pitter patter on the keyboard

The last goon who lived here ripped the surface-mount toilet paper roll holder out of the wall.

These holes are easily cleaned and filled in with spackling paste. Cut any of the paper fluff from around the edges of the holes at an angle so that the hole is tapered inwards.

Unfortunately, bigger holes require layering.

And more layering.

Once you have a slight bulge above the surface of the wall sand it down smooth. I didn’t know at the time I would be getting a recessed holder, which would have saved me a lot of time filling in the larger hole. Since it’s the uglist of the two it’s the one to go.

I measured 5.25 inches on a carpenter’s level and used a dry-erase marker to plot my cut. It would have been a good idea to put a screw in the middle when I started cutting so I could cut straight without losing the hunk of drywall.

This holder has a bracket which clamps to the drywall. It may take some fiddling to get it mounted but it is important to secure it to the faceplate before mounting or you risk losing it in the wall.

Nice and shiny. If someone rips THIS holder out of the wall they’ll be taking the whole gypsum board with it.

This is more of an anecdote than a tutorial since I threw it together with what was handy and wouldn’t endorse this kind of work on-site.

I love moving. Broken back, head-to-toe agony and thousands of dollars vaporized aside – it gives me an opportunity to put new holes in walls and try to make it look as though the rent is a little higher than it actually is.

So, when I saw this ugliness it had to go immediately.

I opened it up and was a little surprised to see….

I removed the box and found the wire connected to…

Am I balls-trippin’  or did I discover the first decorative phone jack ever? I could understand if it was used to store drugs, but being painted over this is unlikely.

I don’t even need cat5 and a phone line in that room but this whole thing started consuming all the idle cycles of my brain. What the hell was that phone jack doing there? Who put it there? Why? Just what were these savages trying to prove?!

Forunately (?) there was also an inexplicable empty hole in the wall near where the jack had been.

Note that a lot of these 8P8C wall-plate/surface box modules do not follow the colour code as though you were crimping a connector. Follow the guide provided on the module for the way the other end is wired.

Apparently it is politically correct to use T-568A these days but the industry (including manufacturers of prefab cables) still seems to prefer B. Personally, I have always wired for B on straight-throughs.

Cut the drywall such that the module will pass into it. I should note here that if you want to save on wire the phone line can be spliced into the blue or brown pairs, but it’s always nicer to run both cables if you can.

Ideally we would be using a dual-port faceplate instead but I had a surface-mount RJ11 jack handy and went for it. I used a filing bit on my drill to make a little gap for the phone wire to come out, otherwise the faceplate won’t rest flat against the wall and one risks blowing out the threads in the drywall (easily fixed and better done by tapping in anchors and re-screwing, mind you). It would also be a good idea to put a knot in the line inside the box; however with the faceplate and a dozen staples holding it snug I don’t see it being much of an issue.

Ta-da! All better. :)