running cables from room above to lounge neatly?

nightrider1470 · 11 Nov 2013 at 15:29

I have home cinema setup in my bedroom and I will soon be doing the same with my lounge. Both rooms are directly above and below each other.

As I have expensive hardware like a lumagen 3Dmini and Darbee its not something I want to start buying two of.

My idea is to run a HDMI cable and speaker cables downstairs. Through the ceiling would be the obvious route, but worried it will look a bit of a mess.

Any ideas?

Lethagized · 11 Nov 2013 at 22:35

Without chasing the wall out with a hammer and chisel, your only option is to run trunking down the wall. Behind the curtains, down the side of a door frame or in the very corner of the room is neatest. The hardest part is getting the ceiling hole as close to the corner (where ceiling meets wall) as possible. If there is a joist there, you're kinda stuffed. I had this problem when i moved in when routing ethernet and sky cables to my living room. Only way to tell is to either lift the floorboards upstairs, or prod a screwdriver, and fill the hole later with some filler.

Participant · 11 Nov 2013 at 22:41

The above isn't quite the whole story. If there's a plasterboard wall, you can run the cable down behind the wall using electrician's fishing wire or similar. You drill holes through any horizontal studs by taking out a piece using a plasterboard saw at an angle that allows you to neatly re-seat the plasterboard you had to saw, then drilling through the studs.

Lethagized · 11 Nov 2013 at 23:26

Participant said:
The above isn't quite the whole story. If there's a plasterboard wall, you can run the cable down behind the wall using electrician's fishing wire or similar. You drill holes through any horizontal studs by taking out a piece using a plasterboard saw at an angle that allows you to neatly re-seat the plasterboard you had to saw, then drilling through the studs.

To be fair to the op, if he's asking what to do about routing cables down a wall, then that tells me he doesn't have any experience at all in doing it. Obviously running them behind plasterboard would be the neatest choice, but there may be horizontal beams behind which could stop the cable going past. At this stage, he's already made a nice sizeable hole in the wall paper to pull the fishtapes or rods through. Being a sparky, i've been there.

Participant · 12 Nov 2013 at 10:28

Lethagized said:
there may be horizontal beams behind which could stop the cable going past. At this stage, he's already made a nice sizeable hole in the wall paper to pull the fishtapes or rods through. Being a sparky, i've been there.

Being a sparky, you should know that you can overcome this by cutting a small square in the plasterboard just above the fireblock stud then re-seating it with filler, as I mentioned in my previous post.

Here's a video that demonstrates this:

I did this in a bedroom with practically no cable pulling experience and whilst challenging, it wasn't exactly rocket science. Tradesmen seem to regularly try to convince home enthusiasts that things are too difficult for them, wonder why

. Lazy sparkies that cbf to do a proper job are exactly why I saved myself a few quid for a half-arsed job and did it myself

.

Investing a bit of time and taking things steady gives you the best results long term, not bodging it by running trunking down the wall which, no matter what anyone says about how amazing their trunking looks, is an inferior option.

Of course this might all be academic if the OP's wall is not a stud / plasterboard wall.

Lethagized · 12 Nov 2013 at 15:18

Good for you. Of course there is always a way round it, i never said there wasn't, so i don't really see a need to undermine my knowledge in the matter, what i was pointing out is, if the wall is already papered, he can't exactly go around cutting holes here and there. It all depends on what lengths the op is willing to go to hide the cables, and is the initial work outlay worth it over the alternative of running trunking down a wall.

Caged · 12 Nov 2013 at 22:33

Participant said:
Being a sparky, you should know that you can overcome this by cutting a small square in the plasterboard just above the fireblock stud then re-seating it with filler, as I mentioned in my previous post.

Here's a video that demonstrates this:

I did this in a bedroom with practically no cable pulling experience and whilst challenging, it wasn't exactly rocket science. Tradesmen seem to regularly try to convince home enthusiasts that things are too difficult for them, wonder why . Lazy sparkies that cbf to do a proper job are exactly why I saved myself a few quid for a half-arsed job and did it myself .

Investing a bit of time and taking things steady gives you the best results long term, not bodging it by running trunking down the wall which, no matter what anyone says about how amazing their trunking looks, is an inferior option.

Of course this might all be academic if the OP's wall is not a stud / plasterboard wall.

I'm pretty sure you'd be the first to complain if you got charged 2 days labour by an electrician to install one socket because they were busy cutting the wall and making good afterwards. Yes I agree that it's worth spending time to make things neat but that's why you learn to do certain things yourself. It's not laziness on the part of the person quoting you the job.

Participant · 15 Nov 2013 at 21:29

2 days' labour to cut some plasterboard and re-fill?? Are you a sparkie too?!

Caged · 15 Nov 2013 at 23:45

I'm not sure how you could fill the hole, sand it back down and then re-fill and sand, and then apply a couple of coats of paint to the wall (possibly the entire wall depending how well the colour matches and where the hole was made) in a time period of less than two days. After all it has to be done properly otherwise it's just being lazy.

It's always going to be cheaper to do those sorts of tasks yourself where you can spend 20 minutes a day for a few evenings. Electricians would happily quote you for that level of quality if you asked, but as most people are seemingly blind to a great big piece of trunking running down their wall and pick services based purely on price they'd end up wasting a lot of time.

nightrider1470 · 16 Nov 2013 at 09:08

That video looks a good idea! but the thing is, thats just one plasterboard section. I am wanting to go from the upstairs bedroom to down stair lounge directly below. I would guess the ceiling is £14ft. Am guessing U would have to make at least 2-3 flap cut outs as I would hit a few wood beams.

I might try to aim for down the back of the curtains (behind wall, like video) and just have the cables coming out of the wall say half way down so I only need to cut one flap