After the all of the equipment arrived, we returned to the Ludlow's home to place the speaker and projector wires. The rear speakers already had wire run to them, but the front speakers and the projector required us to install the wire through finished walls and ceilings. A good custom theater company will be able to install your equipment with little or no damage to the existing walls.

We started by installing the speaker wires for the front speakers. To do this, we were able to use space behind the baseboard molding, and bring the wires up the inside of the wall. These wires were then finished using wall plates and speaker terminals.

The projector required a bit more work, as we had to pull the wire across the finished ceiling. We were pulling a large bundle of cable that included everything needed for the projector, and this included a DVI cable - whose end is over an inch wide. This fish required working around many can lights, and drilling through about 5 inches of wood. In the end, we were able to get the wire to the projector without causing any damage to the ceiling.

We also had to get wire to a second zone of audio. This ended up being in the kitchen ceiling upstairs. To pull this, we had to get wire across the finished ceiling in the basement, upstairs into an unfinished closet, and then across the finished ceiling in the kitchen. This work caused no drywall damage, either.

Finally, we had to get the XM satellite antenna outside. The equipment closet was on an outside wall that happened to face south, so we simply drilled through to the outside, and mounted the antenna discreetly under the porch.

Once the wire was in place, we were able to quickly set up the equipment by plugging in the custom speaker cables, and connecting the equipment.