I Don't Want to be a Stone Mason

If a career change ever comes on the cards, I have decided I do not wish to become a stone mason.

I am chasing out the walls in the old bedroom and fitting flush mount steel pattresses for the sockets and other electrical fittings. It is a slow and awkward process, with a masonry drill in one hand and a bolster and club hammer in the other. The drill is already blunt. This stone is much harder than you think - not quite granite standard, but certainly harder than bricks. By contrast, the lightweight insulating blocks used for the construction of the inner walls of the extension, are so soft you can scrape out the slots for the pattreses with your finger nails !

So, here is a combo I prepared earlier :


The stonework is very rough, so even choosing where to locate the boxes is quite difficult, as they need to have some solid stone at the fixing points (the mortar is incredibly soft - no use for fixing anything!).

Note that I have managed to find a supply of 20mm grommets, to avoid wire chafing on the entry points. Note also the small bracket that joins the two doubles together. The electrician has used these in the extension - they make sure that the spacing between the two boxes is spot-on for the cover plates. However, I searched on the internet to try and get some and couldn't find a supplier anywhere. In the end I managed to buy two that were lurking in a box at the back of an electrical supply trade counter in Stroud.