The house is officially ours! We got the keys, sat in the empty house, ordered pizza and drew pictures. Now it's time to start thinking about pre-move-in improvements.

I want to run gigabit ethernet, telephone and coax (for cable TV) to the two bedrooms, the living room and the basement, with the distribution box in the basement. Terminating cables and setting up network topology are the easy part. What I want to know is, how do I get the cable to each of the rooms?

Initial research produced a few suggestions:

• Drop the cable from an attic, crawl spaces and other open areas. I'd love to, but we have a notable lack of access to such spaces in this house. I think our best shot at the bedrooms will be coming up from the living room, not down, if that's even possible. This article tries to be helpful with this suggestion, but assumes we're lucky enough to have such access.
• Run cables on the outside of the house, drilling in to destinations. This seems to be what cable/phone company installers do, because it's fast and easy. It's my least favorite option because of how it looks, and potentially how it performs. PCStats.com shows pictures of such an installation, recommending following an existing cable into the house if possible.
• Use fire retardant cable and run through air vents. Since this is an older house, our vents are large and run pretty much straight down the middle. It doesn't give us direct access to our ideal destinations, but may be the easiest way to get from floor to floor.
• Run cable under the carpet and/or beneath the base boards. Only the bedrooms have carpet, and I have a feeling this option is too cheap for its own good. I just imagine messing it up and having lumps in my carpet. Base boards sound alright, though, and it's encouraging to believe they are easy to tear up and glue back down again, if necessary.
• Punch holes in the walls to drill through the studs, then patch and paint. Saw this in a book on electrical wiring, where it's important for wires to get directly to specific locations on the wall (or ceiling). Sounds like a last resort, and a lot of work, but good to see it suggested in case it's necessary. The general advice is to avoid doing this as much as possible, using the space between studs in an interior (uninsulated) wall as a channel for cable. Our real estate agent warned us to be careful going through floor joists, because you don't want to weaken them with holes.

Why not wireless? Speed, signal, security. We'll do wireless for couch computing, but home servers, networked TiVos and desktop workstations deserve better.