Since we have all of the walls open in the new section of the house still, Mr. BBB and I decided that we would use the opportunity to run some speaker wires so that we could later mount speakers all around us. Music is a central part of our lives, especially for Mr. BBB. He often listens to something while he’s cooking or working on the house, and I’ve picked up the habit as well. We used to listen on a stereo system that Mr. BBB has had since he was a teenager, but it finally gave out a couple months ago, so we’ve been using our work radio instead. While it works surprisingly well, it tends to get in the way (our kitchen is actually a decent size, but it feels quite small with two bouncy seats and a work radio on the floor, and I’m constantly tripping over them). Plus if we’ve been using it outside, we don’t always want to bring it inside and risk tracking mud everywhere.

I thought this would be a relatively simple task after all the electrical wiring I had done. After all, I wasn’t even hooking up the speakers; I was just running speaker wire to some boxes so that it would be available to hook up in the future. Of course, I soon learned that my optimism had struck once more.

The first hint that the task might be harder than I had planned came when I was in the middle of the hardware store staring at the speaker wire, trying to figure out what to buy. I had not realized until that point that there were multiple gauges of speaker wire, so my list simply read “100 feet of speaker wire” (a number that was also extremely optimistic. I used about 250 feet all told). After a few minutes of frantically searching Google on my phone, I determined that I would buy the 16 gauge wire, for many sites claimed it would sound better than its thinner cousin despite the slight increase in cost. Given that we were going to put it behind a wall, we didn’t really want to realize later that we needed thicker cable.

Armed with this cable and some simple plastic new work electrical boxes, I decided to get to work. Of course, I almost immediately realized my second problem—I had no idea where to put the speakers or, indeed, how many I needed in each room. With that, I began my second Google search. I figured out quite quickly that the information I was looking for wasn’t out there in an easily digestible format. I really wanted some sort of formula—i.e. if you’re in a kitchen, take the number of square feet and divide by x. For the living room, divide by y. Most of the information seemed geared at someone setting up speakers for a surround sound system for a home theater, not for playing music.

Eventually, I found this site which, though it did not provide exactly what I was looking for, got me pretty close. I ended up deciding to do ceiling speakers for the kitchen since we’ll have cabinets on all the walls and wall speakers in the living room/dining room area. Our kitchen will be 14’x11’, and I decided on four speakers in the ceiling for it. Honestly, the number was somewhat arbitrary, but two seemed like too few, and I wanted an even number for balance sake. For the living room/dining room, I did decide to hang three, but that was mostly due to window placement—there really isn’t room for a fourth. My plan is to hang two of them at the height we would be when sitting at the dining room table to have a left and right stereo speaker for listening to music while eating. The third I decided to hang a bit higher so I could treat it like a ceiling speaker, i.e. send both channels to it for more diffuse listening.

After drawing out where I wanted all the speakers, I hung electrical boxes where each speaker was to go. Technically, you don’t need these, but I figure it will be nice to tuck some excess wire back into them until we’re ready to hang the speakers.

One thing that I did not realize the first time I ran wires is that you need wire rated to be used “in walls.” This is, of course, more expensive, but if you don’t use it and your house catches fire, an insurance company could technically deny a claim because it’s there even if it wasn’t the cause of the fire. Though I feel this is unlikely, the increase in cost for in-wall wire is small enough that I was willing to pay it to eliminate that small risk.

Additionally, when running your cable, you should also try and avoid any power cables if you can. I know the holes with those running through look very tempting but the AC current can interfere with the audio signal and cause tons of feedback. This means a whole new set of holes to drill which, as with electrical, is the worst part in my opinion. But once that’s done, you’ll see just how much easier it is to pull 16 gauge speaker wire through small holes compared to the rest of your electrical.

Once you have everything ready, including the drilled holes, you can simply run wire. It should go from wherever you intend to have your stereo/entertainment system to each of the speakers. If you want to have a stereo that can control multiple rooms, I would recommend trying to locate it centrally. Our plan is to add one more kitchen cabinet on the side closest to the living room/dining area. We can then tuck the speaker system and any other paraphernalia it needs in that to keep it hidden.

And that’s it (for now). We left all the cables loose while we finish up some other things, but the only steps left now are to hook up the actual speakers and then the stereo. I’m sure that will be an adventure, too, but it is one best left for another time.