Vinings GA Real Estate

New Home Upgrades

Prewired Surround Sound Systems

Vinings, Georgia

Surround sound theater systems have become about as common as high gas prices these days. Not to miss out on a few bucks, home builders have caught wind of this and started offering pre-wired options for new homes but at a rather hefty price tag. In some cases, builders will charge as much as $150 per speaker. Lets see, $20 for speaker wire. 30 minutes to run all the wires in an unfinished room. Total cost, $750. Feeling like you just paid for the

This is one option I dread from a financial standpoint but the alternatives are not much better. You can hire a contractor to come out after the fact for less money but this means out of pocket expenses, cutting holes in your drywall every few feet, creating a mess, patching the holes and then repainting everything.

You may opt to leave the cables on the floor and forget about them but in a condo, this can become pretty annoying and in a high end home, buyers like prewired rooms. You may even decide to install the wires yourself but a good drywall job takes a little bit of skill. I learned by practicing on my neighbor’s house first at his expense before finally feeling comfortable enough to chance it on my own home.

There are of course other tricks which I will not cover here but unless you have the extra cash, skills or can live without it, just go ahead and suck it up and pay the builder. At this point, you might as well run two more wires out to your deck, especially if you plan to position your stereo system far away from the back of your house.

If you are thinking about sneaking in after dark and running the wires yourself, I would advise against. Both the county and the builder will inspect the wiring a few days before the drywall goes up and it is a pretty safe bet they will spot your Radio Shack wiring job. This is technically trespassing and most homebuilders will not respond favorably once they find out you tried to stiff them while potentially getting them in trouble with the county.