Pzzzt buzz zork

Within a week the first electrical problems showed themselves. First the fan assist on the oven for some reason manages to trip the whole house. Actually its tripping the residual current breaker. That can wait for now until we replace the cooker.

The other problem was the 3 way switch for the light on the upstairs landing failed. Not sure which one died, so I replaced them all. At least these new switches don't have layers of pink paint and wallpaper on them.

Next order of business was to replace the worst of the light fixtures. These were the front hall, upstairs landing, back utility room, and front room. Not having a massive budget we opted for some inexpensive but nice looking units from Ikea.

The only thing that can be said about this lighting fixture is UGLY! This hideous thing and its equally nausea inducing twin at the top of the stairs were the first of 4 fixtures to end up in the bin. If you look closely you can see the bit of wire that the fixture was hanging from. It looks brown in the picture. It was originally white. All of the exposed plastic in all of the fixtures had been nicotine stained to a gross shade of yellowy brown.



The original front room had some sort of half broken tiffany thing. I'm wishing I had actually taken a picture of it before smashing it to bits. The scary thing was, when replacing it with this globe thingy I found the old one was just hanging on by one screw into a bit of scrap wood which in turn was sitting in the ceiling rose. In other words all the weight was supported by the bit of glue that holds that big plaster thing up. The rose itself will eventually have to go as although its original too many of the edging 'leaves' have been either damaged or infilled with at least a dozen paint layers.

The front hall again after the cardboard cone of crap has been replaced. At least now we can see the steps. The downside is we can now see the walls of the hall properly. Yuk.