Stone Fireplace, Stone Staircase, Limestone Fireplaces

I didn’t watch the final, but I wish I’d been in Spain last night. That must have been some party!

Yesterday, our local agricultural show was held. We had a small pitch where we were showing a few stone fireplaces and a small section of a stone stairs. It’s amazing how much interest a small rural show can produce. Of course in a rural area, there are loads of lovely old farmhouses, many of which are ‘crying out’ for a lovely stone fireplace.  But even in the wilds of Leicestershire, these days there are new developments, and always renovations and re-furbs, and there are very few projects that don’t benefit from having something made from solid stone in corporated into the structure!

One couple visited us on the stand, and they are renovating an old pump house on the canal. It is very dilapidated, and is in an overgrown copse alongside the canal, yet hardly anyone knew it was there. This couple tracked down the ownership, sorted out all the many complications, and have managed to buy it, complete with a private mooring, and are now embarking on the restoration. The building is victorian, and has many lovely stone features: Cills, corbels, and door surrounds. Some of these are damaged, and some will be replicated in a small extension that they are building.

They also want a couple of stone fireplaces: An impressive one for what will be a double height sitting room, and another smaller stone fireplace for the lovely main bedroom that will overlook the canal. It really will be a stunning property when it is finished.

I love rural Spain, and have done a lot of stone fireplace research out there.  I would love to have been in Spain last night when they won their World Cup semi-final against Germany. I bet the mood and partying was fantastic.  Heaven knows what it will be like on Sunday if they win the final!

It’s very dry here in Leicestershire at the moment. Our yard is very dusty and the stone fireplaces are drying out (after we’ve carved them) faster than I’ve ever known. That is quite a bonus really, as they’re noticeably lighter once dry, and that makes for easier handling and loading.

A friend of mine in Spain, with whom I often stay when hunting for architectural ideas, has just installed one of our stone fireplaces in his new house in the Sierra de Gredos. This is a beautifull area North West of Madrid. Quite mountainous and wooded and very beautiful. It’s a very unspoilt part of Spain, and even though it is still dotted with sleepy little farming villages, it is so much more accessible (due to EU road building schemes) than it was when I first visited about 15 years ago.

The Spanish have a great depth of history in the use of stone, and there are very many stunning and totally intact buildings that well illustrate their skills with the material.

We’ve just fitted a lovely stone fireplace to another old farmhouse here in Leicestershire. While we were measuring up about 8 weeks ago, the customer asked if we had any good contacts for fibrous plaster cornice. We knew of a great little firm in London called Miles and Wilde (www.milesandwilde.co.uk)  The customer had chosen a lovely gothic design of fireplace, and wanted an essentially gothic cornice to compliement it. Miles and Wilde had just the thing they were looking for, and we can recommend them if ever your looking for something similar.

Our truck has just set off to deliver another three stone fireplaces. Two up here in the midlands and one down on the coast in Hove. We travel all over the country, and there’s not many areas that we haven’t delivered a stone fireplace too. We’ve been to quite a few locations in Europe too. We use a ‘ man and van’ service, because we find the big commercial carriers are just too rough with our stuff no matter how well we pack it. Whereas the man and van service we use, is very careful; always helps the customer put the fireplace where he wants it, and is generally a good ambassador for our company.

I’ve just seen on the news that there is ‘black redstart’ with a nest full of young at a ’secret location’ somewhere in Birmingham! Apparently there are only 24 breeding pairs of the birds left in the country! How do they find each other I wonder?  We often get birds nesting in our pallets of uncut stone. You may think it’s an excuse, but we do sometimes have to delay stone fireplaces because we’re waiting for the chicks to fly. I think they like the feeling of a big solid lump of stone to nest against. I think it always keeps them a bit cooler too in years like this when we’re getting some hot weather.

We’re just looking at a building project for a council in the north of England, where they want to add a stone staircase to the entrance to a new library extension. It’s a lovely bit of design, and quite traditional, and they like our clean unfussy designs so we are optimistic.

We have also been given the job of supplying stone fireplaces for new build house in Brittany. It’s owned by a British business man, and we’ll send a couple of guys out there in early September, and make the fireplaces on site, as it’s not very ‘green’ to ship the stone from France to here, cut it, then ship it back!

You just can’t beat natural materials. Oak for furniture; flooring; doors or actually the frame of your house. Thatch for a roof, terracotta tiles for the floor; travertine or limestone for flooring, and of course, natural stone for a stone fireplace or a stone mullion window, or a stone door surround. Not only do all these natural materials look beautiful, but they’re also generally very durable and long lasting. They also tend to be rarely a ‘fashion’ item and are therefore retained much longer if not for their lifetime, which means that they’re very eco-friendly.

The beauty of natural materials, whether stone; timber; or whatever, is that no two pieces are ever exactly the same. Each piece is unique, and thus has a unique beauty. When we make stone fireplaces, we often find lovely figuring or maybe a subtle shade variation, and even sometimes a preserved sea shell, that settled in the sediment many thousands of years ago (millions probably) and only sees the light of day again, when our masons find it as they carve your stone fireplace. How miraculous is that!?