Bizarre House Work

One thing we didn’t know when we bought this place is just how bad the previous work that had been done on the place really was. As time goes on, we’re realising it more and more.

In the current bathroom work, we’ve found that the floor in there is extremely non-level, and in some places has up to an 8° slope. And the corners aren’t square either. Come to that, neither are the walls. And while I know that’s not down to work done by the previous owners, it’s still a pain in the tits.

As for the work done by the previous owners, some of it is nothing short of bizarre. For instance, because the place was originally built with nowhere near enough power sockets, they had rigged up what amounted to an extension lead with two lots of wall-mounted double sockets coming off it. And they’d done that in just about every room.

There are also under-cupboard lights in the kitchen which were running from a power-feed that should be only going to be boiler. According to the electrician (who went an interesting shade of white when he saw it) that is a serious no-no.

I’ve written about the heating system before, where the wiring and pipework are – what’s the best word? – interesting. Yes, interesting – that’ll just about cover it.

Now in the bathroom we’ve found that they replaced the toilet with a new one (which, incidentally means they chose an avocado-green suite, it wasn’t forced upon them at house-purchase time) and fixed the difference in pipe-sizes with a plastic collar filled with solid cement.

All told, very bizarre people. Still, at least we’re getting these things sorted out slowly but surely.