I am working on a project that seems to be ever going. That is my network infrastructure. Probably for the past ten years, I have had plans to expand full network capability to the apartment. Various tenants have paid for their own service over the years but ultimately, I want to prepare it for an Air B&B or office or guest house. I don’t want to pay two bills for internet.

I have a box on the outside of the house that I planned to run conduit. I still might but we will get to that later. Back when I had a tenant that had a real phone, the phone company would only run service to my house. It was my responsibility to get the service over to the apartment. I quickly sprang into action and ran a Cat5e cable to the apartment on a cable that had had been run between the two buildings for that purpose.

After the tenant moved out and we started residing the house (2015), the phone line was no longer in use and the hardware was in the way. I cut the line telling myself that I would implement a better solution. I have done all of the easy work but the time never came where I wanted to rent a trencher and dig up the yard. I haven’t given up on the idea though.

The good news is that when I cut the line, I still had the whole cable length. I was going to use that cable to install the wireless bridge. Most of the work was fairly easy, terminating the ends and hanging the units. You never know what you are going to find in the wall though. I wrestled and wrestled with getting the fish tape through the wall to my new jack location.

Sunday evening, I was beat. I could not fish the wire through the wall. You might ask why I couldn’t just re-terminate the phone line? Good question, I cheated the first time and ran the wire on the outside of the house and drilled a hole in the siding. When I redid the house in 2020, I pulled all of that into the attic space because I resided that house as well.

My only option was to cut the wall to get access. I really did not want to do it because it adds a week to the project for additional repair work of the drywall. But, at some point there is a tipping point. After spending two hours trying to fish the wire and only getting halfway through, I had no idea how this was really built.

Once I resigned myself to the extra work, I was done in about two hours. By done I mean I cut the hole, fished the wire, terminated, tested and hole filled again. The work of patching the drywall is only fifteen minutes a day for a week. Initial mud and tape, second coat, texture, prime and paint. My real concern is that the work is disruptive having to move furniture everyday and clean up as I wasn’t there.

I will write one more time about the wireless bridge when I am actually done with the project. It definitely seems temperamental, but that is for a later date. There is still cleanup work to be done in terms of tidying up and optimization. I continue to work on that while I am doing the wall repairs.

End Your Programming Routine: The trick is knowing the right time to change strategies. I don’t regret attempting to fish the wall before cutting. Maybe I should have given up sooner, but then again maybe I was just another attempt from succeeding. All I can really say is that sunk cost fallacy can cause you to give up or double down on a failing path. Be flexible and be willing to change course if things are not going the right way.