Structured Wiring in the Den

I have been wanting to run Ethernet down to the Living Room for a while, and have been pondering how best to do this ever since the Bedroom Theater and Server Room installs.  If I was going to go to the trouble to run Ethernet, I would also pull Coax for a better antenna position, and after trying to watch over-the-air broadcast TV during a recent windstorm, I decided it was time to run both.

The challenge with making a run to this particular wall is that there is no contiguous wall up through the second story to make a straight drop from the attic.  Being isolated as a sort of 'island' wall rules out running laterally to where a straight drop can be made, and of course with a slab foundation, there is no access from underneath.  One option would be to run up into the first floor ceiling and then laterally to the workshop where I have access to the base of the utility room wall, but with no access inside the ceiling, this would be impossible without cutting and patching a lot of drywall.

I decided to run up into the attic and then over to the utility room, however the one upper wall that crosses the TV wall does not cross over the stud bay where I wanted the outlet, nor is the stud bay to which I have attic access over the lower wall.  I needed access inside the second story floor to make the jog, which either meant cutting and patching drywall or pulling carpet, cutting and patching the subfloor.  I opted for the second choice.

First step is to peel back the carpet upstairs so I can remove a piece of the subfloor for access underneath the upper wall.  With a great stroke of luck, there is a corner seam between three sheets of plywood subfloor, which means that two edges of my patch can bear directly on existing structural members.  The other corner I will brace.

Layout my access hole and make plunge cuts with the circular saw, then finish it up with a handsaw and chisel.

This is what the inside of the second story floor looks like from the access hole I just cut.  You can see the hole and the shaft of the long auger bit where I've drilled to run the cables down from the upper wall into this floor cavity.  Since the upper wall is just a partition and nothing bears on it, the baseplate is just set on the decking - you can see pairs of nails that attach it.

I've pulled the new cables down from the attic and fished them into the floor cavity.  Finally, I'll drill a hole through the top plate and into the lower wall using my newly cut access hole.

Now, I go downstairs and cut a hole for a low-voltage faceplate ring and fish the cables out.

I got to use my new coax crimper and now the faceplate is installed.