Becoming a smurf

 The walls are back to their rainbow of original colours and we’re finding holes, gaps, very old plaster and rusty nails, but now we can start the preparation for our own wall colour. So we scrape, spot holes, fill, sand, fill, spot holes, sand and fill again. It’s relentless.

We need to take time out from the repetitive action, our arms and necks are screaming, so for some light relief I head to the loft so we can try and resolve the mystery of the random wires in the kitchen with white tape on them. They go nowhere, they dangle and we have no idea what they are.

Ian isn’t a loft type of person all those spiders, and crawling around… he’s more of a fix it, person. My job today, is to help move the light switches from dangling in the gap we created when we took the wall down and working out where those stray wires are connected.   We start with a lesson in using a loft ladder. I have never had one, or used one, this is going to go well.

There are a mass of wires up here, but thank goodness it’s been boarded. If anyone is capable of falling through a ceiling it’s me. I have an uncanny knack of breaking bones, things and generally being clumsy. Something two of my nieces have inherited. Their parent’s don’t have this trait, only me, so please don’t say I never give you anything.

We start with, ”can you see this wire I’m jiggling?” “Yep”. “Pull it up, then poke it down this hole,” 

“What hole?” “The one with my stick in it, I used the paint stick so you can see it!” Said hole located, the doorbell rings, and it’s a delivery, so I wait in my spidery, hot (did I say it was hot?), new abode. Plenty of time to take a photo so that’s good.. next the cable needs to go down this hole, easier said than done.

I’m onto finding the random wires. There are multiple junction boxes up here, all with 4 wires, most disappear off to the edges of the room and it take a while of me pulling gently on them, to find the one that twitches in the kitchen. First one located. “Right, pull it up, yep that’s it pull!” I’m now wedged between the beams, stretched out over a fairly diggy in beam. There is no shifting the wire, it’s caught, so I wiggle in to the corner and start pulling again. “That’s it, nearly there… Oh, be careful, it might be live! Its got tape on the end, but be careful – actually hang on, I’ll turn the power off!” Good job I was a girl guide and a venture scout! My preprepared torch lit, light off, and it’s an even nicer place to be! Now Ian says “ pull!” So I pull and up, it comes, tape on its end. I hasten to add, Ian didn’t put the tape on, he found a few wires like this,  Clearly the kitchen fitter loved his white tape as all the other electrics are really great.  Now I try describing what it is connected to. It is connected to a junction box, that is connected to 3 other wires, one going to another box of 4 wires, we have no way of knowing what is connected to what. We locate another random wire and Ian decides the only way to make this safe is to venture up himself. Now, on the way into the loft you need to negotiate the low apex,  elegantly draped bathroom extractor fan and the light tube. Did I mention we have a light tube? Lovely, but a pain to duck under and let’s face it Ian isn’t a small chap...but he’s in, spiders and all.  Actually, I don’t see one living creature, but the webs are there. Fortunately Ian has soon made it all safe and we can venture down.

Back to sanding…. The blue room, in my blue overalls and my blue shower cap (I am not washing my hair every day in a freezing house and it is curly and thick and it takes hours to dry), by the end of the day I am resemble a smurf. I loved smurf’s when I was little, I collected them, I did not want to be one!