We have a DirecTV Dual Tuner Tivo in our bedroom, but unfortunately we only had one coax cable jack. So we couldn’t record one show and watch another at the same time unless we ran another cable into the bedroom from the basement. A daunting task because I didn’t want to run the cable around the baseboards and I didn’t want to run it all the way around the house and in through the outside wall. That leaves just one option, and that was to go up through the interior wall.

At first I thought it would be easy thinking the walls would be hollow and I could simply drop the cable down the wall and fish it out in the basement. I was wrong. In newer construction homes, there are 2×4 fire breaks between the studs which prevent one from doing this. I then thought about cutting a square hole in the dry wall at the firebreak, drilling a hole and passing the cable through. Because we have a split-level home, the hole in the dry wall would of been in a very visible spot and unless I patched it perfectly, the wife would of had my head.

So my solution was to buy a 72″ flexible drill bit extender and a wire puller (called a glow stick at Home Depot). The sub-floors are made of a high density plywood so a battery powered drill will have some problems punching a hole through it unless you’ve got an 18 volt drill. Getting through the 2×4 was no problem. Using the flexible drill bit is a bit of an art, especially if you have to flex it. It takes a bit of muscle so it’s almost a two person job until you get better using it. Lucky for me, I had a straight shot up from the basement to the master bedroom which made it very easy. I then used the 15 foot cable puller and pulled the coax down through the wall.