Tom,
I ran into this same situation 2 years ago. I ended up drilling the holes on the back wall out with a stepdown bit and putting 2 1/2" bolts in with nuts and washers on the bracket side. A little patch and paint and we were good to go.

Ernie, I've had those moments as well. I took an angle shot from a crawl space to get into an area above an outside porch so I could fish a wire using an existing can light hole. I could not believe how much wood it seemed like I was having to go through and then it finally let loose. The good news is that I was in. The bad news is that my shot went perfectly horizontally through the top of an antique end table. The look on the homeowners face was priceless. The lesson I learned that day was also priceless.
The best news is they were not antique collectors and the peice was just for decoration. They allowed me to have it repaired.

LOL!!!

The sad thing is a lot of this crap happens when we are working on friend's or neighbor's homes!!!

We just hung 2 60's on the same SANUS mounts. Dude, those things are almost a 2-man lift on their own!

I remember being at a house and cutting a hole in a laundry wall for a keypad. It was fibreboard and I was cutting it with my drywall knife (I know!) so I had to use a little more gusto!

Ended up getting caught-up in the moment and cut a perfect, nice clean hole...

...through both sides...

Honestly, when it came to cutting through the outer layer, I didn't feel a thing.

If only we'd cabled for a keypad in that part of the hallway!!!

once, while drilling up from the basement, i took an angled shot with the drill, since there was a beam in my way. i sent up my fishing rods, and my partner could not get the chain out of the wall. my partner asked me to try fishing it out. sometimes it helps to trade off, since when you get frustrated, you lose patience with your task. as i was coming upstairs to take a stab at fishing out the chain, the client asked me if i was looking for a green pole. i said, why yes, how did you know it was green? she smiled and said "because it's waving around in my library!" missed the wall altogether, and came up through the carpet in the next room. thank goodness it wasn't a hard wood floor!

mike

Ok this thread definitely put a smile on my face this morning, and no I am not laughing at any of the misfortune. BUT I have a few to ad myself happily none of these was I directly responsible for.

One of the guys down in the basement doing prewire drilling holes. Myself and another installer are going over how, what, etc when all of the sudden the carpenter working on the trim of the stairs screams and comes flying off. We run over to see what is going on and there about 5 steps up is a 1" Auger bit sticking about a foot or more through the stairs right where the guy was working. What was really funny was when the installer came up from the basement all serious trying to see what happened..priceless!

Ever see a in wall speaker installed in a cold air return...I have to funny! The phone call explaining the issue they wanted me to come look at had me smiling and when I get there..sure enough, apparently the daughter didn't want music in her room ..lol!

Ever fall through the attic in a brand new condo? I have, yep it hurt, yep the customer was pissed! Wasn't funny at the time but sure is now!

I was working on a guy's house whom I used to work with in a HiFi store years ago... Well he got into the software biz and hired me to retro a bunch of stuff.
I was drilling up from below with a flexi bit, and heard his wife screaming (stop-stop)!

The bit walked up side of their newly (silk) wallpapered wall. Routed out a nice channel right up the wall and trashed this exotic silk wall paper.

I usually won't drill up from below anymore without using one of those Labor Saving Device ultra - thin wire things to locate exactly where I need to drill.

It's an extra step, but can save a lot of heart-ache, embarrassment and $$$.

When I first started doing this about 6 years ago, I was doing a small 5.1 retro for a guy. When I was drilling the holes up into the attic for the front right and surround right I hit a joist, no big deal, just drill through it.

After crawling my ass around in the attack into the slope, digging through blown insulation for an hour, pissed off that I can't find my bright white wire. Usually when it pops out of a joist, they are easy as hell to find.

I was then back in the room wiggling the wire around, trying to see if it was caught on anything, when I caught a glimpse of white from the corner of my eye, OUTSIDE!!!
Then it hit me, I was in the corner where the top roof joist met at an angle and i drilled right up through the damn roof.

I walked out back and there was about 6 feet of wire dangling around out of the roof.....damnit. =-)

That reminds me of a time where I was working under the helm of a boat while someone was installing the air conditioning system on the flybridge. I heard a grinding sound and then a 6" hole saw came buzzing by my ear! The guy was cutting in the holes for the vents and never checked to see if I was working under the helm. That could have hurt if it was another couple inches to the right.

I let him know that I wasnt happy.

LOL!
I can picture that perfectly.
Yeah, suddenly you get that feeling in the pit of your stomach, and you look behind you to make sure the homeowner isn't standing there with there arms crossed with a furrowed brow!

Makes me nervous, as I have to go jump in the shower, head out the door and do a lot of challenging retro-fishing myself... I've been putting it off as long as possible!

Thanks for freaking me out! ;>)

Yeah, freaked out is right! I suddenly think I'll limit myself to programming from now on. I'm immediately taking all wire off the van.


I'm reminded of a puzzle, not a disaster. We were trying to go down through about a four foot section of wall with an opening at the top and another at the bottom, but we couldn't get through. We could get the drill down more than three feet but we couldn't get all the way through.

So we went down and fished up, got more than three feet, but still weren't through.

We did some measurements and found we had gone far enough each way that there was more than a foot overlap between the two approaches. Huh?

We gave up and busted out the wall. We didn't want to, because it was two layers of plaster over horizontal wood lath, so a hole was quite a commitment.

Turns out there was an old style 2x4 shear support running diagonally through the space, so the fishes bent one way, or the other, but could not meet.

I've had a few mistakes over the last twenty years, here are some highlights:

1. Drilling from outside into a basement and hit a hot water pipe, when water started shooting out the hole I was drilling I knew I was in trouble.

2. Drilling from outside (again) didn't compensate for step down living room and drilled through a floor to ceiling mirrored wall.

3. Drilled through a pocket glass door wall leading out to a balcony on a high-rise condo. I was thinking something didn't feel right when the bit touched the glass and then it exploded in the wall.

Most of my "accidents" happened in my first few years installing, fortunately nothing too major for quite awhile.

LOL! Yeah Been there, done something similar!



OMG! That must have really sucked!!



Ha ha!!! That must have been a nightmare to clean out all the glass!



LOL, I actually didn't start making major F-Ups until I though I knew it all and cgot a little overconfident...

Now, that I've lost all of my confidence, I am a little more careful, although last week I almost ran a plasma bolt into an old Oil - Pipe! It was back a couple inches and that would have sucked!

i've managed to avoid anything major in my 5 years of custom install, but recently i almost ended my streak. drilling horizontally through studs with a 6' flex bit, it popped out on the other side of the wall. i walked around to the other room and the bit had popped out about 4" above a pioneer 50" plasma that was on the floor, leaning against the wall. i moved the plasma immediately and pretended a near disaster didn't happen.

Whew!! THAT would have sucked!!

Question: When you extended 6 ft. flex-bit jockies are drilling horizontally through a few stud bays, do you ever worry about hitting AC that is running vertically up and down a stud?

I just gotta say, doing the flexi-bit thing scares the heck out of me these days...

i use a toner to locate romex first. there's usually only 1 or 2 outlets, one under the tv location and one near the adjacent wall. most of the time the bit isn't going near them.
having said that, about 4 years ago i was sectioning a stud for a center channel speaker and i sliced through a live romex, scary.