Stone Fireplace, Stone Staircase, Limestone Fireplaces

Have you ever been there? It’s stunning, and if you’re in to architecture then you’ll be in heaven. The Duomo on the cathedral, engineered by Brunelleschi, is just awe-inspiring when you think it was built in the mid 1400s. No cranes or modern equipment to build it, and certainly no cad/cam to design it!  I doubt we could do it today.

lots of our masons have done some of their early apprenticeships in florence. Working on the many stunning historic buildings. We have yet to fit any stone fireplaces there! My favourite building is the Strozzi palace: It’s such a daunting building. The Strozzis were rivals of the Medicis, and if you walk round the palace at night time, you get a feel for the bloodiness of that period.

It always amazes me that a period of such incredible creativity was ruled over by such ruthless and bloodthirsty clans. I’d loved to have been around then… I think. Not necessarily as a stone fireplace maker, but I think that working on those great stone structures in those days would have been very exciting. (not as a menial stone-hauling labourer)

We’re into stone fireplaces and buildings of a slightly more modest scale! But essentially the stone masons’ craft has not changed. He may have access to better tools, and some welcome machinery and weight lifting aids. But in the end, the masons’ art is that of his eye. He ’sees’ the finished shape within a block of stone that is just that to another person.

That part of  the craft has never changed, and is as relevant when producing one of our stone fireplaces as it is to the men who shaped the stone blocks of the strozzi palace.

Well at least we can get back to Normal life now? What a disgrace, I wouldn’t given any of them £20 a week, let alone £150,000. Come on Andy Murray!

At least the sun’s shining still, and we can enjoy a lovely English summer.  We’ve just been asked to quote for some stone fireplaces for a massive converted barn in Stafforshire.  It’s a gigantic building, a real traditional and very old tithe barn. It’s in incredibly run down condition, but the planners and listed building people have been very helpful, and have allowed a lot of reconstruction of the worst parts. The base walls are stone, and they look like they were originally ’salvaged’ from another building, they are quite finely worked. No one local is sure where it would have come from, but historically there were many great houses in the area, so there are many options.

We are to make a large but essentially plain stone fireplace for the main hall. This hall will extend for the full height of the building and be almost cathedral like.  This will house a  massive dog grate, and will look incredible when at full blaze! What a perfect location for a Christmas party or something similar.

The second fireplace is for an L shaped extension to the main barn. This is also very old and was probably a small stable, or calf shed. This will be the ’snug’ or 2nd sitting room for the  barn, and the owners want a small but simple stone fireplace, that has a rustic feel in keeping with its barn home. We’ve got a few ideas, and we’re currently doing the drawings to give the owners a few choices.

So we’re through to the next round of the World cup. Our English masons are carving stone fireplaces with smiles on their faces… the French ones not so cheerful! But forget football…. did you watch that match at Wimbledon yesterday (last night!) between Mahut and Isner?  It was stopped due to bad light with the 5th set at 59 games each!!!!!!   The match has broken all records: Longest; most games; most aces; etc etc.

John McEnroe’s post match comentary was brilliant… saying in fitness terms what wimps the world cup footballers are by comparison. Hilarious!

Oh well, back to stone stuff: Another advantage of this glorious weather is that it dries out our stone quite quickly. When we carve your stone fireplace, we do it with the stone wet. This makes the stone easier to cut; produces less dust, and ‘lubricates’ our carving tools. The downside is that it makes your stone fireplace very heavy, as they can hold a lot of water. This can normally take several weeks to completely dry out by evaporation, but in this weather and outside, some can dry out in as little as three days. It’s not the wet that’s the problem, it’s the weight it adds to the stone.

We’re just working with a friend on a new combined trolley and lift for use when we install fireplaces. On some jobs, the installation is essentially a one man job, all except lifting the main fireplace lintel on, which needs two people (at least) We trying to make a trolley and lift that will make even that operation, a one-man job, so we can make your fireplace installation a bit cheaper.

Here we are, out in the sun from 6.30 this morning, cutting stone in our yard and working on some lovely stone fireplaces. Some of us are sneezing a bit, due to the hay fever ’season’  We’ve started a little early today, so that we can finish a little early, as some of us want to watch the potential horror of the England/Slovenia match.  No doubt the country will come to a halt this afternoon once the match starts, and if we lose…. I dread to think!

We’re delivering a big stone fireplace to Scotland today, the Glasgow area, and yesterday we delivered one to South Wales, Monmouthshire. The driver said what stunning countryside he drove through yesterday once he got off the motorway, and I remember riding through that area of Wales on my motorbike a couple of summers ago, and how beautiful it was.  I’m not sure what the area is like where he’s going today, but hopefully it will be nice.

We’re just working on some stone arches for a big barn conversion. Each arch will have a door in it, but the rest will be just glass. The glass will just sit in a slot that we’re cutting into the stone, so you’ll have glass and stone, but no frame. It will look incredible, and we’ll put pictures on here when it’s done.

It’s all sport at the moment isn’t it!  World cup (aren’t we doing well!) Wimbledon starting today, and the MotoGp was at Silverstone this weekend.  The latter being my favourite! I thought we (the English) were having a bad World cup, but the French are having it worse, and our French stone suppliers, who are football mad, are very down in the dumps. We’ve got a couple of French masons helping us with a few jobs at the moment. We put a big old tv out in the yard where we’re carving the stone fireplaces, so that no one need miss a match. Now it seems the French have nothing else to watch, but hopefully after Wednesday we still will have!?

