Mistakes are okay (as long as you can do something about them).

I will admit to hitting a rough patch on the basement this week. A lot of that has to do with not having power for a few days while I waited for an electrician to repair the damage ComEd did to the house getting the power back on, and frustration in dealing with them and the fence company not being able to get us back on their schedule. But while this is going on I’m trying to get the outside molding corners right, and I keep seeing other imperfections and they’re kind of driving me nuts. 

The electrician had to trim some of the drywall to replace a couple of outlets last night; it’s not a huge deal but I had them looking pretty good with the covers on. Oh well. I know I can patch. Apparently the wife wants to put new covers on anyway so it can wait until we’ve picked new ones out.

One thing I can do is deal with a smaller mistake that’s been driving me crazy, the coaxial cable sticking out of the wall. What I should have done was bring it more toward the center of the wall so it was closer to where the tv will end up and not running along the wall from the corner. If we can afford a tv, paying an electrician took a nice chunk out of that budget…anyway, too late to change it that now. What I did do, however, is put a prior work box in there so the cover has something to screw into and sits there properly, even if it’s in a dumb place.

When even the simplest sounding jobs get complicated, sometimes it helps to take a break. Literally. Break something.

I thought this would be an easy fix; get the jab saw out, mark the guidelines, and viola, outlet box attached. Of course not. I forgot the foundation was sticking out in that corner, and there’s a stud just to the right of it so there wasn’t even room to cut the hole properly. Thankfully, with a quick mod to the box via breaking the top swing arm off, the box fit in with one side resting on top of the stud. And the screw that would close the swing arm just went right into the stud, so it’s probably on there better than it would have been anyway.

Yeah, that looks better, even with the crappy corner mud job behind it even if I do wish it was about 4 feet to the right. I’ll take some joy in a small victory though, as I try again to get the outside corners lined up. 

I also got a new shop buddy to keep me company while I work on stuff, and to be honest having Batman in the shop with me kind of made my day. I'm going to ride that feeling to the end of this project.  

Maybe I can make him a better perch later.

Purchase list

Prior work box

new coaxial cable cover

Batman