Finally it’s warmer!
This weekend was the first time it really felt like we may get some sort of summer. We’ve had a bit of sunshine recently, but there’s always been a cold wind, and so it’s not been very summery! So hopefully now, we can forget about lighting a fire for a few months? In England this is the best time to be doing your building work, as you are less likely to be working in wet or more importantly , frost. Frost and wet play havoc with brickwork and mortar and if you’re caught out by a hard frost you can find yourself having to re-do big sections. It’s not a problem when we fit stone fireplaces or stone stairs, as they’re always indoors, so we can easily protect them from excessive cold.
Stone mullions and door surrounds of course are a different story. As we cut our stone wet, we have to be very careful that it doesnt’ get frosted, and if there is a chance of frost we would always cover it up with hessian blankets.
The other good thing about building work in the summer is that you can just open all the doors and windows and get some air flowing round the building. Not only does this aid the drying out of plaster and mortar, but it makes the dust clear a lot quicker when we’re working on a fireplace.
Although our standard range of stone fireplace can be fitted by any competant builder, and do not need stone masonry skills, our larger and more complex bespoke stone fireplaces can need quite a lot of hand finishing once installed, and this can produce a lot of dust no matter how we try and subdue it. Having the windows open (on hopefully a breezy day) always makes this less of a pain!