Round Old Work Electrical Box

I've spent twenty years crawling through attics and fishing Romex through finished walls, and I've seen the same disaster play out more times than I can count. A homeowner or a green apprentice walks into a hardware store, spends six dollars on a Round Old Work Electrical Box, and thinks they’re ready to hang a thirty-pound designer chandelier in their dining room. They cut the hole, tighten the plastic wings against the drywall, and wire up the fixture. Three months later, the vibration from a footstep upstairs or a slight shift in seasonal humidity causes those plastic tabs to chew through the gypsum. I’ve walked into homes where the entire fixture is hanging by the copper ground wire, or worse, where the box has ripped