Cutting Drywall

One of the core skills I had to learn for setting up the media room was how to cut drywall.  Anytime you want to install anything into your wall, you'll have to cut drywall.  Here's the easy way to do it.

1.  Figure out where you want the installation to go and then trace/stencil the installation onto the wall with a pencil.  This will give you a general idea of the size and fit on the wall.  Make sure to level out the installation before stenciling.  In this post, I'm showing a rectangular cut, but the same process can be used for a circular cut.

 2.  Check the area behind the stencil to make sure you won't be cutting into any studs or hot wires.   You don't want to cut into any of these.  Most studfinders on the market today will check for studs and hot wires.  

3.  Take a 1/2 inch drill bit and drill two holes at opposite corners of the stenciled area.

4.  Use a drywall saw to cut the stencil.  Start at one of the drilled holes and cut towards the stencil line.  Then level out the saw at the stencil.  Cuts shown in red.

5.  Reverse the saw along the stencil to cut out any remaining portions.  Cuts shown in green.

Mess of Wires

Our media room was pre-wired for 7.1 audio.  This meant that audio wires were pulled behind the walls and ceiling to where the speakers were going to be.  The other ends of the wires collected at one point where the audio receiver was to be placed.  The wires weren't labeled though.  So at first, the media room just had a mess of wires coming out of the wall.  It looked sort of like this:

The first task in setting up the media room was to figure out which wires went to which speaker.  Because the wires went behind the walls, it wasn't a simple task.  No need to buy a fancy wire tester though.  You can test each wire with a AA battery and a flashlight bulb.

At its core, speaker wire is just two copper wires bound together in one housing.  This means that you can hook the AA battery up to the two wires at one end and the flashlight bulb at the other end, and the bulb should light up.  

First step is to strip the external housing and then strip the individual housing on each speaker wire.  After the copper cores are exposed, you can hook up a battery and bulb to either end of the wire.  If you have chosen the correct wires, the bulb will light up.  Below is a diagram:

Through a series of trial and error, you can figure out which wire goes to which speaker.  Label each wire so you don't have to repeat the test.

The Big Reveal

Not many posts from me the past few months because of baby and because of the media room project.  When we bought the house, it came with a prewired media room.  Too bad it was just an empty room with wires in the wall.

I wanted to set the room up without hiring out so I could learn some new skills.  I went with a 7.1 in-wall system with ceiling mounted projector  I've been working on this project off and on for the past 6 months, and it is finally complete.  In the picture above, you can see the screen, the two in-wall front speakers, the center speaker, sub, receiver, console, and Frozen.

I'll make more posts later about each mini-project in the media room.