Three hours turned into three days on a single outlet swap

I had a call last week in Austin to swap out an old two prong outlet for a GFCI in a 1950s house. Figured it would be a quick 20 minute job but when I pulled the cover plate off there was no ground wire at all. Had to run a new ground back to the panel which meant drilling through studs and crawling under the house in the mud. Took me almost three full days just to get that one outlet up to code because the crawl space was packed with old insulation and rat droppings. The homeowner kept asking why I was taking so long and I tried to explain but she just saw a single outlet replacement. Have any of you ever had a simple job completely snowball on you like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

sarah_hart1mo agoTop Commenter

Man, three days for one outlet seems a bit much.

black.laura1mo ago

Wait, three days total or three days just to install it?