Warning. Pointless rant ahead.

Today I went to start the install on a newly finished basement. When I get to the ceiling speakers I find that the drywallers had gone crazy with the roto zip and gone as far as a half an inch outside the new construction brackets. Seriously? I can see a little slip up but one speaker actually fit entirely through the hole they cut. So I spent wayyyyy to much time repairing the dry wall today. The customer was cool with it. He was just happy I could fix it but it put me behind schedule big time. Not what I need at this time of year.

I wish people would take pride in their work.

Ok rant over.

Craig.

I find stuff like that all the time...I use a pencil to write "PATCH" with an arrow pointed to the hole and then i tell the drywall guy and/or the contractor that they need to repair it. I REALLY don't have time and they can't afford to pay $150 an hour for me to patch drywall.

Here are some of my favorite scenarios:

#1.They drywall right over the brackets. Sometimes you can even see lumps in the ceilings where they are located. Same with data jacks, recessed TV boxes etc.

#2.They do not know how to use their rotozip and they leave huge gaps or don't remove enough drywall.

#3.They remove my brackets because they have a .5" lip that sticks down (so that they know to cut out for them) and they want it out of their way.

#4.They pull my speaker cables back to wherever...sometimes to the other speaker...sometimes down the wall to a data jack. Sometimes to any point on the wall and they stub it out in the wall.

#5.They cut the wires off right at the ceiling or wall forcing me to splice everything (including fiber).

#6.This one wasn't the fault of the drywall guys...clients wife and interior designer meet and decide they want NOTHING in the ceiling on the first floor. They will light the house with lamps. Contractor has the drywall guys remove all my sonance speaker brackets. The "trufig" style brackets where you skim right to the edge. Then my boss reminds them that no speakers = no music during parties and i end up cutting in 25 pairs of speakers where the brackets used to be...except for 1 pair that had its wire pulled down the wall between 2 pocket doors. Huge room with 2 speakers 1' from the floor about 5' apart. Sounds "awesome".

I always try to visit the job site after the drywall goes up but before they finish mudding.

Oh and out here, none of the drywallers speak English.

Mac, you forgot - staple wire under joist and then install drywall over it sandwiching the wire between the wood and drywall

Last year we had a large project where we used a ton of X-spot. (about 100 locations)
When we went back to trim the project the drywallers had used a hole saw to expose every single X-Spot magnet.
Needless to say they fixed it.

Thanks guys. I feel better. This was only three speakers. The client wants it done before Christmas hence why he paid me to fix it, otherwise I would have had the contractor come back for sure. I f'in hate drywall mud.

I just checked out the x-spot. Very cool. I'll have to see if I can find those.

So, bigger ISN'T better? Huh.

And that makes your area special, how?
 

Whew...for a second there i thought you were located outside of the US.

Thats pretty funny. You finally got the drywall crew that made sure to cut out for your stuff...and as luck would have it...they were not supposed to :).

This reminds me of a job years ago (more than 10) where we planned out our control room so that we could have 3/4" MDF on all the walls to mount our vantage lighting cans and phone system etc.

We did 1' of drywall up from the floor so that the electricians and trim guys could do their thing. Then we came back and mounted our cans and perfectly routed the MDF sheets so that everything was nice and neat and perfect. We even took out 5/8" from the back side of the MDF so it could sit right on top of the drywall and create a finished edge. It was done and it was perfect.

We come back two days later to find that the drywall guys decided to try and mud that MDF to drywall joint. It was awful and there was a kid in there trying to make it neater when we showed up. We walked in and started chopping it up out of frustration and that kid freaked out...like we were ruining his work of art! I had to sand all the dry mud off the MDF and they had to come skim the drywall. It ended up looking okay but not as nice as it did before they started working on it.

So now i just let them drywall and i slap a piece of wood up and bolt it over the drywall when i need to mount stuff.

We prefer to bury the wires, take pictures, and cut our own holes. We can make minor adjustments and line things up with the lights as we cut. This avoids being victimized by RotoZip, but sometimes the drywallers think that we forgot something and pull the wires out anyway -- usually along the joists.

I'd love to be able to keep my wiring live, creating a shower of sparks if they are dinged by RotoZip.

This ^^^^^^^.
I'm not taking chances with some drywall munky making things more difficult when I am already dealing with crappy framers, painters, electricians, etc.

We threw a laser line up yesterday to line speakers up with the can lights. But the 4 can lights weren't in a line. :(

But that's not the drywaller's fault- blame Sparky. I just had to cut all of my ceiling speaker holes bigger after the client decided to use different speakers that wouldn't fit in the rough-in rings and when I looked from one end of the room to the other, the cans weren't in a straight line. Part of me was annoyed, but another part of me knows that almost nobody will ever look for their alignment. I moved mine so they were as centered as possible. In one room, my rings were in place before the cans went up and in the other, I used the cans to line mine up, with a string stretched form the first can to the last. They moved the cans after I left.

Theres no way in hell i would prefer to cut my own holes out! Thats what brackets are for. if the drywallers fugg it up, it gets fixed.

Alot of patio ceilings are wood, MANY times the whole would be cut larger than our brackets. OOPS! That cost someone dearly and it sure as hell wasnt me. They eventually learned what a bracket was for and now rarely have issues.

I have ZERO desire to cut holes. No way. More risk there in getting it exactly right whereas a bracket goes EXACTLY where you want it. Its what a bracket is for, plus less chance of speaker ears crushing drywall and it add more distributed support. I LOVE pre-construction brackets.