A pre-wire checklist for a room you have not decided how to use yet

The bonus room that became an office

A client called a room over the garage the bonus room. Kids' hangout, maybe a pool table. I wired it like a hangout: a TV wall, speakers, a keypad.

Then somebody started working from home full time. That bonus room became an office with two screens, a desk phone, and a printer.

Wrong wall for the desk. No wire near it. Wrong wall for the TV that was now a monitor. We drilled through a finished ceiling in a house that was ten months old.

The room did not change. The story about the room changed, and the story is what I had wired for.

Wire the walls, not the story

The lesson took me too long. Do not wire a plan. Wire a room.

A room has four walls, a ceiling, and a door. Those are facts. "Bonus room" is not a fact, it is a guess about people who have not moved in yet.

So for any room where the use is not settled, I put in the same small package. It costs very little at rough-in. It costs a lot at any point after.

The package

Here is what goes in every undecided room.

• Two cable drops at the most likely screen wall. The wall across from the door, usually. Two, not one, because one is never enough and the second one costs almost nothing today.
• One cable drop on the opposite wall. This is the insurance policy. This is the drop that saved me the day the desk moved.
• Power at both of those spots. Coordinate with the electrician while he is still on site. An outlet added later is a patch and paint.
• Blocking at both spots. Something heavy is going on a wall in that room eventually. Blocking is cheap while the studs are open.
• One cable to the ceiling, near the center. That covers a wireless access point, a sensor, or a projector later. It is one wire and it opens three doors.
• Speaker wire to the ceiling, two positions. If they never use it, you capped two wires in an attic. If they do, you saved a ceiling.
• One cable to the wall by the door. A keypad, a screen, a thermostat, a panel. Something ends up at that door. It always does.
• A cable to the closet. Closets turn into little equipment spots more often than you expect.

That is the whole thing. It fits in an hour of pull time on a normal house.

Leave slack and leave it findable

The package only works if somebody can find it later.

Leave real slack in the wall, not six inches. Leave enough to move a drop a couple of feet or bring it out somewhere else on the same wall.

Cap the ends. Label both ends in plain words. Photograph the wall with a tape measure in the shot before drywall goes on.

An unfindable spare cable is the same as no cable, except you paid for it.

Tell the client what you did

Do not do this quietly and hope it pays off. Tell them, in one sentence, before they pay for it.

"We are putting spare wire in the two rooms you have not decided on yet. If you change your mind after you move in, it is a small job instead of a big one."

Every client I have said that to has said yes. It is a small line on a proposal and it reads as somebody looking out for them.

Then write it down where it will not get lost. A note that says which rooms got spares and what is in the walls. Feed it into the closeout paperwork so it lives past this job. My proposals and install guides carry that forward automatically now, because I was the guy losing that note.

When not to do it

Do not do this everywhere. A hall closet does not need a package. A powder room does not need a package.

Do it in the rooms that get renamed. Bonus rooms, lofts, spare bedrooms, dining rooms nobody dines in, basements, casitas, anything over a garage. If the client uses the word "maybe" while describing a room, that room gets the package.

What it buys you

Two years later that client calls about something they now want in that room. You look at your photos, you look at your notes, and you tell them yes.

No holes. No patching. No week of scheduling a drywall guy and a painter.

That call is where the money is in this business. You either wired for it before drywall or you did not.