The A/V project that wouldn't die

Still working on the same thing. Ugh. It'll be great when it's done, but it's frustrating to be spending so much time on something that is mostly a luxury. Still, it's way better to be doing it now rather than when we've got the paint, new baseboards, flooring and TV mounting all done. And so we continue.

Remember this picture?

Well now it's going to be used to explain our plan. The front speaker ports are moving on up the wall. We're going to mount the speakers on the ceiling and we don't want wires running from down here all the way up to them. So we're running wires from holes up near the ceiling down to these current ports and splicing the wires, then moving the panels up to the top and leaving blank panels down here. The purpose behind this madness is that when we go to re-sell the place, I want it to be easy for someone with speakers that sit on the floor to just take off a blank panel and hook them up rather than needing to bust more holes in the wall. See how helpful I am?

The only weirdness is the panel just to the right of the fireplace is actually an electrical outlet. We're going to need to fish the wires down to the electrical box (just next to it, actually) And then fish the wires from the actual speaker port (which is off to the right about 3 feet) up from the basement to meet them. Sort of a pain but it will give us symmetry.

Also, here's the plan for the TV alcove. We have to move some of the holes around. See these holes?

Rather, see the hole where the outlet is and the center hole? Only one of these is going to work for us. The outlet hole is actually being expanded to become a double-gang box (they have these great orange boxes at Lowe's that can be clipped to the side of an existing box, making the whole thing much easier) and the middle box is being patched. We have to cut a new hole to the right where we'll put the HDMI/center channel port. Why all this work? Because we have one of those full-motion TV mounting arms that's getting mounted back in here and the plate where the arm attaches needs to go in the middle of the alcove. We have to clear a space for it since it sits flush against the wall, and we have to find places to mount all these panels so they won't interfere with any of it. The good thing about this plan is that the TV will be able to float in the front of the alcove without any visible wires (the mounting arm actually has a path for the cables to run through it for a really sleek look) and, get ready for it...we can pull the TV on the arm all the way out and swivel it so we can also watch from the kitchen or the breakfast nook. Sweet, huh?

We're getting more panels cut and wires pulled and all that jazz so I'll try to remember the camera tonight and take some pictures. We also picked out the tile for the bathroom floor and we may start that project before too terribly long. We'll have to see how it all goes!

*Edit*
Good news! Looks like we can splice our speaker wire without a significant (if any) loss of sound quality. Huzzah! Here's a handy link in case you decide to undertake a project like this yourself: Comprehensive Guide to Splicing Speaker Wire