The "great room" in our hom has one wall that is essentially two stories, above which is just the attic and framing for the roof.
This wall is ~16ft tall and ~20ft long. It is the interior wall between this room and the garage, and also makes up one wall of one of the bedrooms on the second floor.
I'm trying to work out the best way to run ethernet up to rooms on the second floor of the house. This wall is the straightest shot from the location in the basement where our network equipment is to the attic.
I'm been mapping out the framing and other elements in the wall trying to understand how to go about doing this, to determine if it's possible / advisable.
I've found that, 8ft up from the floor there is some kind of lateral piece that, at least based on the stud finder, seems to be roughly 9" thick. This piece seems to span the length of the room.
9" seems especially thick (the only thing I've found in the house that's visible that's that thick are the floor joists). Is this common for this kind of wall?
Main question, beyond just looking for clarity on how a wall like this would be framed, is whether or not it's safe to drill through this lateral piece in order to allow the cables to continue up to the attic (I'm aware there will be a few other things to drill through along the way).
