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Sometimes it’s the little things that can make a big difference. In this particular instance I’m thinking of the sudden lack of any (visible) cables being emitted from the TV hanging on the wall. Magic!

When we installed all the network, satellite and aerial cabling oh so long ago we neglected to install an HDMI cable, frankly because we were rank amateurs (apart from Kelly, but the IT guys don’t really generally care about TV’s). But luckily the professionals that came after us to connect up all the wires to actual sockets thought that perhaps one day we might like to be able to do so, and very kindly drilled some nice wide holes and installed a pull wire or three. We only needed one (so far), but what a life saver it was!

• So. First step: After convincing my able assistant it was a good time to attempt this task, the initial issue was to work out which of the three pull wires went from the receiver box to the box behind the TV instead of straight up to the roof. Which generally involved tugging randomly until a wire moved more often than the other two.
• Second step: Work out which way it was most inclined to be pulled.
• Third step: Use massive amounts of duct tape to tie the HDMI cable to the pull wire (trying to make a nice conical shape at the front to assist in travelling though holes in studs).
• Fourth step: Pull wire with fingers crossed, and to helpful advice such as “I don’t know how this is meant to work”, “It’s not going to work”, “It’s stuck”, etc…
• Fifth step: Try to mask surprise and look generally like I was confident all the time when the mass of duct tape appears on the end of the wire a lot sooner than we thought it should. I swear we were only a third of the way through, and hadn’t come close to clearing the difficult 90 degree turns, but apparently we had. Joy!
• Sixth step: swap over all the wall boxes and install some blanks around the wire to avoid any mice thinking it’s a nice entry/exit hole for them!

I have to say we were both almost as surprised as when we managed to suck a fishing line from the pump shed. But it was a very, very nice surprise! Especially after putting it off for so long.

That’s obviously the receiver end. There’s really not much point of showing you just a TV on the wall!

So, another job ticked off. What next?!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2013 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Geeky Tech Stuff, House. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.