Can You Hear Me Now

In my last post I thought I had finalized the stud wall frame, however I have had to make a couple of changes, albeit minor. When I started pulling the speaker wire through the frame, I realized I hadn't left room for the center channel speaker which will reside below the HDTV. I had to remove one of the shorter studs below the recessed box are to accommodate the necessary gap. I also had to move the electrical line over to the next stud.

When it's all said and done, below the HDTV I will have a front left and right speaker plus a center channel. There will also be a rear left and right speakers to complete the 5.1 surround sound. Do I need to have 7.1 sound? Would I notice a difference in a room this small? We opted to stick with the 5.1 sound, which is more that what we currently have setup.

The last change I had to make the the stud wall, if your keeping score, this is change number three. I purchased a couple of 2'x2' DRIcore subfloor boards as we will use this product for our basement flooring. It will get my flooring material off of the cold concrete. It will also give us a moisture barrier and the floor wont be as cold to walk on any longer. All this for losing a half inch of space, what's not to like? So, after realizing the bottom of the Sheetrock will need to be a half inch higher than the flooring, I needed to have a second sill plate to the bottom of the structure. There wouldn't be any wood available for me to screw the Sheetrock too if I didn't scab in a second level of boards.

So that's it, the wall is finalized now. I have my speaker wires run, a CAT6 network cable from the server room is in place, and I've added steel plates to protect the wires running through the studs. I'm not sure what those are officially called. They prevent you from drilling into your wires after you cover them up with Sheetrock.

There is one last thing to work on for this blog post, moving the light switches to the new wall by the door. After removing the old cover for the switches, it looked like a mess. I have three lights here, one for this room, one for the light just outside of the door and one to control the lights on my garage. Two of these lights are three way switches, so many wires!

 Let's see, this one with the two orange wires controls the ceiling light in this family room.

 The other combo switches with the blue wires control the outside light and the garage light. Everything is moving over to that fancy 3-gang blue box.

So dirty and messing inside. These three light switches are also had two fuses running to them. The separate one being the garage light.

Ahh, it's so clean looking now and no more combo switch. The outside switches are my two 3-way switches and the center single throw switch controls the light outside the door.