How to run wires? (1 Viewer)

[Anthony_J]

This has probably been discussed to death but...

I'm moving into a new apartment soon and will, of course, be setting up my home theater. I currently live in a dump, so all of my wires are electrical taped to the walls, with no attempt at concealment whatsoever.

The new place is much nicer, however, so I want some semblance of neatness. Without going under the drywall, what are some easy ways to run my wiring to the surrounds, while keeping everything as neat as possible?

How about if I have to use free standing rear surrounds (i.e., not attached to a wall), how do I get the wires to the rears without leaving them exposed in the middle of the room? Since it's an apartment, I can't really pull up the carpet to run the wires under there, either. Is there a viable way to make an omelet without breaking some eggs?

I'm at a total loss, thanks for any input.

I forgot to mention...I'll be setting everything up in my living room as the apartment doesn't have room for a dedicated area.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Anthony,

There are a few ways to get the wires to the back. The cleanest looking, but not necessary the easiest way, is to run them around the baseboards. Typically there is some space between the baseboard and the carpet tack strip, so you can pull the carpet up at the baseboard, a little at a time, get the wire underneath, and then stuff the carpet back down. Any place where the carpet gets pulled up off the tack strip, you can hammer it back down.

If you have to cross a doorway, you can pull the wire under the rug. On both sides of the doorway cut away a piece of the tack strip just wide enough for the wire to pass through (don’t lay the wire across the tack strip). Then get a stiff wire (something along the lines of a clothes hanger) long enough to span the doorway, and tape a pull-string to it. Push the wire under the carpet across to the other side and pull it out. Then you can tie your speaker wire to the pull string and pull it through, across the doorway.

Hope this helps,

Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[Tim Kline]

the under baseboard and under the rug is a good way. Also what I did was bought a big spool of the white monster cable (my walls are an offwhite color so it blends in) and I run the wire up the corners using a staple gun to make sure they stay firmly in place, and it's really not noticable at all unless you are looking for it. A friend of mine has a darker colored room and just ran the white wires up the corners the same way, and he painted over the wires the same color as the wall and you also can't see them barely at all, it worked good.

If you want to do the pain-over approach too, I have seen flat wire before that's paper thin and sticky on one side, so you just stick it the wall and run it up to the speaker, then paint or wallpaper over it. supposed to look nice too but i've never tried it

 

[Anthony_J]

thanks for the info.

 

[Jayson klimek]

I dont exactly how you have your space set up, but when i was living in an appartment i used black pump hose. accordian like hose. Obviously you cant go directly through the middle of the room with it. But if you have multiple runs going from one side of the room to the other. It will atleast keep the cables together with a clean look. its about 5 or 6 bucks for a 24 foot roll at home depot or you local home improvment store. I used to keep all of my gear ant the rear of the room and had to run an svideo cable, front left, right, center, and subwoofer cable to the front so i wraped it all up into one hose and laid it down by the baseboard. It Didnt look bad at all.