Stone Fireplace, Stone Staircase, Limestone Fireplaces

I’ve just spoken to an artist pal of mine who has gone to live in the south of France. He’s in the Cevenne Forest area, and it’s very beautiful. Anyway, he’d nearly bought a lovely old farmhouse near us in Staffordshire, but there had been a few scare stories that suggested that the house could flood in bad wet weather. Stories were sufficiently plausible, and the Trent sufficiently close, to put him off.

The funny thing is, though not really funny! Is that a flash flood went through the French house two nights ago and 6″ of water ran through the house front to back! He says no apparent damage though, and in fact you can hardly tell it’s been through (I suppose the warm weather soon dries it all out) I of course, wondered if it had left any marks on the stone fireplace we fitted in the house for him, and he said that there wasn’t a mark on it, as he’d sealed it a couple of weeks ago.

Some customers seal our stone fireplaces to stop them getting stained, and others prefer to let their stone fireplaces take on the ‘patina of life’  It’s the customer’s choice in the end. This friend actually wants his stone fireplace to gather some stains, but had sealed the base blocks when sealing some stone steps we’d made for him.

Have you ever seen them in ‘real life’? Well they did a display at a little village festival in Leicestershire yesterday; (Shackerstone near Mkt Bosworth) I’d seen them before, many years ago, but had perhaps forgotten just how amazing they are: Complex and beautiful manoeuvres with nine little jets only feet apart. I think it’s a fine example of what the British are still the best at! Anyway, it seemed strange seeing such a world class act performing over a little rural village, (rather than at a big airshow or over Buckingham Palace!

One of our masons is renting a house in the village, and he hadn’t realised the Red arrows were going to appear. He was doing a bit of ‘homework’ for us in his back garden overlooking the canal. (carving a bulls head on the lintol of a stone fireplace) He said he wondered why a few dozen people were gathering around the canal bridges, and then on the second of 5.00pm the nine bright red jets zoomed over his head trailing their red white and blue smoke trails. The display lasted the regular 20 mins or so, and he said he was so overwhelmed by it, he could do no more stone fireplace work, and sat in his garden and consumed a bottle of wine!

He’s out in the yard this morning, working on another stone fireplace, and regailing the other masons with his description of the display. He also got some great phots.

Anyway, hopefully we won’t find a stone red arrow carved in the yard tomorrow, and he gets his mind back onto stone fireplaces!

Invariably when our customers are installing one of our stone fireplaces, they are redecorating the room in which it’s being fitted. What a difficult job that can be!  Hundreds of times I have been into a room and one wall is covered in a patchwork of ‘match pot’ paint squares, and the problem is, that thos match pots only really paint an area a couple of feet square, so you still can’t see what each colour will really look like.

Our stone fireplaces are of course natural stone, and fairly neutral in colour, so they don’t dictate a particular colour scheme. However, it looks fantastic if you can make the stone fireplace ’stand out’ against its background, so perhaps creams, yellows, or sandy colours are best avoided. This assumes of course that you want to make your stone fireplace the dominant feature in your room! You may in fact want it to blend into its background, in which case ignore the last bit!

Our stone fireplaces look outstanding when in a traditional dining room, and a deep red wall colour, will give a dramatic feel to your room and will make your stone fireplace look very impressive. Dulux Heritage do some gorgeous traditional reds and reddy pinks, that go very well with stone features: Try DH red; pugin red; or naples red. Red Ochre is also a very ancient and tradional colour. All with make our stone fireplaces look outstanding.

What a gorgeous misty morning it was today. We’d had a really early start as we are delivering a massive stone fireplace to a house in Nottingham, and it’s going to take all today and all weekend to install. While we were loading, the sun was just sending beams through the little wood at the back of our yard, and making patterns in the mist. I had to keep telling the masons to get on cutting the stone fireplaces and not to keep gazing at the wonderful morning view!

We’d fully loaded the stone fireplace by 7.00 am and sent the two installing stone masons on their way. Hopefully they should avoid the worst of the traffic. The house they’re going to, is an Elizabethan mansion, that has been restored and turned into a conference centre. That may sound terrible, but the location meant it had few other uses, and it has been beautifully restored, so is preserved from further decay. Our stone fireplace is going into one of the large meeting rooms. The room, we think, was probably originally a ball room or something, as it is very grand. The original stone fireplace, in fact the whole end of the building where the fireplace and chimney had been, had collapsed about 20 years ago, and all the materials had disappeared. It has taken the owner a long time to accumulate replacement materials.