To set the scene, before we found it, our house had been on the market for a couple of years and the people selling it (children of a widow in a home) had decided that it probably wasn't going to sell so they would do up the kitchen and rent it out.
So, whilst the kitchen was being "refurbished", we found the house and decided to buy it. The kitchen refurb was very poor and I couldn't believe anyone had accepted the standard of wall tiling etc.
Anyway this didn't bother us as we intended to fully refurbish the whole house. Previously the lighting circuits had been re-wired but not the sockets so this was something that I planned to do over time.
On inspection I found that all sockets in the kitchen were spurs (new colour cable) which I found a little strange and wasn't able to work out the cable routes (skimmed and painted walls).
I also discovered that whilst there was a circuit breaker labelled up "kitchen" only two sockets were on this breaker with other sockets being either on the upstairs or downstairs circuits - how confusing was that?
It was only when I started refurbishing the kitchen (removing the kitchen units etc.) which exposed unpainted walls that I realised that what they had done was simply to connect into the old socket locations insulating the joints with any old rubbish they could find before burying in plaster as the photos below show.
My favourite is the second one where they wanted to connect the spur to the socket. As you can see, rather than link the two in the shortest most direct way with a piece of cable 4" long they have embedded in the wall a piece of cable 10 times as long taking a nice curved route.
The last photo shows that they were masters of more than one trade as they needed to cap off part of the kitchen waste and rather than use a proper fitting they simply shoved a piece of polystyrene in the end of a joint and siliconed it - brilliant!
I am pleased to say that I now have all sockets on one completely re-wired circuit and absolutely no polystyrene in my waste system!
There was a similar story upstairs again related to the kitchen where they had disconnected (at one end only!) a live feed for the lighting which they had just taped up and left under the floor boards. The most annoying thing about this was that this cable was about 1m long and emanated from a junction box so why not disconnect it properly?
Some people should definitely not be in the bulding trade!
So, whilst the kitchen was being "refurbished", we found the house and decided to buy it. The kitchen refurb was very poor and I couldn't believe anyone had accepted the standard of wall tiling etc.
Anyway this didn't bother us as we intended to fully refurbish the whole house. Previously the lighting circuits had been re-wired but not the sockets so this was something that I planned to do over time.
On inspection I found that all sockets in the kitchen were spurs (new colour cable) which I found a little strange and wasn't able to work out the cable routes (skimmed and painted walls).
I also discovered that whilst there was a circuit breaker labelled up "kitchen" only two sockets were on this breaker with other sockets being either on the upstairs or downstairs circuits - how confusing was that?
It was only when I started refurbishing the kitchen (removing the kitchen units etc.) which exposed unpainted walls that I realised that what they had done was simply to connect into the old socket locations insulating the joints with any old rubbish they could find before burying in plaster as the photos below show.
My favourite is the second one where they wanted to connect the spur to the socket. As you can see, rather than link the two in the shortest most direct way with a piece of cable 4" long they have embedded in the wall a piece of cable 10 times as long taking a nice curved route.
The last photo shows that they were masters of more than one trade as they needed to cap off part of the kitchen waste and rather than use a proper fitting they simply shoved a piece of polystyrene in the end of a joint and siliconed it - brilliant!
I am pleased to say that I now have all sockets on one completely re-wired circuit and absolutely no polystyrene in my waste system!
There was a similar story upstairs again related to the kitchen where they had disconnected (at one end only!) a live feed for the lighting which they had just taped up and left under the floor boards. The most annoying thing about this was that this cable was about 1m long and emanated from a junction box so why not disconnect it properly?
Some people should definitely not be in the bulding trade!
