I took on a significant remodel of my (large) home and whilst it was gutted I took the time to pull a significant amount of cable for distribution of networking, telephone, video, security, (thermal) zone control and audio. It's a large home (>5000 sq ft) with 4 levels (basement, 2 living levels, attic level). It's over 100ft end to end.
I walked though every room and looked at the layout and did a "what if" scenario to determine drop locations.
The most central location for home runs was an attic space. All networking, telephone, video and security drops terminated at this location (demarcation point). Audio distribution for "most used living spaces" (kitchen, dining,sitting areas) was home run to a kitchen location.
Two areas of the home were targeted as possible home theater areas, a bedroom and an attic space. Closet space in these locations were identified for local distribution, and multiple RG-6 and cat-5e runs went from these locations back to the demarc point. Each HT area had audio runs for 7.2 distribution, as well as HDMI and 6x RG-59 to the projector locations.
For locations where a TV may be located, I pulled 2x RG-6 Quad and 2x Cat5e. Some rooms only had a single potential location, some had two. Cat5e drops are handy at TV locations as I have multiple directv dvr's that are networked together as well as roku's for Netflix etc playback.
For locations where a phone may be located, I pulled 2x cat5e.
For locations where computers may be located, I pulled 2x cat5e.
For security sensor locations (doors, windows, motions, keypads etc) typically 1x cat5e although some runs were 2 wire.
For Thermal zone control the house is effectively split into 7 zones with 2 Heat pumps, and 2 master zone controllers. Cat-5e run between thermostat / remote sensors and zone controllers, 4 wire run from zone controller to zone damper, 8 wire run from zone controller to furnace/heat pump. Cat5e ran from each zone controller back to demarc for remote control over RS485.
For potential camera locations I ran RG-6 and 14awg 2 wire for power.
Audio distribution from the central kitchen location is via a HT receiver fed into a 6 zone Crown distribution amplifier. 4 Wire 14awg ran to each room to a local attenutation control, then 2x 2wire to L&R speakers. I didn't need a multi-zone audio system, so its a single zone and every room gets the same feed. Local attenuation control in the great room, dining room, kitchen, sitting area as well as 2 outside zones.
I pulled wire literally everywhere, even cat5e and RG-6 stubs to the garage. Fortunately I pulled 4x Cat5e down to the basement so I'm able to locate my server rack there with a local switch (HP 1810-24G v2) and use the 4x Cat5e to trunk back to the main switch (HP 1810-48G) in the demarc area, so I have adequate bandwidth for distribution.
I didn't pull any cable at all for lighting control. I implemented a type of switch that communicates over the power line, so that saved some time and effort.
All in all I think I ran about 12,000 ft of cat5e, 4000 ft of RG-6, probably 500ft of audio, and over 500ft of 2 or 4 wire for sensor/control applications. And on top of all of this I have several wireless access points throughput the house to support phones & laptops, especially for guests.
If I had to do it all over again I would still pull cable and still implement wireless as well. In hind sight I should probably have ran cat5e to all potential camera locations for PoE.
I don't have full automation control in place yet, but all of the hooks are in place. I just need the time to work on the software to glue it all together.