Guardian Meeting and Selections

This will be a super quick post, since we only added one thing: pre-wiring for a flat screen TV in the living room. Done and dusted: the whole meeting took about ten minutes. Our Guardian rep was very nice; although he laid out different options, he didn't pressure us into adding anything unnecessary, which we really appreciated.

We're a Mac household, and some of the upgrades that Guardian had available were relatively easy to accomplish with what we already have. If you have a $99 AirPort Express, you can send music wirelessly to any speaker in your house, and use your iPhone or iPad as a remote. (An Apple TV will accomplish the same thing.) So, we can have iTunes running on one of our Mac Minis, and then beam it downstairs to play on our groovy soundbar. It's not quite as nice as pre-wired whole house audio, but you can't beat the price tag.

Say What?!

I'll write more later, but y'all, my husband just met with Guardian, and the rep announced that they just dropped their price for same-stud TV pre-wire from $415 down to... $330!!!



PLS EXCUSE ME WHILE I OPEN SOME WINE. KTHX.

Pre-Wiring for the TV Question

Our Guardian meeting is scheduled in a couple weeks, so we’re trying to think about what upgrades we’d like them to do, and what we could reasonably do ourselves. I’ve seen a suggestion on some Ryan Homes blogs (like this one) about running PVC pipe for the low voltage components like RCA cables, HDMI, etc. I’ve seen some reasonably nice and cheap -- less than $30! -- solutions on Amazon for providing access to the wires, like this one.

My tentative plan is to ask Guardian to install an outlet for the TV higher up on the wall, because power cables aren’t low voltage and you risk voiding your insurance if there’s an ever an electrical fire, and then use the Amazon gizmo for the signal components.

So my question is… who do I ask to run the PVC pipe? What if I wanted something like this installed, that does include the electrical? Is that a PM or a Guardian ask? At $30, that sounds a hell of a lot better than paying Guardian hundreds of bucks.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Amazon's $30 solution for hiding cables to wall-mounted TVs.