Full rewire of a Victorian end-terrace

01The requirement

The owners had bought the house to restore it. A pre-purchase EICR was unsatisfactory: much of the wiring was original rubber-insulated cable, there was no earth to the lighting circuits, and a 1970s fuse board sat under the stairs. They wanted the electrics done once and properly before any decorating started, and they needed to stay in the house with two children.

02The condition and the constraint

The ground floor has deep plaster cornices, two ceiling roses and original pitch-pine floorboards, all of which the owners wanted to keep. The first floor was due to be replastered anyway, but the ground floor walls were not. Every cable route downstairs had to reach its point without cutting into the cornice or chasing the good plaster.

03The work completed

• A survey and a room-by-room specification agreed with the owners, marking every socket, switch and light position on site
• Ground-floor circuits run from beneath, through the cellar and up behind skirting boards, with floorboards lifted, numbered and relaid in their original positions
• First-floor circuits chased into walls ahead of the planned replastering
• Ceiling roses kept, with new pendant supply cables fed through from above without disturbing the plasterwork
• A new metal-clad consumer unit with RCBO protection and surge protection
• Mains-wired, interlinked smoke and heat alarms throughout, plus a new supply ready for a future EV charger

04Safety and disruption

A temporary supply kept the kitchen, fridge and one bedroom running throughout first fix. Work areas were closed off with dust sheets and zipped screens, and floors were protected from the front door upward. Every evening, the rooms that had been worked in were made safe, with no exposed cable ends, and the family had lighting and power in the rooms they were using.

05The result