www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk

Confirmed the lines were dead (master sockets were too) and started the rip out today. One of those jobs you start and immediately wish you hadn't as cables and clips with up to 40 years of paint on them made a right mess coming out. Still it will look a lot better when all tidied up.

While it's unlikely to be needed I will probably leave the BT master socket in situ, or maybe put a cover plate over it to neaten things up. The Virgin master socket I know isn't connected to anything so that will be removed and patched up, it was only surface mounted anyway so just a couple of screw holes to fill.

Just a little update. I ripped out all the phone lines in the areas I was already decorating. Looks so much better now it's all tidied up.

More lines and sockets to remove in other rooms but given the mess it made I will be waiting until I decorate those rooms to finish the work.

Phone lines are even more redundant now as since starting this project we have given up our Virgin fibre broadband connection. It was getting too expensive and too unreliable. We have now switched to a 5G mobile internet system and it's working out really well and saving us a lot of money each month. Reliability not 100% perfect, but still far better than Virgin was.