10.05.2006

This worked out differently in my head.

Mounting a TV over the fireplace means figuring out how to hide those pesky cords. So Brian spent Monday night drilling a couple of holes in the wall for power cords and cables. Actually, he spent some of early Tuesday morning on that project, too. But he finally conceded to the Carpentry Gods that the drilling was not going to work without the right drill bit.

So, after a trip to Home Depot, Tuesday night's work went a lot faster. He made it through 2 studs to bring the cord down to an outlet he created next to the mantel, and after I went to bed, he put up part of the mounting bracket for the television.

(I would put up pictures of this stuff, but right now the hard working crew at Blogspot is out for a manicure. So I'll try to edit them in later.)

He also created a second outlet for the satellite dish hookup and the phone line. That required a trip to the crawlspace, to pull the lines from the current location across the living room to the new spot.

For those of you who have not visited your home's crawlspace before, I learned an important fact on Tuesday night. Brian came back from his trip under the house and shared with me that we had "millions of spiders."

Now, I don't know about you, but I get the heebie-jeebies whenever I see a bug. As a kid, I was not typically afraid of bugs. I carried around roly-polys, I played with caterpillars, I watched ants scurry around, but a chance encounter in a bathroom with a cockroach the size of my foot changed all that in a hurry.

And for many years I've owned a cat who delights in taking care of any pest problem I might have, and even tortures them, too. So, at the end, there's no more bug, and as a bonus, it's died a horrible, lingering death. It's a win-win in my book.

But now, I have to sleep each night on a bed which stands on a layer of carpet and plywood subflooring and wooden joists, knowing that mere inches below all of that lies a breeding, teeming layer of spiders.

(Sorry - did I mention sleep? My eyes aren't actually shut. It's more like a panicky, "eyes wide open" look.)

Back to the project! On Wednesday night, which should have been the easiest of all, it took 3 hours and another trip to Home Depot to get one lone cable through the brick outside of the house, into the crawlspace and up through the floor. As a bonus, tonight Brian will get to re-crimp the cable since one end didn't survive the trip through the brick wall.

I'm now taking bets as to how many more trips to the hardware store are left in this project. Please feel free to make your guesses in the comments. The winner gets a free consultation with an experienced TV installer, who may or may not be deathly afraid of spiders.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

No project (and I mean that with a capital NO) can be completed in less than 4 trips to Home Depot. Plumbing projects REQUIRE a minimum of 8 trips to get the right "gozzinta". This is a law like Newton's 3rd Law of Gravity.

Xander said...

Amen Dad! I don't recall too many projects where I haven't gotten on a first name basis with the Home Depot department person that particular day.

"Oh..so I slide the gozzinta in, THEN I tilt it over...ahh ok"