A short while ago, in a city not to far from Woodbury, Amber and Justin signed a lot of papers to buy their second home.
Unlike their last home, this home isn’t a town home. It’s a single family home. 5 Bed, 4 Bath in wonderful Woodbury, MN.
On day one, the priority for me was to get my office wired and running. Without Comcast fully installed at the new place, and with Comcast fully disconnected at the old, I had no good source of internet other than to head to the local coffee shop, and they never seem to like it when I bring my full office there.
I estimated the original task of getting the cable where I wanted it, and my office up and running to take approximately 2 to 3 hours.
Instead, it took closer to 8 hours. Here’s the quick run down of everything we did:
- Bought a cable modem from best buy (I didn’t want to pay monthly modem rental fees). Best Buy was very helpful for once, and they price matched Amazon, which made my day.
- Went to home depot and bought 500 feet of R6 coax. I figured at most I would need 100, but better safe than sorry. Also got all the things I needed to “crimp” the cable (heads, etc).
- Started figuring out how we were going to get the cable where we wanted it. We originally tried snaking our way through vents, but with no luck. After about an hour of debate, we settled on trying to go straight through the floor, into a closet, and then straight through the closet floor.
- Ran to Ace Hardware to buy a drill bit to get us through the floor.
- Drilled the holes, ran the cable.
- Crimped the cable on both ends.
- Plugged the cable modem and called Comcast. Comcast could see the modem. Took it to another jack in the house, still couldn’t see it. Took it to yet another jack, couldn’t see it. Took it outside, still couldn’t see it. Was frustrated at this point, so told comcast I would get a TV and test that, and call them back… I wanted to make sure it was the cable before calling a Comcast rep (otherwise I would get billed for it, AND would end up wasting my time if it was in fact the modem).
- Ran and got TV, came back and plugged it into a particular jack I had tried before… It worked.
- Plugged the modem into that same jack (which I had done before). It suddenly worked (delayed registration perhaps on Comcast’s part is my guess).
- Took the modem back upstairs to see if it would now work in my office… It did not (urgh….)
- Thinking it was a bad cable we had just installed, went to the other end and tested… Still failed…
- Went to the other end of that cable… Still failed…
- Went where the cable goes outside… discovered failure there again…
- At this point I was very very confused. There were 2 entry points into the house that I was pretty certain based on the direction the cables were running was interconnected. It was clear that at one point these cables were working, and at the other, they were not.
- Went to the end where the cable was working and began to “dig up/pull up” the buried cable. Did so literally all around my back yard.
- Discovered that whoever wired it (comcast), had skipped over the junction I was working from, and that there were 2 cables running underground back to the main comcast box (which is sealed). This lead to the assumption that one was connected, and one was not.
- Cut the good cable in the middle, and hooked it in where I needed it…
And just like that, my internet in my office started working.
Of course I created 2 more projects as a result… Namely:
- I needed to crimp the other end of the cable that I just cut, and get a splitter so that I would still have cable TV in the main rooms, not just my office.
- I will need to find a way to rebury the cable I dug up, and or, run it along the house (might be smarter).
I would end up saving those for day 2 of my new home.
We also moved a good number of boxes. The hope is to have as many boxes moved over prior to Saturday, when we move all of the really big stuff.
My friends and family have been an amazing help this first day already as well. My mom and dad helped paint and move boxes (and helped with all the cabling). Amber’s Grandpa helped drill the holes in the floor, and her Grandma helped with painting. Amber’s mom and dad helped with painting. And Richard and Elizabeth helped with painting and some of the first unboxings and cleanings in the kitchen. Oh, and Richard did get the pleasure of moving what I believe to be the heaviest box so far… I could be wrong. Needless to say we are VERY VERY VERY VERY grateful for all of our friends and family and the help they gave us. We’ll be leaning on them quite a bit the next few days until the move is complete, and we appreciate every minute!
I’ll try to post a day-2 update as well…
I’ll work on getting some photos soon… My camera isn’t quite unpacked yet.