On Monday night and until around 2am on Tuesday morning, I finished installing the new (restored) phone line in the King's Room. I attached the wire around the southwest corner of the room and up to the builder-installed phone jack. From 20 years ago, I had drilled a small hole in the plate of the builder-installed jack panel to run a wire through it, but it was too small for the new wire, so I drilled out the hole to 1/4 inch. Stapling the wire to the wall just above the victorian baseboard was easy and fun with the Acme 37AC stapler. The hard part was wiring in the new cable to the old wires in the wall. That was especially tricky because the old wire was cheap and very thin. So much so, I broke off pieces of bare copper wire from the old line 3 times doing the installation and had to re-strip the old wires. Fortunately, I strip wires just about as well as I ever have with my primitive wire stripper. The new wires are twisted with the old wires on the Green and Red lines, then screwed down to the screw terminals on the jack panel. On the second wire, which I broke twice, I twisted the two wires together starting with the insulated portion of both wires, to provide additional strain relief. The actual old wires follow the new code (which the electrician called Canadian but I'm not sure) so that Red is Blue and Green is White/Blue.
After screwing the panel back in firmly, I hooked up the original King's room phone, and called my cell phone, and it worked perfectly and I detected no extra noise either on the phone or from the recording.
I continue to like the almost invisible appearance of the Acme 37AC staples and the way they permit the black wire to run nearly invisibly on top of the black baseboard. I decided to replace 3 of the first staples I used (the Arrow T59 6mm black insulated staples) with Acme staples along the east wall where the new night stand will go, because they will sometimes be visible. I left in place 5 Arrow staples around the corner and starting on the south wall because those staples are going to be hidden by the new CD rack anyway, and I'm loath to create more tiny holes in the wall from removed staples. Though the holes created by the removed Arrow staples are themselves so tiny as to be nearly invisible, I worry about gypsum dust coming through them, and was thinking about putting drops of paint on them to seal against that. It's amazing how much I can worry endlessly about such tiny details.
After screwing the panel back in firmly, I hooked up the original King's room phone, and called my cell phone, and it worked perfectly and I detected no extra noise either on the phone or from the recording.
I continue to like the almost invisible appearance of the Acme 37AC staples and the way they permit the black wire to run nearly invisibly on top of the black baseboard. I decided to replace 3 of the first staples I used (the Arrow T59 6mm black insulated staples) with Acme staples along the east wall where the new night stand will go, because they will sometimes be visible. I left in place 5 Arrow staples around the corner and starting on the south wall because those staples are going to be hidden by the new CD rack anyway, and I'm loath to create more tiny holes in the wall from removed staples. Though the holes created by the removed Arrow staples are themselves so tiny as to be nearly invisible, I worry about gypsum dust coming through them, and was thinking about putting drops of paint on them to seal against that. It's amazing how much I can worry endlessly about such tiny details.
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