Spent 3 hours fishing a coax cable through a wall that should have taken 20 minutes

Man, I swear I've run a thousand cables in my time, but this one house in Arlington last Tuesday kicked my butt. The customer wanted a wall plate in their living room, nothing crazy. I figured it'd be a quick in-and-out, maybe 20 minutes tops. Three hours later I'm still fighting with a fire block I didn't account for and some old insulation that was packed in there like concrete. I finally had to drill a new access hole from the basement and use a glow rod to snake it up. Talk about a humbling day lol. What's the longest you've ever been stuck on a simple install job?

3 comments

3 Comments

hayden_craig9510d ago

Three hours for a coax cable? That's brutal man, ngl.

umar4910d ago

Wait, three hours on a fire block and packed insulation? That's insane, I would've lost my mind. I spent two full hours once trying to get a coax through a wall that had a metal stud right where I needed it to go. Had to cut a hole in the drywall and patch it up after, totally ruined my morning.

ward.jamie9d ago

My neighbor's kid did a whole house rewire in the time it took me to get through that one wall. I get it though, sometimes you just hit that one spot that fights back. For me, the decision was simple. Cutting a hole and patching it later would have been a lot faster than three hours of fighting with fiberglass and a fire stop. I still think I made the right call because that wall was in a finished basement and I didn't want a visible patch job. Metal studs are their own kind of nightmare too.