Use a Wireless Router for Internet Connection in a Different Room

LESLIE: Anita in Virginia has an interesting question. Usually people call in to The Money Pit they want to fix a hole in a wall. Anita wants to put one in. What’s going on?

ANITA: Hi, I just bought a new house and we have an internet connection and one other spare bedroom. And we’re trying to – we have the internet by a phone jack and we’re trying to run that cable through another room which is a smaller room; would be perfect for an office. So I’m basically trying to find a way to run a cable to make internet connections through a room that does not have it.

LESLIE: Are the rooms right next to one another? Like is it sharing a wall?

ANITA: In between is a closet. There are two closets in between.

TOM: OK, and what’s underneath? Are you over a basement?

ANITA: This is actually the upper level. Underneath …

TOM: OK. Oh, OK. So you don’t have access to that. Well, alright. So you want to get the wire through one wall, through a closet and then to the opposite side of that closet wall?

ANITA: Yes.

TOM: Well, what I would do is this. I would take the baseboard moulding off of the wall on both sides and I would drill a hole to try to get up into the closet wall. Now, it may be, since this is just an internet connection, you can simply – you don’t have to put this inside the wall. Once it gets in the closet you could run it sort of along where the baseboard moulding is of the closet and then bring it out through the other side; again, with another hole in the wall. Try to keep everything behind where the baseboard moulding is and then once you bring it out you could replace the moulding and even if your hole was a little bigger than you wanted it to be it can be hidden quite neatly there.

LESLIE: What about can you not hook up a wireless router to where that first connection is? This way the whole house then has internet?

TOM: Certainly that’s another possibility.

ANITA: Yes, because I was trying to avoid doing …

LESLIE: Having anything in there.

TOM: You know, a lot of the ISP suppliers will help you put in wireless routers these days so that the whole house can have wireless capability. So that’s another option.

ANITA: ISP?

TOM: Yeah, the internet service providers.

ANITA: Oh, OK. Sounds great. I’ll probably go through them before I open any walls.

TOM: OK. Alright, thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.