Look to the Floor

Published: 2024-12-28 9:05 PM

Category: Life | Tags: diy, drywall, home improvement

Every break, we decide to tackle some home improvement projects. This week, we decided to finish putting drywall in the basement. We've been half done for about a year, so this past fall, I finished the framing so we could wrap this project up.

As I was working, I put in new electrical outlets using a coil I had left hanging from the last drywall phase. I wired everything up and then went ahead and tested the connection.

No power.

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That's right, I'd not hooked up that wire so that I didn't electrocute myself. Past me was safety conscious.

So, I opened up the first outlet in the run and hooked up the loose wire. Happy to have remembered my foresight, I turned everything back on only to find...no power.

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In all this, the south wall had no outlets, which was strange. I wouldn't have left an entire wall without power, so we went hunting. The electrical boxes behind the drywall would've left a slight bulge. I grabbed my level and, sure enough, there was a subtle bulge in the wall. But, how high was the box?

In such cases, I scratch my head and look at the floor.

Past me was even smarter than I gave him credit for. Knowing, for some reason, that I couldn't cut out the outlet boxes I had put in the wall that I would need to find them, I had marked the floor with the stud and the measurement to the center of the box. I punched and cut with my drywall saw to find a box with wires ready to go.

I spent 20 minutes getting those boxes wired up and, hey presto, the entire basement has power. No cutting or removing drywall hung last year because past Brian was a smart dude.

This phase went so smoothly that my father in law offered to come up and help us get the first coat of plaster on the seams.

Breaks aren't always this productive, but because of some good thinking done by yours truly in the past (that I honestly don't remember doing, so don't give me too much credit), we were able to knock out a relatively big job in just a few hours of work.