20
I recently took 2 weeks off work so that I could spend some quality time at home, relaxing, going to the gym, going for a swim with Chris - you know how it goes. However, the first weekend had hardly started when it was decreed: “I’m going to decorate the lounge”
Off to B&Q we went, got all the emulsion, the trusty Basecoat, all the nick-nacks you’d expect top use during a decorating job (there’s always some you forget) and a couple of plastic dust sheets to cover the stuff that was too heavy or too awkward to move out of the room.
Anyway, on to the good stuff… I’d decided that all the speaker cables, aerial cables and satellite cables were going to be hidden inside the wall. How easy is this to do? Well, to be honest, it’s a piece of cake - especially if you’re decorating the room afterwards 
I picked up a good trick off the electrician when he did some work at our house, and that was not to channel the whole wall, but to knock small holes in the to create the path that you want the cable to follow.
When I looked at all of the holes I made in the wall, my first reaction was: “Oh crap. I hope I can plaster”:
Unfortunately, because I didn’t want to mess around with the coving, I had to leave the satellite cables coming from the ceiling - trust me, it was much easier than the alternative.
As this was the first set of holes I’d put in the wall, I’d done rather a lot. I fed the cable through each hole just after I made it, then knocked the next hole out and so on.
I did three of these in total: The one you see here, one on the right of the room for the right-hand speaker cable and one next to the stereo, which contains the DAB aerial going up through the ceiling, into the airing cupboard and into the loft to sit happily with the other aerials. (Our loft looks a bit like an antenna park these days!)
So, once the cable was in, all I had to do was cover it up with some cardboard so that there’s less of the hole to fill with plaster and also so that the cable isn’t stuck in plaster (although my first though was so that I could move it around if I needed to, but once I packed it in with cardboard, it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Luckily we had loads of cardboard left over from the boxes and boxes of stuff that Christopher got for his birthday. So, when it comes time for someone to knock this wall down in I don’t know how many years time, they’ll have a pleasant surprise when bits of cardboard with Bob The Builder pop out at them
Now, what if you want to move the position of the moutning boxes, I hear you ask? Well, I thought of that. This next shot clearly shows how I assume that I’ll need clear instructions on how to pull cable through the wall next time I come to open the mounting boxes. (Click for a larger image):
In case you can’t read what it says inside the cable housing, each box has: “Spare cable in wall” written on it, and a handy arrow to show the direction to pull from, should it be needed
One thing that you do have to be careful of when you’re burying cables in the wall is that you don’t damage the cable. I know that sounds obvious, but just in case, I tested the cable before I started, once it was in the wall and then again once the holes had been plastered up.
What can happen (and did happen to me, which is why I’m glad aI left so much slack) is that as you’re gently twisting and turning the cable to where it needs to be, you can damage it. Lucky for me it was only at the very end!
So, holes done, cable in, all I needed to do was to plaster - and hope that I could still do it.
The plastering went OK - and I remembered a tip I read on the internet about smoothing over by putting the plastering trowel in hot water first. That saved me a bit of sanding later.
Once the plaster had dried, I had to sand it down. This didn’t take as long as I thought it would, because the plaster had settled nicely and I’d cleaned around the edges of the holes, as you can see.
Next job: Basecoat. That covered up any would-be imperfections in the wall (and also my plastering job).
Once coat of Basecoat and three coats of emulsion later and the room had nice bright white walls. (Just a shame that the coving also took three coats, as this was the biggest pain in the backside)
All in all, I’m pleased with the way that the cabling went - you can’t see it and you can’t see where I knocked holes in the wall. I must admit that I did enjoy smnashing holes in the wall - even though I didn’t know whether I’d be able to cover them up again or not. Well, what’s the worst case scenario - I’d have to get a plasterer in. Luckily it didn’t come to that
The painting seemed a doddle compared to the rest of it. I was getting a bit freaked out by the time I had to
So, holes done, cable in, all I needed to do was to plaster - and hope that I could still do it.
The plastering went OK - and I remembered a tip I read on the internet about smoothing over by putting the plastering trowel in hot water first. That saved me a bit of sanding later.
Once the plaster had dried, I had to move the piano out of the room to make way for the floor going down. This thing weighs a tonne (probably literally). I was worrying how on earth this was going to get shifted out of the way so that we can lay the floor, but thanks to our friends Dan and John who came to the rescue and made it look so easy, the piano is now sitting (temporarily) in the hallway. I need to get it back into the lounge at some point. Wonder if you two guys would be free again
In this picture, you can see the same area, but finished. Trust me, there’s not a lump in the wall. The floor’s down - thanks again to my dad, who’s a total expert when it comes to wooden floor. The final stage was the beading around the floor. Again, dad to the rescue. I just can’t handle a mitre block to get the funny angles.
While we were doing the beading for the floor, I realised that we hadn’t left enough gap to take the audio cable and the speaker cable that I wanted putting in. So, the audio cable didn’t make it, but there were still some places where the speaker cable wouldn’t fit in, so we had to trim the edge of the floor. Off we went to B&Q to buy a B&Q equivalent of the Dremel Multi tool. What a waste of time. No sooner had we put it together and attempted to chip little parts away from the edge of the floor than smoke came billowing out of the thing. Back in its box it went and off to B&Q for a refund the next day.
In the end, we managed to do it with a Stanley knife. The cable’s in and it’s hidden.
So much for a relaxing couple of weeks off!