fireplace

One of our stipulations for when we moved to our current home was that it had to have - or be able to have - a wood burning stove. We have had one for years before and they are just great. With access to scrap wood and logs, we can keep our heating bills down considerably, as lighting a fire can often be enough to take away the chill, without resorting to other heating, in much colder weather it means we dont need the heating on as much, and for those power cut days, (fairly frequent in the country..), we can still be warm. From an environmental point of view, they are much better than burnng fossil fuels. As well as all these benefits, the top can be used to mull wine, or cook in a limited way and its just lovely to snuggle up in front of the fire!

We bought the house complete with a hideous 1960s? ish fireplace, with fake hood. We called in our regular chimney sweep for a quick checkup - and he did a smoke test which showed smoke coming out of two pots - not a good sign - usually indication of a breach somewhere... and advised us to only use the fire with caution. When the cold weather came we cracked and gave it a go, but found quite rapidly that the open fire actually made the room colder.. and I only got warm by running upstairs to check no smoke was coming out of other fireplaces... too worrying !

So - as soon as some time and bad weather (preventing us from being outside growing things!) came, we started the process of knocking out the old surround. "just find the clips and it should lift off the wall in three large pieces " our sweep told us. Ha!

The new fire suround - when it was new, had been put in with an accompanying three inches ( I do not exaggerate) of concrete. We had to break it out. A very mucky job too! We were not sure what we would find behind the fake hood, as parts of the house are 400 years old, but what we did find was a brick arch. A slightly comical one as it is not even and peaks slightly to the right of centre.. however, all part of the house's charm...

We then began to carefully remove the infill of stones and concrete they had thrown in behind the fire, a satisfying yet worrying job, as we were not sure how stable it would all be.

We did eventually get back to a fairly straight wall at the back of the fireplace, much to our pleasure. It was a bit of a surprise as we were expecting maybe a granite lintel and a rough back, as would befit the range that would originally be here in the first instance? But the house is not listed as it has undergone many changes, and this must be one of them. It seems likely that the kitchen fireplace, which backs onto this one, might have been 'borrowed' from the living room.

Either way we are pleased to have removed the hideous fake fire and brought it back to something more pleasant and less room dominating. Sadly, the orginal lime plaster had already been stripped back to a level above the brick arch, and so there was nothing to save, only inches of concrete to remove. There are parts of wood inserted in the walls of th fireplace, presumably to fix a surround to at some point, and holes knocked into the bricks, to act as fixing points, and the soot from the fake hood will not come off the red bricks. In time we shall probably lime wash the stones and bricks, but for now the important thing was to get the woodburner installed before the Autumn rush began again (everyone else wanting a woodburner ) , and we faced another cold winter! and all that log stacking would be for nothing.

We spent some time pondering the hearth. We did consider slate, but it seemed so harsh and new looking. As the house is largely constructed out of granite, we thought a granite hearth would be just the thing, and approached various suppliers. To get granite to match we were advised our best bet would be to import from India, as it is no longer quarried from here.

We were horrified, importing granite to Dartmoor just seems an insult. We then went searching through reclaimation yards, trying to find the ideal stone. There are some lovely things in reclaimation yards... serious risk to your bank balance! We were lucky to find a local yard had some reclaimed granite paving slabs, from a town on Dartmoor and bought enough for the job - they are really lovely (and cost a lot, lot less than the shiney kitchen counter stuff we were shown elsewhere!).

We cleared out the old hearth floor - which was sad as there was just enough broken rubble to hint at the old stones that might have been there beforehand, and after alot of moving pieces around and just two cuts with a diamond cutter, we arrived at a pattern we liked the look of, with the nicest edge pieces at the front, and set them in place and used lime mortar to point. We also repointed a few holes in the back wall of the fire.

So now we were ready for the woodburner itself. We had already made enquries at a local manufacturer, and selected the stove. it's lovely to know the stove is all made locally.

We also decided to have it fitted professionally, as now we have a certificate of compliance to put with the house info etc.It turned out that below the pots, there was just an open chamber, above the separate chimneys, so no wonder we had smoke out of two pots! , so the chimney was lined, and we fitted anti-bird cages on the pots too (as had already had baby jackdaws fall down and arrive in a sooty muddle in our sitting room...)

We still have to finish sorting out the chimney breast, fill in the holes made in the brick arch, remove the wood, and redecorate, but at least we can now have the fires!