2nd fix

Those of you who visit my Flickr pages will probably have seen that the electricians have retruned and started 'second fix'. This is great as it means the end of the project must be in sight, and it also means that some of the finishing touches are being installed.

For those of you who don't know what 'second fix' is, it's the electricians second (and final) work of installing the surface mounted fittings once the plastering is complete. This means installing sockets, switches and light fittings, testing all the circuits and finally and powering everything up.
So where the plasterers have finished we now have electrical fittings, including the fabulous looking downlights in the kitchen and the LED lights on the external timber clad walls. I can't wait to get power on to see what they look like when illuminated. And if you think external lighting may not seem very eco, we've used LEDs to ensure that they are low energy lighting in the sunken courtyard (see photo). Wherever possible inside the house we'll be using low energy fittings, and while the kitchen downlights come with energy hungry halogen GU10 bulbs we'll be changing these to LEDs soon as well.

LED lighting

The last light fittings we need to source are for over the front and back doors. You'd think it was easy to find a contemporary (but not too high-tech) stainless/galvanised external downlighter with an integral PIR sensor, but it's not. I sometimes wonder if our desire to buy quality products that are stylish as well as functional makes life too hard! Anyway, after too many trips to B&Q and far too much Googleing I think we've found what we're after, Lighting Direct's Luxembourg fitting which I think fits the remit of contemporary but not modern. I'll reserve final judgement until I open the box.

Hopefully another decision made at long last. All we need now is some power...