[kstone]

I have decided to throw some cables into my house whilst doing some other DIY, hopefully this will develop into a basic multiroom solutions as it evolves.


The concept is to have a Matric Switch at the center of all this.
See below for a basic concept.

One Day - it will look like this I hope...

But I have quite a lot of building work to do first (knocking down walls, blocking up doors, making doors etc etc).

Below is my Tale of how my house is progressing.
I have a tight timeline to do all this.

Well I say I have a timeline, it is indefinate. The fact is I am living with the inlaws until this is done.
This is OK, except for the fact that I have to watch.

Holby City, Double Bill this week, lots of kids died and stuff great
Celebrity Ice skating.. ***!
Who want to be Nancy - or something like that (lloyd webber is a bit irritating).

Anyway - enough of my problems..


Below are some snaps of the progress.

[kstone]

Ok, Where to Begin?

So this is my lounge today, lots of Wires thrown together.
* TV, PC, TV/Mon, Xbox 360, Video Sender, 2x Cable Boxes, TVIX + some other bits and peices (PS - Speakers are not in optimal 5.1 positions, or cabled up)



Not Wife Friendly at ALL.

I get phonecalls asking 'how do I play a DVD' I wanna watch Titanic.
And I have to explain that I stole the HDMI cable for my Xbox so she has to unplug it and swap it over.

It generally doesn't go down well.


21st Feb is Kick off Day
- The mess and Tangle of wires, not hidden very well and quite 'visible'.

Lots of bit's and Peices in my 'corner' where only the brave venture.

A big pile of Crap in the dining room ready for removal.

The Cupboard under the stairs, previoulsy used for the boiler and general rubbish.

Little Yellow useless room that serves no purpose other than to house the Cats Litter Tray. (It used to be a kitchen)

Everything stripped out with exception of the Cable and TV (Gotta have something to watch when working!)

Removed all the 1970's pub carpets and started to throw in a few cables.. Now it gets exciting!!!!!

Smash Bash lets make a mess.
Time to cut in neatly all my new Dual Gang backboxes. Gently does it...

Oooops, bad plaster and the hardest bricks made from Rock and Diamonds or something.

Time to channel a neat little groove to the TV.

Ahhhhhhh.


Big gas Pipe.

Smash the Brick to bits and go behind it
Worked quite well.

I have run up there.

* Fused Spur
* Coax
* CAT6
* Component Vid
* HDMI

More Smashing up

Cat 6 and Coax under the boards.
All over the place.

The hardest part is chopping and pulling up the Boards!

Whoever cabled my house originally is either an umpa lumpa or one of teh borrowers!
All my sockets are mounted on the Skirting board and are so low that the cables get wedged into the floor.

The Dining room cleared of furniture and replaced with Dust.

Here you can see the Arch into the Yellow Room / Useless room & the Hallway.
I'm going to block that one up.

That Mess in the front room is not getting any better!

The wires are now starting to arrive.

Left = 10 Pairs of Speaker cables for the surround (I doubled up just in case).
Right = new Power Sockets

Those cables will not be falling out anytime soon, tehy are now part of the house.

[kstone]

Ok That Junk cupboard under the stairs is now going to house my Media Gateway / central patching panel.
It will house.

* Coax Patch
* Coax RF Splitting

* Cat 6 Patch

* 100Mb Switch

* Telephone

(Possibly HDTV Distribution & Audio, not decided yet).

All those cables are just from the Ground floor.

Yellow room Taking shape now.

A big Pipe through the Wall so I don't have to go upstairs anymore.

Plaster, Yay

I do love it when the anaglypta (SP?) wallpaper comes off and I get a nice clean wall

TV Mount Bolts and the AV wires.

Coving & my nice BIG Steel RSJ boxed in.

There was a wall there once you know.

And there it is now, re-located to my Patio.

Little cupboard upstairs.
That was an expansion tank for the old gravity fed Boiler, just replaced with a Combi.
Loads more space created in the Loft and this cuboard (Possible server room?).

No Wall.

Wall flattened and concreted (Perfect Base for my Conservatory)

Whilst we are making mess, lets chop a hole in the Kitchen Ceiling and put a window!

Window from outside.

A bit more progress on the Yellow room.

Conservatory Wall going up.

Paint on the walls (Wife chose the colour scheme, she did quite well I think).

Yellow Room not yellow no more, now the cream utility room (with toilet).

Another view of the Utility room, lots of storage space for stuff.

[kstone]

Ok now the Wallet is getting a little empty, time to scale back the idea's a little.
The Faceplates are simple Modular Snap in ones, not the prettiest but functional.

Ah ha - square hole for a new fireplace.
The big Wooden beast had to go.

I decided to take all my speaker cables to single gang wallboxes.

Here is the room complete with Flooring, we went with laminate as it is hardwearing and we are sick of our carpets getting covered in cat hair.
The downside I guess is the 'echo'.

It does look smart though!

The Chimney Breast, looking all red and un happy. I think it needs electrical bits hanging on there!!!
Such as a TV.

Curved Bay Windows... Great.
Ideal for Blinds skirting boards, my Chippie managed to steam a peice and bend it in place.

I am a little annoyed I didn't replace the rad's they look a bit 'Cream' now. But they will do for now.

The OVEN -
Designed for Baking AV stuff.

