INteresting installations
Every installation of a fireplace presents its own unique challenges. Some are obviously very straightforward, and if its just a stone fireplace from our standard range, put into a pre-prepared site, then half a day can have it fully installed and ready for a fire.
Some though are incredibly complicated. We’ve had examples where we’ve had to fit large fireplaces in Penthouse flats, where the only suitable access is a small lift! We’ve somehow crammed large, and very heavy stone sections into the lift, along with two of our staff to hold it, and then manouvered it into place, many floors above street level.
We’ve had others where we’ve had to go up numerous flights of stairs and/or narrow alleys ways where there is no room for mechanical assistance. In circumstances like that, we need just plenty of human sweat and muscle… there is no other way…. and in the end, we always get the job done. Many vast old houses, perhaps surprisingly, are sometimes the worst for access problems, or is it that the fireplaces are just chosen for the hard to get to rooms in which no one else has attempted an installation?
If we have the space to use proper lifting gear, then we can achieve amazing feats. We recently moved and gigantic, and very ornate white limestone gothic fireplace from the 2nd floor of a house in London, down the basement. The owners then decided they didn’t like it down there after all, so we moved it back up again to the first floor.
It was a major operation, and the lifting gear we used looked like a Heath-Robinson drawing!