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!?

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?