Gym Project: Shelf Low Voltage

Now that the TV is hung in the home gym, I need to hang a shelf for the blu Ray and surround sound amplifier. The electric outlet is finished. Now I need to run low voltage cables: HDMI, digital audio, and speaker cables.

The room is already wired to the hilt with speaker wire. Unfortunately, all that wire is 18-gauge (which is probably fine) and I want to use the better 16-gauge wire.

The surround sound is going to be fed by a digital audio cable. This is a coax cable with RCA connectors.

 I could only find 6 foot cables and I needed 10 feet. So I combined two cables with a coupler. Hopefully I won't lose too much signal through the coupler.

I already have a low voltage box installed for the self. Using a 1" bit, I punched out a hole in the back of the box to accommodate the large number of cables that will feed through it.

I already have low voltage boxes in the corners of the room. When I built the room I anticipated wanting speakers someday. Now. I simply need to knock out a hole in each speaker box.

Then run the speaker wire through the hole.

I did this for each corner, center, and subwoofer locations.

And then staple the wires to the rafters.

In the past I had all the speaker wire return to a central wiring closet where I would patch them together. This time all the wire returns to the shelf.

I have some very nice electrical box plates for speakers, but I am not going to use them this time. Instead, I am going to use a cheap trick of drilling a hole into a normal plate cover.

And then I simply feed the speaker wire through.

The low voltage is done! Now I can hang the shelf.