Audio and video for townhouses, floor by floor, wall by wall.

In most cases, yes, though it depends on the construction. In a wood-frame townhouse we fish wire up through stud cavities and across joist bays with flexible drill bits and fish tapes. The exceptions are masonry interior walls, fire blocking between floors and plaster ceilings under concrete. We find these on the site visit and choose the path that needs the least cutting. When a cut cannot be avoided, we keep it small and in a place that is easy to patch.

Interior AV work such as TV mounting, in-wall speakers and equipment racks is generally not what the Landmarks Preservation Commission reviews. Exterior speakers or cable on the facade are different. Where we can, we route cable through the inside of the house to a rear or side wall and keep hardware off the street facade. In a landmarked building or historic district, exterior work may still need Landmarks Preservation Commission approval.

Plaster over wood lath needs a different approach than drywall. We find the studs with a finder set up for the lath pattern, confirm each one with a finish nail probe before drilling, and use lag bolts long enough for the plaster thickness plus a solid bite into the stud. For very large displays, 75 in and up, we may recommend blocking between the studs to spread the load, which means a small patch but a much more secure mount. A TV mount never hangs on toggles in plaster: it goes into studs, added blocking or solid masonry.

Sound through a party wall is a real concern, especially bass from a subwoofer. A few things help: placing the subwoofer away from shared walls, an isolation riser under it, keeping surround speakers off the party wall and setting sensible crossover points on the receiver. We also recommend against in-wall speakers mounted directly in a party wall, because the cavity acts as a resonator. If isolation is a priority we design around it, though major acoustic improvement takes construction work beyond our scope.

The basement or cellar is the best equipment room. It is usually the lowest point in the house, which makes running cable up to each floor easier, and it keeps gear out of the living space. Without a usable basement, a utility closet on the parlor floor is the next choice. We build the rack with AV distribution, a labeled patch panel and ventilation, so any technician can service it later without guesswork.

Yes, if the existing system supports it. Control4, Lutron RadioRA, Savant and Crestron all have AV integration drivers, and we work with each of them. If you already have lighting scenes or motorized shades, we can add AV to the same interface, so a "movie" scene dims the lights, lowers the shades and turns on the theater. Before the site visit we need the name and version of your control system and access to the controller, and we confirm compatibility before committing to a scope.