So last night I got a number of things done. Of course, it meant a lot of tearing things out just to put stuff in.

I had to take down the vapor barrier and insulation from the outside walls of the home theater. I then had to measure and run outlets for the room and equipment rack. This seems easy, but getting them all within 12 feet of the next outlet, and somewhat symmetrical with the outlets on the other side of the room took some time.

After I had them wired up, I wanted to use something like "Putty Pads" to seal up the outlets and wall sconces. I had been tipped off to this "Duct Seal" compound over at AVS that is real similar, but comes in a block that you need to flatten out yourself. It really wasn't hard to do, and a single block that cost less that $2 a block) covered two single gang outlets really easily. Probably could have even managed 3 single gang outlets per block, but the stuff was cheap, why make it too thin.

So I sealed them up, and then back went the insulation and wrap. It took a little longer than I wanted do to my corded drill died on me, and I was working with my cordless to drill holes in the studs to run the wiring. Normally not a problem, but one of my two battery packs was dead from the night before (I went through 2 batteries pretty quick last night, and only have 1 charger) and the other battery pack made it most of the way through all of the studs before dying, but with a 3/4" spade bit, cordless was pretty slow.

Tonight I need to add the star ceiling outlet and the rope light outlet which both need to run to the switch box. I need to also run the projector electric, and put some more Duct Seal on a few outlets. I need to re-run an outlet in the wet bar area quick. Not a big deal. And get power to the wet bar lights. Hopefully I will also get 1 more outlet ran in the bathroom, and that will make for a pretty full night. It is gaming night after all, so I only have a few hours.

I need to make a box to try to muffle where the video cables come through the ceiling, and cut 2 additional odd-ball pieces of OSB for the bottom of the soffits, but they are small easy pieces. After that, I am down to the small stuff, like testing all audio/video/network connections in the whole basement, and crimping the can lights to the "hanger bars" once I have them absolutely lined up. I need to strip the outer sheathing on all outlets and switches and label them so that they can be tucked into the boxes easier for the drywall stage. I will wire up all of the new lights as a test and to make the next step easier... I then need to pull out all of the old lights and wiring for the old lights. Then it is clean up, including the tear down of my 3' x 8' workbench and tools.

When I am ready to start building in the theater again, I think that I will just need my compound miter saw and table saw to do a bulk of the work, so the whole workbench will just stay disassemble until spring.

So it is moving along.

Here is a link to the Duct Seal Compound I am using.
Gardner Bender Duct Seal Compound
The packaging in the store was different than this, but the product number was the same.


Farewell - June 4, 2020