Seeing all these pics of old kit used at at home reminded me of the time i used to bring home 3524's and 2500's to set up and study for the CCNA.
So long ago.
Unless you can get hold of 1GB managed switches and good routers which can take adsl2 or cable wics it really isn't worth the bother.
2811's and 1841's are not old junk that can slipaway without anyone noticing, and the hwics are very expensive.
I used to use 800's for my DSL connections at home but since they are both now adsl2 the 800's are a bit useless.
Did have a 2948 running at home a few years back.
At the time 1 GB etherenet nics were rare so i used the two GBIC's connected to my file servers.
Liberated a couple of Intel IGb fibre nics for them.
Still bring kit kit home if i need to set something new up.
Can work on configs over the weekend.
There are limits though you cant set 6513's up in the living room

Most kit is so noisy though you wouldn't want to run it at home 24/7