Sparks

A year ago today, I fell off a ladder and broke my wrist. Frimley Park hospital did such a good job, you’d never know it now. I think the way bones knit together is amazing.

Anyway, today I was up, bright and early (like every day) because the electrician was coming. He worked non-stop from 8am to 4pm. And on his own. Amazing guy with an incredible work ethic and the stomach of a camel.

He installed a new switchboard so we were without power for most of the day. I figured this would be the case so I charged everything I could think of so I could still have some semblance of electronics. Of course, I had no Internet but I managed…somehow.

The plan was for me to work in the garden (there is a serious weeding backlog) but the weather was not kind. Hopefully things will improve tomorrow. The electrician claimed tomorrow is going to be the best day of the week (weather-wise) so he’s going to connect up the office and spend Wednesday in the house.

But today was all about the switchboard and upstairs. He replaced the downlights, which the useless builder installed before we lived here and the bathroom is so much brighter, it’s incredible. He also discovered a powerpoint that had been embedded in the wall (very odd), which took a bit of time to repair. It’s left me with a rather ugly hole to fill.

Possibly the most amazingly bad thing about the old builder is in the laundry. Ages ago, we had a plumber around who couldn’t find the main stopcock to the house. He searched everywhere but couldn’t find it. Eventually he wound up turning the water off at the street. The electrician had the same difficulty (he had to earth to it) but didn’t give up. Well, he couldn’t, really.

After a long while swearing and sweating, he called me into the laundry. He’d found it. The builder, for reasons known only to himself, had built a little box around the stopcock and then installed the toilet. Now you wouldn’t think that would be such a big problem, however, the inclusion of the toilet meant it was impossible to remove the box to get to the stopcock. As the electrician said, it would have been a major problem if we’d had a water emergency.

He asked my permission to remove the box because it wouldn’t be usable afterwards. I told him to go for it. I think I detected some sort of satisfaction in his discovery and, subsequent destruction of the box. That’s another job for me to repair but with a bit of access this time.

He also needs to access the bottom of the linen cupboard which, you’d think, wouldn’t be a problem. Except when you factor in the fact that the top half opens and the bottom half is fixed with screws. After he’d left for the day, I tackled it with screw drivers and hammer. It is now off, after some concentrated determination.

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And while we’re looking at old photographs of our back garden…this is what it looked like just after we moved in.

A looooong time ago when the Wendy House was there and before the path was born

And this is what looks like today.

Looks a bit different!