But it had to be done this weekend, so I set the alarm for 5:45. To beat the heat, I planned to get there at 6:00 AM, before the sun comes up and starts to warm it all up. I don't have a haz-mat bunny suit, so I donned a turtleneck and cotton sweats with my hiking boots. (Stylish!). I had the heavy duty breathing mask, too, though I opted to not go for the full respirator. To top off my head, I had the LL Bean integral headlight cap- what a fabulous piece of gear. It worked perfectly; didn't need the flashlight.
I had purchased some knee pads a couple weeks ago to do the waterproofing installation, so I climbed up there "armed" ("kneed") to the teeth with those, and started the crabwalk through the darkness. The access hatch is right next to the new skylight, which was lined at my request with R-30 batts, which are almost a foot thick. I couldn't get around ot without rubbing my whole body against the batts, so I just pulled them all out so I could get where I needed to go.
As I rounded the corner, my headlamps shone on the massive tangled pile of blue cable lying on top of the insulation over the new entry closet. What a pile of spaghetti. So I tangled and twisted my limbs around midst the roof jacks, joist tops, and collar ties just to untangle all the cable so I could separate the three strand that need to go to three different locations. that took a little while, but all in all less than I thought. And fortunately, the knee pads were doing their job pretty well, and I found that I could sit comfortably on the big vent pipe that Ray the Plumber had put up there way back in June.
Once untangled, cable number one had to be poked down into the stud cavity by the new wall oven. The two speaker cables I poked up there a few weeks ago indicated the exact location I needed to poke through with this one. The building code today requires that any hole into the attic be plugged up with insulation, to prevent hot gases from getting into the attic space in case of fire. To pass inspection, Pete had filled up all the cable holes with a spray foam stuff that I now needed to somehow open up for the new cable. And I didn't have anything to poke at it with. So I manipulated the speaker wires that were in the hole, moving them around from side to side, trying to enlarge the hole, and I eventually was able to poke it on through, without too much effort. One down, two to go.
The next one was going to be a challenge. It was right next to the skylight shaft, and the framing at its base for some reason was double studs thick, and I knew from running the cabe before that I couldn't come down in the same spot as the existing ones because those turn sideways, go through another stud, before ending up at the electrical box. Now that the walls are all covered up below, that wouldn'r be possible. So I had to guess- and cross my fingers- that the place I think I needed to drill a new hole would actually be in the right place. (I did that once before in my previous house and ended up drilling into a camera bag that was in my closet!). This time, I lucked out. The drill I brought up went through the double studs like a hot knife through butter, it didn't feel like I hit anything nasty, and I poked the cable through into what I hoped would be the spot right above the targeted electrical box. I had to wait to see how close I came once I poked the third cable through.
Third cable, no problem, and by then I had the hang of crab-walking from joist to joist. No poke-throughs with my feet, and as I exited the space, I replaced the R-30 batts on the skylight shaft.
The trick really came down to whether or not I could actually get the cable all the way into the wall box - especially the one by the skylight. The others all had some accessibility from an unfinished back wall- but that one was totally enclosed. So I unwound all the cable already in the box and snapped open one of the prts in the back, and there it was - just sitting there like I had planned it and executed it like a pro. I used my fish tape to snag it in a matter of seconds, pulled it through the port, and all became right with the world. All wired up for sound; now all we have to do is find the money to buy the components!
Most of this was written at the Majestic Bay Theater while waiting for the new Coen Brothers' movie to start- all of it on bberry. My thumbs are sore. ;-)
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