24 March, 2017

Cord-cutting part 2 assembling the kit.

With our cord-cutting project plant firmly in hand we set about Gathering the needed materials and tools for a project.

First off we are going to be running fresh coax in two areas of the house that do not have it already while we are pulling this we are going to be pulling Category 5 and category 6 cable.

The Cat 5 cable will be for telephone and the cat 6 will be for ethernet. We have sufficient quantity of Cat5e and Cat6 cable as well as all the fittings, keystones,  etc that we can need. They have been in my toolkit for years.

My ethernet termination and test tools are all TrendNet devices and have served me well on a professional basis as long as I am testing simple connectivity and not necessarily physical layer performance. There are better meters on the market but typically for residential networking and even small business Networks they are far and above what you need.

The termination and test tools for the coaxial cable are from Paladin tools and it is the data shark set from Home Depot.

We did not have sufficient RG6 coaxial cable in our inventory to even begin this project. I compared the product available at both Lowe's and Home Depot locally as they had better prices than of other companies and they both carried 500 foot schools of Southwire RG6. I do not see the need or the quad Shield or its added expense.

While we were there we picked up a couple of 10 packs of F-Type compression fittings for the coax thinking we only had a couple left in our service kit. Boy were we wrong!

I went to put the compression fittings in the storage well in the datashark toolbox only to find the storage well and the large compartment underneath the storage well nearly crammed full of probably 70 or 80 compression F-Type fittings. As God as my witness I haven't the slightest idea how all of those fittings got in there or fit. I haven't done that much actual work over the years yes I've done some but not enough to justify that many fittings.

Non conductive fish rods again from Home Depot and the Greenlee brand will help fish cable through the wall.

With everything that is in hand we are almost ready to move forward with the project however a major item being the yagi beam type antenna has yet to be delivered. I fear it will be delivered when we won't have time to deal with it.

There is a good deal of this that is going to get terminated in the Attic or simply pulled to the Attic above the termination point and a service tube left in place for now.

The concern is that we have much work to do in what will be the home office where they structured wiring panel will be. We do not want to bring in the structured wiring until the walls are done the trim is done and the flooring is done.

Which brings mean two the concept of how we are going to do the flooring in the home office. The idea is to finish the home office and move on to a separate music room which has been dictated by my lovely bride. In order to do this with some Style , good stewardship of Natural Resources. And good stewardship of our budget , we are planning on upcycling wooden pallet wood for flooring in the office.

This will keep with our country rustic theme that has gone through out the house. It will also make 4 a lot more physical labor to prep the material for installation.

Simply put it would be much easier to just go out and buy pre-made tongue-and-groove flooring but it would not have the character or attachment two us as a couple as flooring we made for ourselves. Not to mention this gives me the opportunity to go out and buy some really cool router bits.

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