Introducing

Masonry Martin...another friend came to help us and what a job he did! One of the major improvements we are making to the house (in our humble opinion anyway) is the replacement of the existing wiring and most importantly the installation of a new consumer unit, which will be sunk into the wall rather than slapped crookedly onto the top. As some of you may know Paul's brother is a qualified master electrician and will be helping us with the rewire. We sent him some pictures of the existing installation, which he showed to some colleagues for its 'entertainment' value. He also ranted a little about the fact that the consumer unit had been installed askew and was mumbling something about spirit levels not having made it onto the island (obviously he's from the continent). Well when we zoomed in on the picture of the consumer unit we had sent him we disovered that there is a built-in spirit level! We had a good laugh about that one.

But anyway I digress...back to Masonry Martin and the superhuman effort he made in attacking the wall where the new unit is to be installed. It is rather large (32x62cm) and so a good amount of brick had to be removed in order to sink it into the wall. We do have a drill which he used to break down the mortar and bricks, but it is not the most powerful and so he had to use a considerable amount of elbow grease to finish the job. I think he was wishing he had borrowed a drill with a hammer function from his workplace. If you are reading this Martin, please ignore the next part. (We bought such a drill the next day as the thought of chiseling out all the socket holes and channels for the cables by hand wasn't all that appealing).

The result of his effort is amazing, take a look at the pictures below and please take special note of the picture showing the unit from the side. Can't see it? Well, my point exactly!! :o)