Man I gotta push back hard on that. I've tried the joint compound as texture trick and it ended up cracking in about six months because the mud just doesn't bind the same way as real texture compound. Bob's been flipping since '98 and he's seen enough callbacks to know better. That "character" in old Austin houses just means you're gonna be painting over the same crooked lines every few years when the humidity shifts. Plus you said it yourself, you spent four extra days stripping paint, which means your method actually took longer not shorter. A 12 inch knife skim coat on badly painted old drywall will just peel right off if the original paint wasn't bonded tight.

Did you at least get overtime pay for playing ground guide for three days straight? That swing brake going out sounds like a real pain, especially on a Liebherr where parts are probably special order from another planet. Had a similar thing happen once with a brake on a Terex and we ended up rigging a temporary line lock just to keep the thing from spinning in the wind. Hope the mechanic at least brought you coffee while you were down there waving your arms around like a traffic cop at a parade.

Contractors seem to have a sixth sense for finding the exact spot where the one cable runs. Had a similar thing happen at my old apartment complex, they put in a whole new fiber line but connected it to the same junction box that was already busted. Took Comcast three different trucks and a supervisor to figure out why the "upgrade" didn't work.

You really think Google would kill Drive though? They'd lose too many people's trust.

Yeah I read somewhere that consistency is the real secret with those bond builders, same thing @davis.gavin said.