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This is some environmental storytelling right here. I see a story of an electrician, all out of appropriate lengths of wood, working past five on the night before the drywallers show up.
That can't possibly be an actual electrician's work, can it? That's got to be the work of a homeowner who didn't know the correct way to locate an outlet in the middle of a stud bay.
Nah, it's been awhile, but I've been an electrician. When you get a foreman who has made it to that special level of asshole, your give a fuck starts to run out incredibly fast. Even if you're not the kind of guy who would do this yourself, someone working with you probably is.
With that said, I don't think this would pass code, but I'm honestly curious as to which part it violates specifically. The wire doesn't look like it's secured properly at least, but this might be one of those things where this is where they learn that they need to write some new passages.
Welp, I can't tell if my faith in professionals has dwindled or my confidence in my DIY skills being up to code has increased upon reading that. Probably both.
Honestly, the requirements to become a professional in most of the trades are pretty minimal because there's a massive shortage of trained workers in basically every trade. The bar is probably the highest for electricians. I'm a refrigeration mechanic and the bar for us is basically subterranean. I've come across "professional" repairs all over the place that are just wild.
Honestly, if you're a DIYer and you're consulting building codes at all then you're probably doing better work than many (but not most) pros. That's why you should never just go with the cheapest contractor you can find for anything. They're cheap for a reason. You really need to ask around and see who is good in your area. One thing that can help is if you can find a contractor that does commercial as well as residential work. It's not 100% but generally they're going to do better work because it's a bit harder to get away with shoddy work with many commercial customers than it is with most residential customers.
Aw man, now you're just enabling my bad DIY habit, where I get too ambitious and/or too skeptical of hiring somebody and end up taking way too long to get the project done. I'm this close ->| |<- to committing to a DIY central HVAC system replacement (complete with new 240V circuit for a conversion from gas furnace to heat pump), which is obviously gonna end up with me relying on "temporary" window AC units all summer, and you're just shoving me right over the edge!
Haha. I'm the same way. It's fun to tinker with that stuff. It's actually probably a good thing it's so expensive otherwise I'd have twice as many half finished renovations.
Just be sure you're aware of local laws. At least where I live home owners can do all of their own electrical work as long as they get it inspected but that isn't the case everywhere. As far as the minisplit goes you should be legal to DIY it as long as you use precharged units and linesets. You just can't buy refrigerants or legally tap into the system in any way unless you have an EPA 608 certification. But if you're using precharged linesets and the equipment works then you won't need to do either of those things unless you somehow lose the refrigerant charge. As far as the rest goes just do your research on system sizing, placement, and all that jazz. But as far as DIY goes, a minisplit is probably about the same difficulty level as installing a new gas furnace so if you would be comfortable doing that they you should be fine.
Also if you're going with a heat pump minisplit, I'd go with mitsubishi, not a samsung. The Samsung units are more technically advanced and have more flashy options but they aren't very reliable. I've worked on several that had major issues less than a year after install. They're also more "proprietary" when it comes to working on them. On the other hand I have never come across a dead mitsubishi with less than 5 years of hard use and they're dead simple to work on as far as minisplits go.
I had a semi related, IRL, Bethesda style enviornmental story telling 'event' involving a wall happen once.
Back in college... I wasn't actually in this one fraternity, but was friends with almost all the guys in it, was good friends with the core group that restarted its local chapter that had been dormant for like a decade or two.
So one day, its video games and beer, and ... well, this one room needed to be renovated, so we didn't give a fuck. One guy loses at Smash Bros, fucking fist through the wall.
... After he walks back a bit, we notice... wait wtf there's something... on the frame...?
We tear out more of the wall, and no shit, there is a miniature time capsule in the form of a note saying basically 'Cheers to any future (fraternity name)'s, from the class of 1982!' ... and there is also a fucking can of Rainier ... from 1982.
So the dude who initially Donkey Kong'd the wall gets dibs on the 30+ year old stale beer of course, downs it immediately.
... The funny part is that this was always supposed to have been a dry fraternity, no alcohol allowed.
I hope you put a can of beer back in there with a note before you sealed it back up.
If I remember right, that is exactly what happened.
Though I wasn't there on the last day of renovsting that room, I think it was the guy who uh, did the initial demo work on the wall, who did exactly as you describe, along with the original piece of paper, which was now preserved in ... either a ziploc bag, or vacuum sealed as you'd do with some meat you'd want to preserve for freezing.