Catch up...The Tale of the Kitchen and the Bodged Electrics

Here's a quick attempt to start to bring you up-to-date with what's already happened with the house.

We completed on the house 6 weeks ago.  We turned up to find out that the vendors hadn't moved out yet, despite us having the keys.  Interesting (thanks for that estate agents)!  After an hour spent at a friends' house, we were finally able to get into the house.

We had always planned to have an overlap with our rented house so that we could try and get the ready before we moved in. "The best laid plans..." and all that!

We got on with decorating the kitchen as we were having our brand new "dream" cooker and a washing machine delivered four days after completetion.  It was all going so well and then the "fun" started when they came to deliver and install the cooker.

But before that, here's the quick catch-up video of the kitchen decoration...

The men from Currys arrived with the cooker and, after struggling for 15 minutes or so, managed to get it as far as the lounge.  They came into the kitchen to check what needed to be done to install the cooker and almost burst out laughing when they saw the electric cable lying on the floor behind the cooker cavity.  A quick look proved that this had evidently been installed by a complete cowboy who had elected to try and run a further 3 double sockets and a light off the cooker ring.  We were swiftly told that they "wouldn't touch it with a barge pole" and that it needed to be sorted before they would come back and install the cooker.

Long story short (because it is pretty long!) it took just over 3 weeks to get the issue sorted.  A quick run-down of the identified problems included:

• A dodgy spur being run from the cooker switch, far exceeding the fuse rating;
• No earthing to the water supply at all;
• Wires running under the cabinets, through a damp puddle to the washing machine;
• We found approximately 5 junction boxes under the floorboards of one bedroom, resembling something like spaghetti junction!
• Overloaded consumer unit;
• Most of the sockets in the house weren't earthed;
• There weren't any proper "rings" in the house, just a series of long and randomly winding spurs.

So, the electrics are sorted for the moment (well they're legal and safe now at least).  The next project is to rewire the lounge/dining room, once we have managed to move out of it!

And we have finally managed to get our cooker installed...

...so at least we can cook now!  

We're still living pretty much in the lounge, but we're slowly getting out!