I need to get a nice unit to house all my bits and peices... Still looking, I want an enclosed solution if possible to keep my little ones fingers out.

I have memories of being a 4 year old and getting all my Dads Vinyl out and placing it on the floor.
Then 'ice skating' all over them... Then putting toast in our toploading BetaMax.

Thats not going to happen to me

It's getting Close now the Sofa's are back from my Shed and the TV is on the Wall.

The Fire is in Place and much less obtrusive than the old one (It is also remote control which is nice!).

I am pleased and my wife is over the moon that there are now no wires going up the wall!

Bonus Points if you can guess the Film.

Big long room (that 3rd Sofa will be in the Conservatory I think).

I have resigned myself to waiting a while for the Matrix switch so I can have multi Zone AV.
For now I am going to use a basic AV Switch from Joytech.
I quite like the look of it to be honest, I gave it a quick go and for 50 quid it is ideal for what I want!

The back of the AV Switch (6 AV Inputs & a 3 port hub for fun).

[georgee_uk]

Hello

Thanks for sharing the pics. I am going through the same process myself.

I have taken some pics so I will post some soon as I finsih dusting down off the house

[mdfwrestler]

Hi,

Will be keeping an eye on your progress. I have a similar setup myself, what is the rack your are terminating your cat5 to? I haven't seen a design like that before. Any further info of cost and supplier would be appreciated.

Nice plan by the way and handy to have these old pantry's for node 0!

Good luck with the progress......

[kstone]

Originally Posted by mdfwrestler

Hi,

Will be keeping an eye on your progress. I have a similar setup myself, what is the rack your are terminating your cat5 to? I haven't seen a design like that before. Any further info of cost and supplier would be appreciated.

Nice plan by the way and handy to have these old pantry's for node 0!

Good luck with the progress......

The Node 0 rack is a product called the Media Gateway from Telect who are a USA based company.
(Whom I happen to work for, but I develop Telecom solutions).

It is pretty early in the develpoment phase, but I think it could be a pretty neat solution. Possibly a little too over engineered, but the cable management is pretty sweet. One of my intentions for installing this is to evaluate the solution for the European market.
http://www.telect.com/www/products/C...+Media+Gateway


As for the house.
It's looking a bit cleaner now, I will throw up some pictures later today hopefully to show the progress.

[mdfwrestler]

Excellent progress, it really helps once the construction is complete and the finishes are starting to be applied.

Really like the idea of the central modular hub, in all honesty I think it could be quite popular as there seem to be more Home Theaters than ever. Some costs would be useful if/when it has been decided to be distributed in UK.

I'd be sure to keep an eye on your progress!

[morphar]

awesome thread, keep up the good work and pics ;-) Loving it

[kstone]

OK - I have cleaned up my DIY posts as they were getting a bit messy.

There is real progress now and hopefully I will be back in this weekend!

[dazza32]

Originally Posted by kstone

Bonus Points if you can guess the Film.

Groundhog Day

[kstone]

Originally Posted by dazza32

Groundhog Day

100 points to Dazza32

1,000,000 on offer if you can get the one above.

[dazza32]

Bladerunner????

[kstone]

Originally Posted by dazza32

Bladerunner????

Smart ass

1,000,0100 Points to you.






Note to self.. Make next challenge more difficult.

[dazza32]

Originally Posted by kstone

1,000,0100 Points to you.

Points make prize's, so what do i get then

[kstone]

Originally Posted by dazza32

Points make prize's, so what do i get then

Respect & a free copy of 'Carry on Camping' once you hit 20,000,000 points




Does anyone else have a Cable Fetish / Addiction?

My names is Kieran and I loves the cables.....

This is one of my many boxes of various cables and carp.

I do love them.





Some of them are being used behind my cabinet, I have mainly gone for Component on everything I could.
Optical for the Dobly & plain Stereo for the TV.
All quite crappy cables to be honest, but they do the job great.

I am using a Joytech Control center thing to plug everything into, must say it works really nice.

No cables outside the wall
All inside the wall, Happy Days.

Put the wrong HDMI in the wall though
It was the one with a kin DVI on the other end, not a straight through HDMI, 'bad times'.

[ballyg]

I share your fetish of cables..but mine is not as excessive :D

Nice job there bud.

[kstone]

OK -
Need to get my PC up and running before I move in, so Ihave located it to the rear of the laounge (Near one of my new fancy Cat5e outlets).

No more dangly cable business, well no more dangley ethernet cables anyway.

OK -
Lets see if those cables that I plastered into the walls still work
So first I need to Punchdown the cables in the outlets using a Krone IDC tool.

Simples..
Even the modules are colour coded so I don;t even have to remember the right colurs.

I still want Wireless for my Laptop so I will need to find a home for the Linxsys router.

I'll also need to get to the outside world, so the cable modem needs a home to. for now that home is going to be balanced at the bottom of my Media Gateway.

AT the top I have a 100Mbps Switch, but I will patch that in later.

First Step is to cable up the patch panels, as this is a good ol USA product it is 110 punchdown not krone, so I needed to use an imported tool.

Pictures of punched down cables.. very exciting.

Here is a couple of Insertion Displacement Connection (IDC) Tools.
Blue = 110
White = Krone

What was even more exciting was that my PC connected straight away & I was able to patch in My Popcorn Hour & Tivx without fuss.