I had same problem with mothers house, built 1954 and the rules changed in 1966 I think. It was not just a lack of earth wires, the rubber insulation was past its best, we tried fitting RCD protection as an interim measure, it simply would not hold in and only the rewired kitchen and wet room had RCD protection. It all came to a head when my mother with
Charles Bonnet
Syndrome and alzheimer's put an extension lead in a bucket of water because she thought it was on fire due to red neon. I realised RCD protection on all circuits was a must.
When we started to strip out we found light switches with Wilex wooden back boxes, and actually although at the light fittings the rubber cable was not too good, well it was quite bad, away from where the heat from the old tungsten lamps would have made the cables warm the wiring was not as bad as expected. But now all lights have earths and all is RCD protected. It was not a full rewire, as said kitchen and wet room already done, and I got quotes between £4000 and £6000 for the job, in the end only the firm quoting £4000 could do it within the time frame so they did the work, all re-plastering down to me.
The pair who did most of the wiring were good, however not completed on time, and the job was flooded on last day with 6 electricians working on it and some of the work they did was not as good as expected, however I had got what I wanted, a house which was safe for mother or in a fit state to rent out depending on what happened to mother, she did in fact come home. But no bells or whistles it was a just enough job as did not know if using, renting, or selling the house when it was done.
While my father was alive he would not allow us to re-wire it, he said he had lived on a building site for long enough, the house would last him as it was, and that was a good point it's not just cost it is also all the mess, it was not too bad as no one in the house while being re-wired, but still a lot of cleaning up. However until done everything else was on hold, no new carpets, no decorating, no fancy lamps, and lucky for us not electrical fires which could have easy resulted due to work being put off.
Your list should not read what I need to do, it should read what I can't do until there is a rewire, you should not have any metal back boxes, light switches or any other non Class II equipment to start with, when the kitchen was re-wired they forgot the light, finding a fluorescent lamp which was class II was hard, in the end found a 2D unit, and I still think it was the same as rest, but some one had bought a role of stickers. Although you can get light switches with no screws showing, it does tend to limit options, The LAP grid switches have a plastic surround which covers the fixing screws,
although this is a plastic switch which fits in a plastic plate and has a plastic cover there is nothing to say it is Class II. OK it may be safe, but not marked as such, which is the problem I had with light fittings as well. I think the electrician had forgot about the switch.
I suppose since the sockets do have earths, then one could isolate all the lights and use table and standard lamps, how much firms would charge for just doing the lights I don't know. But really the re-wire is also to remove all the rubber cables. There were one or two very bad cables, it was easy to see which, they were the ones which would have fed electric fire back in the 1950's to 1960's before central heating was fitted, it took a lot of work to light a fire, so the electric fire was used a lot then, although since the latter end of 1970's there had been central heating, clearly the damage was already done. Also there was the spur off a spur, 7/0.029 cable was thicker than 2.5 mm² cable and often 7/0.036 was used, however I found a mixture a spur off spur with 7/0.036 was all well and good, but if that was supplied with 2.5 mm² then it would be overloaded. And until all stripped out we were unaware of what fed what.
