Removing Unused Phone Jacks
Painting my bedroom compelled me to confront one of the real horrors of old houses- useless phone and cable jacks disfiguring the walls. My whole house is a jack-athon extravaganza
Other than my kitchen, (recently renovated), every room in my house has an unused phone jack. The office has 3, (one for the home phone, one for the company phone and one for the fax machine, another relic).
There are approximately 44 million homes in the US and less than 28% of these have land lines.
Each of the cell phone based homes has 3 to 8 wallflower jacks, ( phone jacks that never get action.) Patching and painting is in order.
Use a straight slot screw driver to remove the screws.
The plate will drop forward the the cover will stay attached by the phone wires. These wires are no longer live so you can clip through them with no repercussions.
If your outlet is on a wall that backs to the outside, you will want to insulate. I used a spray foam insulation purchased from the hardware store. (Have you thought about your local hardware stores for your hardware needs? It’s nice to support local owners instead of the big box stores).
If your outlet is on a wall that backs to the outside, you will want to insulate. I used a spray foam insulation purchased from the hardware store. (Have you thought about your local hardware stores for your hardware needs? It’s nice to support local owners instead of the big box stores).
Theupsides of this insulation is that it’s relatively inexpensive (around 7 dollars) and it’s easy to use.
The downside is that once you’ve used it, the tube that attached to the spout is filled with an impenetrable foam. We tried and tried to clean out the tube so we could use the can a second time. We were unsuccessful. There was a lot of foam left in the can but we couldn’t use it.
Next time we buy a can we will prepare muliple unused jacks to fill.
Another note about the foam is that it’s mean stuff. In this picture Randy is wearing rubber gloves (as suggested in the instructions. When I filled my first phone jack I did not. I had that miserable stuff on my hands for almost a week. Two of my fingers were stuck together. No matter what I tried, nothing would take the residue of the foam off my hands.
Knowing that the foam is relentless, make sure you surround your opening with painter’s tape.
Use a sparing amount of foam. This foam expands in an alarming manner like a cartoon ballon, taking up every possible space. Just when you think it can’t get any bigger, it does.
Your foam will probably expand past the front of the opening. It’s actually easy to deal with this. Once the foam is hard (2 days or so), you can saw off the excess foam.
You can patch the hole the same way I patched the other holes in my wall, using cuts of wallboard. (Click here to see how I did that).
Or, you can buy a drywall repair kit. These kits are easy to use but pricier than using scrap wallboard.
If your walls require texture, use a texturizing spray, let everything dry, then paing.
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