At least the weather is good for working outside. We’re finishing a large gothic style fireplace today, and it will be delivered and installed (in London) at the end of the week. We’ve also got a very nice ‘French style’ stone fireplace in the early stages of manufacture. We’re just waiting for some more blocks to arrive, as it needs a nice wide overhanging mantle shelf, and we hadn’t got a piece of stone in the yard.

Any one like tennis? I wonder if Murray can do it this year?

Don’t computers drive you mad!  Just when you rely on one totally to send email; pay bills; order goods for work, then it goes and packs up, or locks up or something!  Mine here at work, the one I update our website with, and correspond with customers on, suddenly decided that it didn’t want to use my Firefox browser any more! I hadn’t changed anything or messed about with it, it just decided it would stop working! Now, like most normal people, I’m used to simple things. When we make your stone fireplace, we cut a block of stone to roughly the size you want, and then carve it into the finished article that you’ve ordered. There are rarely any inexplicable problems. If the saws don’t work, it’e easy to find out why, and there is very little that stops us getting our stone fireplaces made.

Computers however seem to have minds of their own. They do one thing for hundred times, then for no reason, decide they’ll not do it again. They let you rely on them, and then lock up so you can’t even access them to try and solve the problem. I love what they do to simplify my work, but hate them when they go wrong.

It’s no wonder you have all those videos on Utube, showing angry people smashing them up because they’ve ceased to function at a critical moment.

Fortunately stone masonry isn’t like that, and in fact the simple act of shaping a stone block into your stone fireplace is positively therapeutic when compared with dealing with an obstinate PC.

I don’t know what it was like where you are, but it rained cats ‘n dogs here in Leicestershire yesterday! One minute we were having a bbq in the garden, and and next running like maniacs to get into some shelter! The rain came down for about an hour, and caused a few floods on the roads. Typical English summer I suppose!!

Happily it’s not raining this morning, so we’re all out side carving our various jobs. It’s mainly stone fireplaces this week, and one particular stone fireplace, for a returning customer, is coming along very nicely. We’ve used our distressed stone, and have ‘bashed’ it up a bit to make it look old. It’s worked very well, and he’s delighted with how it looks.

We’ve got another big load of stone arriving next week. Some samples from a different quarry too, so we can experiment with them. Some of it is specifically for stone fireplaces, but we have also found another harder stone, that is very beautiful, and will be perfect for hard wearing external stone staircase, and stone stairs.

Well it starts today… I think!  And I know that Engerland’s first game is tomorrow. I expect I’ll try and watch a bit of it, but I’m not really a football fan. No doubt if we win a few games and move through a few stages,  then my enthusiasm may increase.

Over the years we’ve sold a few stone fireplaces to well know footballers, though perhaps that’s not a great advert! In fact the two that spring to mind were very unlike the stereotype footballer. They both had lovely families, and both lived in old houses that they were restoring very sympathetically. None of the stuff like you see in that Hello mag.

Mind you it’s a few years ago now, and neither player are in the current England team.

We’re just working on another rustic style stone fireplace to be fitted in a new-build oak framed house. The house is being built in green oak, and is too a very traditional and very beautiful design. It is on a lovely plot near Melton Mowbray, and the site used to have a similar dwelling on it, but it was demolished in the ’50s. The owners have fought very hard for years to get planning permission to build the new replacement house.

Have you ever tried to track down a title document and plan from the Land registry? What a nightmare job that is, or at least can be!  We’re working on another walled garden, where we’re restoring the stone base of the original green houses. While there and talking with the owner who is a friend (and good customer as we’ve made several stone fireplaces for him for the house as well), we realised that there is another area of land outside one of the kitchen garden’s walls that appears to be landlocked, and yet with no obvious ownership. Well, via the uK Land registry, we’ve been trying to find out who has title to the land, and we just cannot get the right information from the Land registry! They just send us back a list of title numbers and ask us which one we’re referring to, and of course we don’t know! That’s what we’re asking them to tell us!

It’s made us realise that designing and making stone products is far simpler. We can draw and carve a stone fireplace with the minimum of complication, and we can turn that drawing into the stone fireplace that you want. Simple

We’re definately working inside today, as it’s tipping it down. Well that is all except our mason still working on the massive stone staircase from the which the sections are just to big to go into the workshop. Still he doesn’t seem to mind working in the rain, and it’s not cold.

There’s a great ‘green’ activity. Apparently it reduces food miles (whatever they are) and of course is beneficial to everyone’s health. Eating veg is healthy, but eating it straight from your garden must be the ultimate. We’ve just supplied a installed a whole load of stone items for a restoration project in Lincolnshire. A spiral stone staircase, a couple of stunning stone fireplaces, some mullions for an old stable block, and some new cappings for the entrance gate piers and wall.  The place will be breathtaking when it is finished, but what was wonderful, was the already restored kitchen garden. The owner must have had incredibly ‘green’ fingers, or just been very experienced because everything growing in there looked like prize winning examples. Beautiful vegetables of every type imagineable, and not a weed in sight. Everything was organic too, so the weed control must all be hard labour rather than Roundup!

Just looking at these rows of tasty salad leafs; radishes; rocket and potatoes made the mouth water, and gave one the urge to try and do the same. My own experience having previously been to plant a load of seeds, then go back 3 weeks later to find they’re swamped by weeds and then giving up at that stage!

Maybe I should just stick to the stone fireplace biz, and leave the gardening to those that know what they’re doing!