I had an electrician in to initially change a couple of light switches and then another dozen sockets once we realised they didn't match the new switches (wish we hadn't started but I digress).
The electrician asked me to have a look at the socket as he was having trouble getting the screws into the back box. The wall is tiled and, on reflection, the fact that there was a lot of mastic on the old sockets should have given away the fact I don't think they were ever flush with the tiles. However the back box wasn't attached to anything seemingly, the guy thought if the screws were tightened it would squeeze the back box against the tiles and hold the socket on but this didn't work. It looked like the box was wedged into place with some stones/bits of plaster and the wall behind (looked like the back of the brick wall) wasn't flat.
I eventually managed to get one masonry screw through a central hole in the back box (plug was a double) which, although a bit wobbly was the best we could do. The plug is fairly firmly fixed on, just isn't very flat.
I'm imagining that ideally I'd take out the back box and make sure I had some flat wall to fix a new one to? But it doesn't look like this could be done without taking tiles off so I'm thinking of using a bit of mastic to neaten the job up. It's not a high traffic plug (sits behind the coffee machine).
All the kitchen sockets seemed to be causing the electrician a nightmare - I think it was the fact they were wonky which made it difficult to cut the screws to the right length and ended up snapping/threading several. Is this always a fiddly job?
The electrician asked me to have a look at the socket as he was having trouble getting the screws into the back box. The wall is tiled and, on reflection, the fact that there was a lot of mastic on the old sockets should have given away the fact I don't think they were ever flush with the tiles. However the back box wasn't attached to anything seemingly, the guy thought if the screws were tightened it would squeeze the back box against the tiles and hold the socket on but this didn't work. It looked like the box was wedged into place with some stones/bits of plaster and the wall behind (looked like the back of the brick wall) wasn't flat.
I eventually managed to get one masonry screw through a central hole in the back box (plug was a double) which, although a bit wobbly was the best we could do. The plug is fairly firmly fixed on, just isn't very flat.
I'm imagining that ideally I'd take out the back box and make sure I had some flat wall to fix a new one to? But it doesn't look like this could be done without taking tiles off so I'm thinking of using a bit of mastic to neaten the job up. It's not a high traffic plug (sits behind the coffee machine).
All the kitchen sockets seemed to be causing the electrician a nightmare - I think it was the fact they were wonky which made it difficult to cut the screws to the right length and ended up snapping/threading several. Is this always a fiddly job?