"Home Telephone Wiring - Adding a Telephone Jack"

 By Ron Stultz

19 September 2005

Summary: the quarter round that sits between shoe molding and the floor can hide a 2 wire telephone cable in behind it.

Background:

 2 years ago our daughter gave me and my wife a Tivo, which was great except where the Tivo had to go there was no Tivo required telephone jack available.  Just run an extension cord behind some furniture or under a rug to an existing jack, right?  Wish I could have but no jack was close enough to allow me to run an extension cord and hide it.  So what to do?  In summary what I did is to run a phone cable from an existing phone jack behind the quarter round, which resides between the floor and the drywall baseboard.

 Specifically:

 -         I went to the closest phone jack, which would allow me to run a telephone cable along walls to the point where I needed the new phone jack and unscrewed the existing jack plate from the wall mounted box behind it. 

 -         Next I took a “tab” out of the existing jack wall box, which would allow me to add a new cable.

 -         2.25 inches up from the floor (above the wall floor plate), right under where I took out the tab in the existing phone jack wall box, I drilled a hole in the drywall the exact size of the telephone cable I was going to add.  I then inserted my new telephone cable into the hole and fished it upward to the hole I had created in the existing phone box.

-         Using a putty knife, I pried up the quarter round all along the path of the telephone cable from the existing phone jack to where I need the new jack.  Then I placed the cable behind the quarter round and gently nailed it back into place.  I had to be very careful here not to nail into the cable and short it out.

-         In my case, my cable path along walls took me to the opposite side of the wall I needed the phone jack on, so just opposite where I needed the phone jack, I drilled a hole in the drywall the size of the phone cable.

  -         On the wall I needed the phone jack, I cut a rectangular hole in the drywall the size of an electrical box, at the height from the floor as all installed electrical outlets.   I then took my hand and reached into the hole and found the cable I had inserted in the small hole on the other side of the wall and ran it into my new wall box.  I then installed the box by simply screwed out the wings of the plastic box and tightened the wings against the drywall.

-         Now I connected the wires of the cable to a telephone jack plate of the new extension and then connected the cable to the existing jack screwed the jack to its wall box and I was done. 

Although not suited to every situation and yes, there is one inch or so of cable exposed on the surface of the drywall at the existing jack and also where I needed a new jack, the installation is permanent and now Tivo works great.