Day 52

I got up thinking I'd have the old TV installed in the master by noon. I should have known better. The task was conceptually simple. Drill two holes in the sheetrock, pull the cables through them, and put a cover on the hole. Fat chance.

I drilled the first hole into the wall below the ceiling. It hit a 2x4. In the only luck I had today, part of the hole broke through the bottom of the 2x4. With some work with a rat tale file I opened the hole enough to pull wire through.

The hole in the ceiling was worse. There was 3 or 4 inches of wood above the sheetrock. I could have dealt with that, except halfway through I hit a nail.I managed to hog out the other half of the hole enough to pull wire.

Then it was off to Home Depot to get a sheet of plywood. I had them cut it into 2x4 sections. I used these to provide a floor for crawling around in the attic. It was a bitch. The highest point of the roof is about 3 feet, so everything was done on my hands and knees. To get to the place where the wire was coming up I had to lay on my back and scoot to the edge of the attic. It was just like caving. My face was 3 inches below the roof, which had a forest of sharp nails sticking through it. I had to stretch my arm out as far as possible just to get a pair of pliers on the wire as it cam up through the boards. I cut my head twice and my finger once.

All the wood above the ceiling was because the hole I drilled was directly below a ceiling joist (bad luck) which was also connected to a rafter (worse luck). If I had placed the hole 3" either left or right it would have been though only a layer of sheetrock. As it was it took me a spade bit and two drill bits to get the hole big enough to pull wire through. It also took two tries.

With considerable help from Ellen I finally got it all pulled. Then I buttoned up the openings. That's when I realized that I had forgotten to pull a power cord. And I didn't have one. So at 4:00 I called it a day. I'd been working on the "about an hour" job for more than 5 hours. I was bushed.

Maybe tomorrow I'll get the TV moved if something else doesn't go completely wrong. We got the 3D glasses today and Ellen is dying to use the new TV. Unfortunately I have to finish moving the old TV and pull one more wire run before we can hook it up.

Now that I've spent so much quality time up in the attic I'm really looking forwared to having to pull the wire for the outside antenna.