Balcony Upgrade - Cleaning Up After Others

The house came with a satellite dish and all kids of ugly cables stapled to the siding; mostly on one side and the front, second story above and around the balcony. We removed the satellite dish shortly after moving in, but the cables were still there for the most part. Also, a lot of the low voltage/phone wires run outside the house, but even though we don't have a land line we're leaving those that are actually attached to something.

They run from where the dish was attached to the house on the left end of this horizontal board to the right end where they run down, up, and also over.

Most of these aren't attached to anything other than the siding.

Upstairs they ran over that horizontal board above the board & batten siding.

So I took all that crap down on the balcony before I put the refinished bistro set and new Adirondack chairs up there, but before I painted the decking. Then... what the h*ck is this? There's a standard power outlet on the other side of that which can't be a coincidence, right? It sure doesn't seem especially smart or particularly safe/up-to-code.

Maybe it's just some sort of ground wire?

So I flipped the circuit breaker for that outlet in the guest room to dig around in there to see if this is attached and detach it if so. Nope, no formerly-red wires in there. This project didn't result in a huge visual impact, but it has been nagging at us as someone else's ugly necessity that isn't at all necessary for us. It also makes the balcony that much more welcoming and less like a sitting area carved out of a systems closet.

Once the cables on the balcony were done, I focused on the real mess attached to the side of the house. I knocked it out one evening after dinner.

Even I was surprised at how much cable had actually been up there after I got it all down!

All that's left is one skinny little phone wire that you can't even see in this photo.

While I was doing that side, I got to wondering if all this effort was going to be worth it. It was itchy and dusty and buzzy-insects were pestering me, but I am glad I did it. It really does look tidier and less half-assed.

FULL DISCLOSURE: We added our own cable - just one. Ours is for the internet and that is how we get any of the TV-type stuff that we watch. Ours is tucked away a little better, or at least it is less noticeable to us.

Sixty-one-pound dog for scale:

For some reason, Delia spent a good deal of time sitting with the cables that I removed and piled up on the deck that evening. Goofball.