DIY

The extension where we usually sit in the evening has two walls lights and one ceiling light. The ceiling light was a matt black metal affair with four bulbs, entirely new but with an oldie-worldie flavour, and the wall lights were of a very similar but not identical design with one bulb each. Now these lights had done good service for some years until some weeks ago, if not months ago, one of the wall lights stopped working.

Investigations, sufficiently complex to require working out which fuse controlled the lights in the extension, eventually revealed that the female end of the bayonet connection in the offending wall light had given up. That is to say the spring behind one of the two prongs had given up and the prong was not engaging with the corresponding contact on the bulb. Sometimes this just means that the prong has got a bit stuck, having been held in the same position for months if not years, and with a little bit of pushing and pulling and the prong is as good as new. But not in this case and the bulb remained firmly dead, and as far as I could see there was no way of getting inside the wall light (costing some tens of pounds) to replace the small spring (costing some fraction of a penny) which had given up. The whole wall light was rubbish and that meant that all the lights in the extension were now rubbish, there being no chance of replacing the one light with anything remotely like the others. BH was not pleased because her extension was one light down and I was not pleased because doing anything about it meant a fair bit of DIY - and probably bother.

But eventually woke up one morning and decided that I was up for a fair bit of DIY. Thought about going to somewhere fancy like Christopher Wray (see http://www.christopherwray.com/) but we decided in the end to start the hunt for new lights in our local Homebase. Where, as it turned out we were able to buy new lights, a five bulb job for the ceiling and two two bulb jobs for the walls, antique brass finish, with very little bother indeed. And having spent far less than we might otherwise have spent at Wray. There is also the consideration that the stuff that Homebase sells suits our kind of house. Wray suits a much grander sort of abode.

I then get down to the serious business of putting the things up.

The only problem with taking the old lights down was the discovery that despite being the proud possessor of many screwdrivers, I did not have a screwdriver which suited the connector which connected the wires coming out of the plaster with the wires coming out of the lights. So off to buy a screwdriver. First stop the electrical shop in Pound Lane. Closed while proprietor on an errand. Second stop Travis Perkins on the Longmead. He could sell me a large screwdriver or a set of fifty screwdrivers, which set might have included something small enough. Third stop the plumbing shop across the road from Travis Perkins which advertised an electrical counter on the outside wall, but which turned out to have decamped to Kiln Lane before Christmas. Fourth stop Screwfix, also keen to sell me sets of screwdrivers. But eventually, working hard at their catalogue, I found that one could buy screwdrivers singly, in particular one with a tip 2.5mm by 0.4mm, a tip which was toughened with vanadium or some such. So back home to find that it was just the job.

Start to investigate first wall light to find that it was attached to the wall using the fitting illustrated. Holes B and C  used to fix the fitting to the wall, C being more of a slot than a hole to allow horizontal adjustment, it being more or less impossible to get two holes in the wall which are close together anything like on the square, while holes A and D were threaded to allow the foundation cup of the wall light to be fixed to the fitting using a couple of short screws. Now the idea might have been that one screwed the fitting to the wall unit embedded in the plaster, but there were two problems with this. Firstly, holes B and C were too far apart. Secondly, the corresponding holes in the wall unit were on the diagonal rather than on the square, whoever having installed the wall unit having had no regard to the needs of the second fixer. To get around this last time around I had cut a small piece of mature oak (you need a hard wood for this sort of job), maybe 3cm by 1cm by 0.67cm which was fitted behind the lugs of the wall unit containing the useless holes and to which I was then able to bolt the fitting by a central hole at E. Not entirely satisfactory as the fitting was a pretty thin bit of mild steel which was going to bend if one put too much wellie into the fixing bolt. But had done, and it did again for the new light, with the only modification required being the cutting of a recess to hold the nut at the back of the oak to stop it spinning. Don't understand why that was not a problem last time around.

Next problem was getting all the wires and connectors to fit in the fairly small hole that was left. Why do the people who design electrical fitting make everything so awkward? Would the posh jobs from Wray have been any better? Anyway, we hope that fixing has been accomplished without breaking the earth bond.

So after some hours the first wall light was on the wall and illuminating. And some minutes after that, the second wall light was on the wall and illuminating. Onto the ceiling light.

The light which was coming down had quite a good fixing, with the light simply being hung off a ceiling beam, with the fixing being hidden by a cup sliding up the hanging pole and being fixed up with a small screw. But the light which was going up was done quite differently, in fact just like its cousins on the wall. But at least this time I was able to screw through holes B and C directly into the ceiling beam, with there being no need to faff around with little pieces of oak. But there was the problem of there being no where near enough room for all the wires and connectors between the ceiling and the foundation cup. But we got there in the end, without having to dig a hole in the ceiling, and BH now has the full complement of lights in the extension.

One last point. The old lights involved fancy glass shades hanging from the arms holding the bulbs, by spring contraptions which were entirely unsatisfactory and which were apt to damage, if not break, the glass on installation. The new lights involve rather less fancy glass shades sitting on, rather than hanging down from, the arms holding the bulbs, with a much simpler and more satisfactory fitting. But the whole thing, while looking well enough, is fairly cheaply put together and one does not get the satisfaction of feeling that one is installing a bit of quality. But probably not worth paying two or three times what we paid just for a bit of installer satisfaction. One forgets about all the little problems and fudges soon enough.