Posts tagged rewire
Electric Nightmares Part 2
7Today is the first weekday in 21 days that I have been able to get up post-6am and do what the hell I wanted with my day. Yes, the electrical rewire and subsequent repair work finally came to an end yesterday. I’m a few pounds (in weight) lighter and also a few pounds (in sterling) lighter. Not quite so happy about the latter!
When I wrote about the impending rewire last month, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on what was about to happen, what the disruption would be and what kind of mess I’d be met with each day. I’d been briefed by the team who were about to kick seven shades out of my house and believed I’d prepared myself sufficiently. I was actually way off. These past 3 weeks have been some of the most stressful in my life. Living out of boxes for 3 weeks, coming home to clouds of dust, broken walls, broken floors, men in and out of my house as if they owned it. Relentless work for 21 days, 8am to 4pm daily.
Now that I have my privacy back I now have the task of re-decorating every room that was affected. That is every room in the house, every wall and every (upper) floor. The lucky room to get attention first is, unsurprisingly, the home office. One of the things I have missed desperately during these past 3 weeks is my routine and structure. The home office was always my cocoon to get things done and focus. Not having that place to escape has been extremely draining – instead I’m having to sit in a broken shabby room with my PowerBook on my knee, looking around at a sea of cardboard boxes and ripped wallpaper. Not a chance of me being productive or creative, not that I’ve needed to be, mind you.
So, that’s where I’m at right now. Painting of skirting boards have been done today, tomorrow and the rest of the weekend will be repairing walls (covering with wallpaper), emulsioning said wallpaper, laying a new wood floor and fitting a new door. I hope to be back in The System Attic early next week.
One of the things I will do when I’m moving my things back in is hug my iMac. Next Monday will be exactly one month since we parted and I have so many gifts to present it with from the MacHeist Bundle I bought a few weeks ago. All year I waited patiently for the bundle and it was released on the eve of my rewire when the iMac was packed away. What are the chances? 
My posts here, naturally, have been greatly reduced and affected during my downtime. I didn’t have regular internet access for 2 weeks as my router was packed away and my only source for getting net access was the iPhone. I had hoped to write occasionally, but inbetween the work I had only a few hours to eat, drink, shower and sleep and that’s pretty much all I wanted to do. Once I’m settled back into my office then I hope to get my writing routine back as soon as.
Electric Nightmares
10In less than 2 weeks my worst nightmare will come true. The whole house needs to undergo the most major and invasive work that it will ever need to undergo – a full electrical rewire.
About two weeks ago some lights in our house started flickering. Being concerned that this wasn’t the first time strange electrical things had occured at home, we decided to call in an expert and check our wiring. We were told that it would be a full rewire and that it would be almost certainly done in one day. Our wiring is mid-1970′s, meaning we’re around 75% more likely to have a house fire or death caused by electrical shock than with those who have ‘modern’ wiring. And that’s a statistic we don’t want to be part of.
So, last week began the de-clutter to get everything out that we didn’t need from old PC’s and software, to clothes that many a charity shop have benefited from this week. Then yesterday we met with the electricians to be briefed on what exactly was going to happen and what we needed to do prior to the work being carried out. I was hoping that they would tell us that the work would be minor and that new wires could be replaced by making just a small incision, a bit like keyhole surgery. However, as you can see from this tweet it wasn’t quite that sugar-coated.
Just 5 weeks ago I completed the redecoration of my home office which I’d so cosied myself into. In less than 2 weeks it’s going to have the floor pulled up, holes cut into that and the walls mauled to death. One day was a bit ambitious and although we’re assured the electricity will be back on within that one day, there will be men coming and going from our property for several days after to plaster and patch up everything that they unpatched. There’s also no way we can stay in our home while the rewire is taking place as it will be noisy, dusty and uncomfortable.
While I’m in the middle of a mini breakdown, I’m also finding my head bursting with a ‘to-do’ list that just keeps on growing. I have no idea where to start, but I shall need to get the mental notes out onto paper so that I can check things off as I go. If that wasn’t bad enough, the estimated “end of the month” could be brought forward a bit, which will give us just over a week to pack up our life into many boxes to ship out. It may sound silly to the non-Geeks out there (not sure this blog gets that kind of readership, however) but the only thing I will be personally physically dragging around with me on the big day is my iMac, aside from my iPhone that doesn’t need dragging, just tucking away quietly in my pocket. The iMac has my worklife on here and there’s no a chance in hell that I will put it into storage in a deep dark cupboard at home, nor will I let family take this incase they have a break-in. Yeah, I’m a classic case for Cognitive Therapy 
So, since my router will be packed up for a while, I shall be solely accessing the internet (um…Twitter, mostly) with my iPhone over 3G (god bless these two technologies!). A few nights will be spent with my parents while the dust, literally, settles. Then of course will be several weeks of cleaning up, redecorating and re-laying wood floors. I’m just hoping it’s now safe to install/update apps over the air on 3G because you can bet the new super-duper version of a super-duper app I’m using will become available during my downtime. Please say it’s so.
Maybe it’s time to invest in one of those GTD apps on my iMac which can sync to my iPhone. Any recommendations?
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