By Will Smith
The first home I networked was my own. I bought what the realtor called a “fixer-upper,” and like any hardware hacker steeped in the DIY work ethic, I did most of the remodeling myself. In addition to refinishing the floors, installing new carpet, and adding a bathroom, I spent an afternoon running Cat5 Ethernet to each room. It was an easy job, and the mess was minor compared with the crown-molding mess, the insulation mess, and the “I think I just drilled into a water line” mess. But as I discovered this month while working on our streaming media cover story, installing network wiring in a perfectly finished home is a whole ‘nother story.

Natalie, our brave art director, was kind enough to volunteer her 110-year-old San Francisco Victorian for the networking portion of the feature. The job seemed pretty straightforward: Drill through the floor into the basement, and run Cat5 to each room. Easy enough, right?

Drilling through the floor of your own home isn’t for the faint of heart. Doing the same in a friend’s home—especially a beautifully preserved Victorian—is downright terrifying. When Mike Brown drilled the first pilot hole in the baseboard trim, Natalie seemed a tad nervous, but I was first-day-of-junior-high-school scared.

I had no idea how dense Victorian floors are. After about 20 minutes of drilling, I realized that Natalie’s floor was significantly thicker than the flimsy plywood sheeting in my first home. After 40 minutes, the hole was actually smoking. At 50 minutes, the drill bit broke, and I knew we were screwed. (Natalie was the one with the jacked-up floor, but I was the one catching the frightened looks.)

The broken end of the bit was wedged more than a foot into the hole, well beyond reach. I had decided to hire a professional to repair the hole, when I noticed a tiny metal tip poking out of the basement ceiling. The hole was perfect! Five minutes of work freed the bit, and we were back in business. We finished wiring Natalie’s network, and were on our way.

The moral of this tawdry tale? Every how-to article you’ll ever read in Maximum PC is bound to present some unforeseen problems. Even the most innocent-sounding project can blow up in your face. But just remember, everything’s fixable—with enough replacement parts, licensed contractor visits, insurance settlement checks, conflict-resolution therapists….

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