Everyone has had sheetrockers cover their boxes. That's apparanently a sad fact of life. I had something happen today that I have never seen before:

I went to a renovation where a barn had been converted into an apartment. We got upstairs and discovered that five of our upstairs switch boxes and one of our receptacles had been covered. There were only a total of six switches upstairs, so we figured the rockers had to have known they'd covered stuff but they were just too lazy to try and find it and cut the sheetrock open.

It turns out that all five switch boxes and the one receptacle box had been properly cut in, and then each box had then been individually taped closed, mudded and sanded smooth. Just as neat as if it was an accidental hole in the wall that had to be repaired. I figure if they had to do a standard two coats, we're talking a least an hour and a half of extra work to manage to screw this up.

The sheetrockers are long gone, so I'll never know what in the world was going through their minds. It really did leave me totally speechless.

-John

"Hey new guy, go spread mud over there don't leave any holes"

Nuff said?

Can't say that has ever happened to me.

Here are some pictures done by careful drywallers.
https://www.electrical-contractor.net/ubb/Forum5/HTML/000478.html

Kinda had that happen with switch boxes. 48" is right in the middle of the joint when the rock is hung horizontal. The taper will just run the paper tape right over the openings on the first coat. Subsequent coats can fill on the top and bottom and if someone new didn't know there was supposed to be a hole there whatever was left can get patched and sanded.

-Hal

This used to be a major inconvenience for me, until about 15 years ago. Then, I started marking all my device box locations on the subfloor with a big marker. Just a line for the stud and a symbol next to it. After drywall, I walk the project and point out to my drywall sub any symbols that don't have matching holes in the wall or ceiling.

I've found the best way to deal with this is to have the drywall contractor come back under the pretext that they could do a cleaner job of locating the lost box than i would. If they have to return to the job for that kind of issue they're more likely to learn to take care.

Zero

Mowimmy po polsku?

Hablamos espanol?

Govaryut pa ruski?

Must have been new guys on the job, no matter what language they speak. maybe they were left there by their boss with instructions to "fill all the holes & make 'em smooth", and they took him literally...

Heh. This happens all too often. The company that does the drywall where I'm at has a drywall inspector.
Well he will walk the houses and spray markings all over the floor telling the drywallers where to cut holes out and what shape they are.

But I have the best...
I walked into a single family house, stepped in the garage looking around... "Hey, wheres the panel?". LOL!!!
Them guys covered up the whole damn panel:-) Cut out the low voltage (On-Q) panel right beside it, but noooo covered my crap up.
So I got em back... Couple houses later I found texture spray all inside my panel and the cardboard was still overtop the panel (I don't know, don't ask). So I backcharged them for a new panel and the labor to install it hehehe.

Here sometimes we will backcharge the drywall for every covered box, but now we play nice with them and if they don't charge us for damaging drywall around boxes, we don't charge em for covering them up.

I'll tell you though, I've gotten very good at finding covered up boxes, just a quick run of the hand over the suspected spot and you will find the lump.

Laying a 4' level on the wall where the suspected box is, is a good way to find them too. The Hump in the wall is a dead giveaway.


Dnk.....

Here's a story about a box that was hard to find.

I was doing homes, 40 of them, all the same. Identical to each other.

And we couldn't find out why a circuit wouldn't work, so we break out prints. Low and behold we are missing a box in the dining room wall. We break out our trusty levels and wire tracers and have no luck.

I grab the guy that did the roughing, and he tells me he swears he put a box there, for the recep. So, we continue tracing the circuit, and nothing.

After my rougher, jumping up and down telling me he put the box there, we cautiously start cutting the wall open, this is after paint mind you.

Well looky here, there is a plumbling pipe right where our box should be, and a little more cutting reveals the box. The plumbers decided to remove our box from the wall, to route their pipes through, and never told anyone. The kitchen sink was on the other side of the wall. They removed it for the ease of their pipes. Like I said, these were identical units, you would think the plumbers would route their pipes the same way in every house, guess they forgot the pipe, and caught it before sheetrock.
Who knows...

Needless to say, the GC took pictures and the plumbers got charged for it. Repaint and all.

Did they think they could get away with that?

Dnk......

I think the rocker is trying to tell you something, what that is, who knows.

I ticked off a rocker years ago. He did exactly the same thing, went as far as to completely fill each box with mud. Turns out the floor guys came after rough, and hooked up a few circuits for themselves, after I left the job. Along comes the mud-man caught a few wires with his knife, and felt he'd pay ME back. I called him and asked what was up. He said, "Thats what you get for leaving your wires live hanging out of a box!" Took a few other phone calls before I found that the floor guys admitted to doing it (Messing with my work!) so they could get 240 for a sander.

Wouldn't it be nice if....

Every job had a board listing every contractor, with a contact name and number? Sure would make co-ordination easier!

but now we play nice with them and if they don't charge us for damaging drywall around boxes, we don't charge em for covering them up.

Huh? What reason would you have to damage the drywall around a box if the drywallers had done there job right in the first place?

Okay, maybe if we screw up and have to cut the wall up but most likely it's not us but another trade that damaged our work.

-Hal

You mean yours don't...
Kidding, I have most on speed dial, most of our work has been the same subs for eons.

Here we have round boxes with ears like US old work boxes that are installed after the drywall is complete. So usually the drywallers are asked just to cut a small hole and leave thze flex conduit hanging out. After drywalling is complete the electrician returns, cuts in his boxes with a hole saw, puts in the boxes and installs the devices. On the last job the homeowner's dad was doing the drywalling. He asked one of the sparkies if he could cut the boxes so we only had to install them. Ok, he even lend him a hole saw.
Now when we returned we found he did cut the holes... but always only one, even where a 5 gang belongs... so we had big trouble finding the center of the round holes to mark the centers of the other boxes... *grrr*

My all time favourites are still tile guys who tile over electrical boxes! Had that twice. Makes for an interesting time!

When the rockers covered up my boxes on my jobs, I would go back with a sledge hammer and asked them nicely,"Do you want to find my hidden boxes, or do you want me too? And by the way, I may not be a neat as you!" They would take one look at the sledge hammer and then proceeded to find every one of my missing boxes.

" Wouldn't it be nice if....

Every job had a board listing every contractor, with a contact name and number? Sure would make co-ordination easier!"

That's the GC's job.

That seems to be a continuous problem everywhere. Sometimes despite accounting for the thickness, you get foamers or stucco guys who bury those boxes. there have been times we've had to tone out just where the HECK they are so we dont go knocking out holes everywhere. (Though its been done, too).
Then someone suggested using those box extensions, too, which you cant possibly lose with those....but who wants to take the extra time to mess with those on every single box, then have to take them all off again when its time to trim and put 'em away for the next project.