Encounters with British electricity

As if the lead tainted plumbing still in existence over most of the country wasn't bad enough... You would not believe how crazy the electricity here is! I thought that I was pretty DIY savvy. I knew how to throw a switch back on if one was thrown off, and even though I have never seen a old school fuse box, I'm sure I could easily pull out a fuse and replace it with a new one if I had to or even use a penny to temporarily fix it, as I've replaced fuses in cars before (thanks to Phil's Nissan truck).
So, I took this bravado with me as I decided to change a light fitting in the new flat. I switched off the main power point with the fuses in it and then unscrewed the light fitting to take out the old wires and put in the new ones for the new light. But the old wires didn't really jive with my new light, so I'll need to get a DIY book from the library to figure that out, but I'm thinking it won't be so hard. In the mean time, I decided to try and isolate all of the fuses in my fuse box and label them with little stickers so I would know which were which in case anything ever blew. That's when I gave our fuse box a good hard look and realized it didn't look anything like I had ever seen or heard about before. So, I did what any good internet surfer would do, I googled "how to change a fuse" with Google UK. And this is what I saw...
Amazing video showing how the UK is still in the dark ages when it comes to electricity!
Can you believe I have to make my own freaking fuse? It's not just some pull out thingy that you buy at Home Base. I mean, I'm a fairly competent DIYer and I'd have to say an all around bright person, so I'm sure I can do this. But I HAVE to, as that's how things are done here! You'd think with all of the lead pipes in this country, the general population wouldn't be smart enough to figure this thing out without blowing themselves up. But, for some reason I don't hear about people getting killed while changing fuses, so apparently either they just don't blow that often, or people grow up knowing how to wire their own fuses. And it's so normal here to unscrew your plug and change it if you need to. But I've NEVER heard of anyone in the states doing that sort of thing. They just throw away an appliance if something goes wrong with it. So, I guess in some sort of health and safety sort of way it's a bad thing, but in an environmental or sustainable way it's a good thing. It was just a shock to my system when I saw this video and realized that I needed to go and buy fuse wires in case of a blow out.

Taa Daaa!!!!!

OK, so I know this has been a long time coming. We've been busy busy busy with the new flat, but it's FINALLY ready for viewing. Here are some videos of our finished work and an in between showing of our final room to redecorate. In the past few weeks, I've had our kitchen tap water analyzed for lead because we have a lead lined cold water tank in the loft/rafters that feeds the flat with water. The water is pretty contaminated! So, that means we need to completely gut the plumbing in the flat to rectify the problem. Normally this would just be expensive, but since we share the building with three other flats and one business, this makes it extra expensive and complicated... Needless to say I've have just about every plumber in the city over to look at our place and they all tell me a different story. Some want to replace the tank with a plastic one, some want to take us off of the tank and install a pressurized cylinder, and some want to bypass the tank and hook up off of the mains water pipe for our cold water but keep the tank and contamination for the hot water. I haven't a clue what the best option is, but we have another plumber coming today and another one again tomorrow. We'll see how it goes. I'm not sure how the UK managed to be considered a first world country with the horrible plumbing system that they have. The pressure is really bad, and they still have tons of lead all over the country! It's a wonder anyone in this country grows up to be smart, as lead contributes to lower IQ in developing babies.

Time is flying by

I can't believe it's already June. I've almost been here an entire year!! We're still pretty busy with the flat. We've torn most of the wallpaper off of one of the front rooms, and now we just need to get off the old glue and tiny traces of paper before we can prime it for painting. We were supposed to spend the day there to knock out a lot of that, but Marius came down with a slight fever last night, so I'm staying home with him and Simon's unpacking stuff. I hope the boy's fever is just a 24 hour thing and doesn't turn into anything worse. He seems absolutely fine, he's just a bit hot. We had the most beautiful day yesterday. It was sunny and warm -- Absolutely amazing! Now it's a bit overcast and in the low 60's but that is still shorts and t-shirt weather here! I hope this nice weather gets more frequent now that it's summer, so our visitors don't think we live in the arctic trundra!