Can I Fill in the Old Master Phone Socket?

anotheruser

Just moved in.

I've done a visual inspection of the house and wires.

The phone line coming from the pole enters the house elsewhere and has a corresponding socket on the inside reading BT Openreach.

The cable coming into the house also enters in the same area and has a correspoinding socket with NTL (so old Virgin Media) on it.

The socket third socket I have found is in the hallway. It's plain and old looking. Taking the cover off, there's wires and another phone-like socket. Behind, in the wall, there's a metal plate of some kind. I guess this is the master socket.

I guess I can get rid of it and fill in the hole with filler because the wire from the telephone pole connects to the newer socket elsewhere in the house.

I guess there would be no down falls. Sorry no photo right now, but I wil get one later.

Thanks

TheCyclingProgrammer

If you're certain it's not connected to anything then get rid of it. We had a similar arrangement of old sockets (including old GPO terminals) in our hallway, made redundant by the new master socket in the living room. We were redecorating and replacing the skirting so I ripped it all out.

anotheruser

The question is, what to fill it with...
I might have to find some wood or something and then use filler around it. It's a good old square hole.

TheCyclingProgrammer

Is it in the wall or skirting board?

anotheruser

It's in the wall, about shouder height, so not particularly out of eye sight.

TheCyclingProgrammer

Well the easiest thing to patch a largish square hole would be a small square of plasterboard - if its a stud wall you'll want to make it fit pretty tight. If its just a masonry wall then you could just stick it to the masonry with something like Grip Fill. You want it to sit just below the surface. Then skim over the top with a fine surface filler like Easifill.

If its a masonry wall and the plaster isn't deep enough to use plasterboard, then you could fill it with anything really, a bit of bonding to just below the finished level and then again use Easifill to skim over the top and sand down to blend in.

Grenage

I had a large hole from a decommissioned BT box; I fixed a piece of wood into the back, then sanded over - as Cycling suggested.

You can also get 'deep hole' filler, which you can use to fill the hole in one go. Quite expensive for the job, though.

TheCyclingProgrammer

Whatever you fill it with, I recommend you leave it slightly below the finished wall surface and finish with a final skim with a GOOD (not premixed) sandable fine surface filler.

To that end what you fill it with isn't that important, what you use as the finish layer is.