Moved to a new house. HT room will be on middle floor, making it hard to pull wire from under and/or overhead. Wife wants the speakers to be mostly invisible so I need to do either wall or ceiling mount. How do i get the speaker wire from one side to the other? I have pulled wire before but never through drywall ceilings. There are some canned lights already in the ceiling. If i hire someone, how do they charge?

I had to run wire in my basement after construction was done. What I did was cut an access hole in the ceiling which I later covered with a vent cover. The problem to me isn't getting wires across a ceiling, the problem is getting the wires from the ceiling down the wall. I created access to the top plate of the wall and drilled down through it. I have no idea what someone would charge to do it.

A friend of mine had to do this in a finished basement recently. He just took a rotozip and cut a path from projector in the ceiling to the wall and then called a local drywall guy to come out when he had a bit of time to patch it, tape it, mud & texture. After paint you couldn't even tell.

Or you could just call around to the stereo/theater places in town and just get some quotes. Probably 150-250 for the job I would guess (just a guess).

Mike

A friend of mine had to do this in a finished basement recently. He just took a rotozip and cut a path from projector in the ceiling to the wall and then called a local drywall guy to come out when he had a bit of time to patch it, tape it, mud & texture. After paint you couldn't even tell.


That Drywall guy probably had a hard time not laughing when he saw that surgery. There is no reason to do that much cutting. You can transverse an entire ceiling with just two holes if you are going between the joists. I'm sure he tells the story every time he goes out for a drink with his buddies.

Another approach is to remove the baseboards, do all your wall surgery there and then put the baseboards back and touch up the paint. Guys who do this for a living can run wires with a very few holes that need patching.

You can also hide wires behind baseboards. or use flat wire and go under carpets.

For the beginner, cutting through the top plate without making a huge hole in either the ceiling or wall can be tough. A 4 inch or so trench is all he would have need to cut. Pretty crazy to cut a path all the way from the projector. :)

If you can put it behind the baseboards, I think that's going to be the simplest and require the least patching. That's what I would do if it's an option. If you're doing in-walls or in-ceilings, obviously that's a little bit easier because you get to make a decent sized hole for the speaker to go in and you have a little more room for fishing your wires.