Demolition Man

The break was good, but we couldn't justify putting off the internal renovation any longer.  The electrician has disabled the electrics everywhere but in the two rooms that we are living in, so we were able to take down the plaster off the walls without danger of electrocution.

Renovation of old farm house, with concrete lintel

Electrocution isn't the only danger with the walls though.  The plaster here is tricky, as it is massively thick and heavy blocks that can come down in one piece weighing about 10 or 15Kg each or as, in one room previously, a whole wall.

The detail of the renovation has not yet been fixed because we don't know what hides behind the plaster.  In some rooms we think it's concrete blocks which we'll need to recover, while in others it will be real stone which we would love to leave on show.  Even where it is real stone though, it may be covered in render or otherwise be so damaged that we'll just have to cover it anyway.

You can see in the photo that a concrete lintel has been smashed very unsympathetically into the stonework, so there is no way that the wall could be left uncovered.

When we know which walls will be stone and which will be plaster, we can then decide on the location of power points and switches, and whether the cables run through the walls or in conduit on the surface.  

It's a bit haphazard not planning the job out, but our experience here has shown that too much planning means that the job is done wrong as the reality behind the walls is never what we expect.