Most people only ever see the finished room. I want to show you the part nobody photographs.
This was a full gut rehab of a building in Palmer Square that's about 100 years old. When we walked in, it was down to old brick, old wood joists and new studs. It was dark, it was dirty, and that's normal. A lot of the most important work in older city buildings happens in rooms that look like this. What you do in that mess decides how clean the finished home looks.
Here's the same job, start to finish.
Why 100 year old buildings are different
A new house is built square, with open stud bays and a clear path from the basement to the attic. A building this old isn't. The joists are rough sawn and not always the same size. Exterior walls are solid brick, so there's no hollow cavity to fish a wire through. Walls that weren't opened still have plaster and lath that cracks when you cut it.
A gut rehab is the one good chance to get low voltage right, but you still work around the brick, the old joists and every other trade. That takes a plan before the first wire comes off the spool.
It starts with a pipe
One of the first things in was chase pipe. It's an open path from one part of the house to another. Years from now, when something new comes along, there's a way to get a cable through without opening a wall.
Rough-in, trim and finish
Low voltage work happens in three passes. Rough-in is when the framing is open. Wire gets pulled to every location and left long. Trim comes after the drywall, when the wires get cut to length and made ready. Finish is when the speakers, TVs and equipment go in and everything gets turned on and tested.
If a wire is in the wrong place at rough-in, trim can't fix it without cutting new drywall. So most of the thinking happens in the dark stage you see here.
The basement theater, before the drywall
The basement was going to be a theater. In this light it's hard to picture. The ceiling speaker locations went up between joists that have been holding this building up for a century. The surround wires were left looped between the studs, right where each speaker would sit.
Speaker locations in a theater aren't guesses. They're set from where the screen will go and where people will sit. The fronts line up with the screen, the surrounds sit beside the seats, and the overhead speakers go above them. Each gets its own wire back to the equipment, planned before drywall, because in a finished ceiling there's no easy way to move a speaker a foot to the left.
Same room. The speakers sit flush in the walls and ceiling, and you don't see a single wire. That only happens when the wire is in the right spot before the drywall closes.
The family room TV wall
At trim, this wall was white drywall with color samples on it and a wire coming out of a box. Finished, it's a dark wall with the TV and soundbar right where the wire was waiting.
A TV wall gets decided early. The height, the center line and the spot for the soundbar all have to be known before the finishes go on, so the box lands behind the TV instead of beside it. That's what keeps the finished wall clean, with nothing hanging below the screen.
The fireplace wall
A TV over a fireplace is easy to get wrong. Here the wire and boxes went in above the old surround, with boxes still piled on the floor, before there was a mantel to work around. Finished, the TV and soundbar sit centered over the new mantel.
The kitchen
In the kitchen, the cabinets were hung and the ceiling was cut while the wire was already out and waiting. Now there's an in-ceiling speaker among the pendants, and music while you cook.
Where it all comes back
All of that wire ends up in one place: a rack with the receiver, the network switch, power protection and the streaming amps. The rack is the last thing you'd see, and it looks as neat as the rooms do.
A rack like this is only as good as the wire behind it. Every run coming in has to be labeled so anyone can tell which room it goes to. Cables get bundled so equipment can be serviced without a tangle. Neat is what makes a service call quick years later.
Why we photograph the dirty part
Photos like the rough-in shots in this story are more than a before picture. Once the drywall is up, they're the only way to see what's behind it. Want to add a speaker or find a wire? A picture of the open wall answers it without cutting a hole.
None of the finished rooms would look this clean without the work in those dark basement photos. That's why I run every pre-wire the same way, start to finish. You can read how in How We Pre-Wire a Home to Minimize Your Punch List, or see what we offer on our pre-wire page.
If you're planning a gut rehab in an older Chicago building, or you're a builder who wants a low voltage partner on it, I'd like to hear about it.
Send us a messageCall 708-705-9665
Acoustical Vision, 7340 Harrison St, Forest Park, IL 60130 (office by appointment only)
708-705-9665 | paul@acousticalvision.com