Too much earth!

We're hoping to decorate our downstairs rooms this summer - it has finally reached a time when (fingers crossed) the boys are old enough to not write on the walls! But, before we can actually paint the walls, there are several tasks which need to be done first - fix the skirting boards, sort out lighting in the middle room (our central light causes great 'shine' problems when playing board games so we're trying to think of alternatives), fix the shelves, trunk up the electrical cables and get the electrics checked.

When we moved into the house, the kitchen and bathroom had not long been renovated by the family there before us. We have found several problems with the drainage in the bathroom so thought we should probably get the electrics checked ... and didn't want to decorate and then find that the walls needed to be ripped apart for re-wriring!!!

We had an electrician round today to do a survey - he estimated it would take about 3 hours all in. After 10 minutes he called us in, provided a very comprehensive but totally incomprehensible explanation of our electrical system (with lots of acronyms!) which basically ended with him saying that we have too much earth coming into the mains and he can't continue testing until that's fixed because until it is fixed, all the sockets will fail the test. Hmmm. On the plus side he seemed to be quite positive that we would not need total rewiring...to be confirmed.