Our wood burning stove was installed yesterday!
The installer, Keith, and his son are great! They render the sides
of the chimney where we have missing brick and chunks of concrete. I
love the original brick so much we decide to keep it exposed in the back.
Keith (and his son pictured above) also sweep all four chimneys. As soon as I
see the chimney sweep broom I am reminded of a certain
niece and nephew
of mine who LOVE Mary Poppins. I have seen them rewind and play the
"
Chim-Chimney" song on the DVD for a good hour (their favourite bit). So this picture is for you two!
I do have to mention that Keith and his son were reluctant to pose
and told me how a friend of theirs who is a chimney sweep gets invited
to all his clients' weddings. Apparently an old superstition says that
if you have a chimney sweep kiss the bride on the day of the wedding it is
good luck. So he gets all decked up in his chimney sweeping outfit,
grabs his broom and goes to weddings (and gets paid for it). Not bad!
Here is our
wood burning stove installed. The make is
Clearview and it is
considered one of the better makes in that it is clean burning (for our
smokeless fuel area) and is one solid piece of cast iron. It is quite
small inside and will take maximum a piece of wood that is 12" long.
Too bad I had not known that before one of my wood stores was cut to
16" long.
We want to get a fire surround, like the one pictured above to go
around the opening. It just looks a bit too modern at the moment. The
one above is cast iron as fire regulation won't let us put a wood
surround (which are much easier to come by) unless it is much higher
above the stove.
Our plaster arrived today and as soon as he stepped into the backyard he exclaimed, "what a mess!"
Well, yes. But that haul of timber is from the loft and I intend to start sawing it up today for fuel.
A mess with pretty dappled sunlight?
My wood store is full so I will have to start stacking against the fence now.
Getting an original Victorian fireplace is easy in the UK. You can get them on EBay and Gumtree (Craig's List equivalent). There are also Heritage Reclaim shops and sites that restore original ones for a hefty price. Above is our large lounge fireplace from the back.
We buy it on EBay for very cheap, but on the way home the mantle breaks.
There are missing pieces like the grate to hold the wood or coal, the fire brick, and the flue.
Here you can see the missing pieces. The dated tiles (60's style) are cracked and since we plopped it in our yard the large cast iron fire has begun to rust. It needs professional help!
As for the small bedroom fireplaces. The one above has 5 layers of paint on it built up over the years. I begin the slow process of taking it off with Nitromors (a chemical acid that melts it off).
The detailed bits are the toughest and I use a wire brush to get all the paint out of the cracks.
Meanwhile we have an expert from Architectural Salvage (on Haydons Road in SW London) come and take away our big fireplace.
It is brought back in pristine condition. He has welded the mantle shelf, cast a new fire brick, found another fire grate and incorporated it in, made us a new flue, reblacked it with graphite paste...and...
...put in new tiles. The above tiles were in a beautiful (but too tall) fireplace in his shop window for months. I would admire the tiles every time I went past and decided to take a picture of them so that I could find similar ones. When I arrived it had been sold, but the buyer had another set of tiles so these 10 were left in a pile in the back. I prefer the fine Victorian detail tiles to the art nouveau or bolder styles. The blue/green will go well with the maroon walls.
Meanwhile the one bedroom fireplace has been completely stripped and I am reblacking both of them.
The detail is beautiful.
Once done with all the grates, mantles, and bits...
...they are brought into our lounge, the current storage room.
