do you install your receptacles and your switches before drywall or after
all right so this was a good question brought by Chase Mitchell on the episode three how to wire
and install a switch video the best way to do it you got to think about like the process of a job
if you were to put devices in before drywall them trying to actually put drywall over the device is
going to be really hard a lot of times they take a RotoZip and they cut around the box and if you
already have a device in there the little tabs from the device on the bottom and top are going
to get messed up or they'll go and stick the RotoZip in and actually like mess up the the
receptacle so it's way harder on the whole process and it ends up damaging I mean you gotta think of
like if the house has like a hundred receptacles and like 60 switches uh you know they're going to
mess up so many different things that I don't do that beforehand I always do it after so we have
a rough end stage and the rough end is where you put boxes and wire only everywhere for you know
lights for recessed cans everything and then we do our trim out some people call it like a make
ready or finish out stage we just call it trim out you put all the canned trims in you put all
the devices and plates and everything on when you go and put the devices in and you put the plates
you're bringing all of these trim out materials together during one phase so in the rough in you
bring all the wire you bring all the boxes and get everything prepped and wired you do the rough in
stuff so you have a certain kind of material that you're bringing in it's stuff that can get banged
up because it doesn't really matter it's all just going in walls but on the trim out phase
you bring all of your receptacles your plates your switches your can trims the Builder is going to
have probably all of the ceiling fans and light fixtures you really only have to be there for
two different phases of a job and when you do the trim out it's everything's like kind of like fine
neat finish work I always wait till after paint and texture because I don't want to put all of my
devices in on walls and they're they're spraying texture all over because they're going to spray
like half of your switches and then you'll have all of these Decor you know paddle switches that
won't actually move because they're like glued together with spackle same thing with paint
they're going to Over Paint you know they're going to get your devices all crappy you could
in theory go and like tape every single one of the devices off but then honestly people in the
receptacles are going to take their tension cords and they're going to come in and they're going to
start trying to plug into receptacles because they see them there and they think there's going to be
power and then all of that tape is going to get like gunked on the inside things are just going
to get damaged so I always always always do it at the end after paint and texture usually the
cabinets are already put in as well probably not countertops in most cases I always try
to have us come out before they put countertops on and the reason for that is a lot of times in
cabinets or in Islands we'll actually need to get in and like run some carflex or run some wire try
to get some receptacles cut into those islands and it's much harder to do all of that when you
don't have access to get inside of the cabinet we do massive Custom Homes so I always always tell
them don't have me come in and just like put one plug here and one plug over here and then
three weeks later be like hang this one light you know it's like no once the paint dries and you've
got all your cabinets set so there's not just like wires sticking out of the ground you know
coming up from the slab have us come out we'll do the entire trim out for from beginning to end
and then when that's all done by that time most of the other trades have gotten all of their you know
toilets and bathtubs and showers and everything in so then we can call for power and we can build our
service on the outside of the house we can put the meter can in sometimes we have like a gutter and
CTS like a CT can enclosure service panels all of that we can get that whole thing built get
it inspected and then have a power company come out and actually stab a meter in place and then
we can turn on all of the receptacles and put all the breakers in get all the switches hot test all
the lighting and everything like that but we kind of do that as one big phase that we call trim out
anyways long long explanation for probably a very simple answer but I hope you got some value out
of that if you want to see a little bit about the different phases of construction I've got a
video here that I talk about pretty much from the ground up how a building or how a home should be
built if you want to see like how I actually wire four receptacles and switches and stuff like that
click this video here and I walk you through my whole process of how I prep in the rough end stage
before we get to trim out and as always I love you crazy people and I'll see you in the next episode