Where is Tim Allen when you need him?

As we are in the process of finishing our basement, I have decided to do most all of the work myself to save a little coin. It is nice to have a brother to take the blame when something goes wrong down there. Currently, we have the whole basement framed and the electrical is run to each room. So the next step is to get the HVAC work done. It appeared to be a simple process of cutting a few holes and attaching a few elbows to the duct work, however after 5 hours, it was a much different story.

I tried to be cheap by using tin snips to cut into the duct work and it was a major mistake. Finally, I broke down and went to the Home Depot to get a tool that cuts nice clean circles into the ducts. It appeared at that point that some progress would be made for the day. As it turned out, we were not experts at using the $60 tool and while it cut some nice holes in the ducts on the bottom side of the duct, the drill was too short to cut the desired hole on the top of the duct to attach the necessary elbows. So after another trip to Home Depot and another $50 spent on drill attachments, we did manage to make some progress.

So for those of you who have the desire to finish your entire basement, my advise would be to let professionals do their jobs, no matter the cost.