Stone Fireplace, Stone Staircase, Limestone Fireplaces

are woodpeckers on the increase? I’d never seen one ’till a few years ago, and now I see them in my garden nearly every day. It’s a green woodpecker, and is very noisy. I’m sure there’s more than one as I see it so often. At the stone yard, birds can be a bit of a problem, as they tend to ‘bomb’ the stone that we are working on outside. It doesn’t hurt the stone, but in the Spring, when the starlings are nesting in the workshop roof (which they do every year) then the parents seem to drop a ‘bomb’ on everytrip to and from the nest, and you can come back in the morning and find your stone fireplace covered in multi-coloured bird poo! Not nice!

It’s normally easy to clean off though, just blast the stone fireplaces off with a hose pipe and maybe a stiff brush and it’s all gone.

Anyway, despite birds’ apparent disregard for stone fireplaces. It is great to see previously rare birds in the garden, and I take it as a sign that we’re not completely destroying their habitats with our modern agriculture and construction.  We also have a thriving colony of grass snakes in the rough ground at the rear of the stone yard. We sometimes see some very large ones and they are a bit scary. Not that they would attack, but if one shot out from under a stone fireplace that you were moving it would really make you jump! They can grow to nearly 2 metres long, and I wouldn’t want to find that under anything!!!

At home, I’ve gone all conservation minded, which is hardly unique these days. It started after having a new roof on the house, and then the insulation of the roof and walls to reduce heating bills. Because the roof re-furb including all new rainwater goods, I incorporated the option to collect the rain water, and I’ve just got round to completing the system.

Because we use so much water during the cutting and carving of our stone fireplaces, I think we’ll be utilising a similar system at work too. In my home system, I’ve had to incorporate a lot of filtration to keep the water as clean as possible, but that won’t be so important for the stone fireplace water, as it’s only needed to make the stone working easier, and it’s doesn’t matter if there’s a bit of dust and dirt in it.

With the long spell of dry weather we’ve been having, the garden really does need a lot of water, and so having a rainwater collecting system makes a lot of sense. It’s not like you’re wasting the water, as you’re only pouring it on the ground and that’s where all water ends up one way or another if you think about it!

When we finished carving our stone items, we do like to wash them down, so you can imagine a stone fireplace takes quite a bit of water. Imagine how much it takes to wash down a stone staircase or a bit stone door surround. Mains water is no longer cheap, so I think I’ll get designing our work system without any further delay.

At last we’ve had some rain here in Leicestershire, not that we weren’t enjoying the beautiful weather. We’ve been making our stone fireplaces outside for about the last 4 weeks and yesterday was the first for ages when we got a bit wet! A lot wet actually as it rained nearly all day. Mind you, it wasn’t could, so we just donned our waterproof tops and carried on carving! The gentle fall of the rain also kept the stone nice and wet, so we didn’t need to use the hose pipe on the stone fireplaces as much as we’ve had to recently.

We’re also working on a special stone fireplace from a very historic local house. It has been damaged by builders during renovation work, so we’ve removed it, and are repairing the damage, and keeping it ’safe’ till the building works are completed.  The house is also having a sympathetic extension added, and we’re going to be making another stone fireplace of a similar style for that extension.

Building works, or restorations at least, seem to be picking up a little in our area. We’ve seen a steady increase in enquiries recently, and we seem to have a lot of stone fireplaces and stone stairs to make at the moment. Of course we’d like to think it also has something to do with our reputation for fantastic quality for a good price!

There was a fantastic programme on TV last night about Concorde: What a wonderful piece of engineering and design that was, when you consider it first flew in 1969!  It’s hard to believe that 40 years later, we’re now back to a World with no supersonic passenger air travel. As the people who designed her said; “We tookair travel from 600 mph to 1350 mph and now we’re back to 600 mph!

We couldn’t be more apart in terms of technology: We make our stone fireplaces using the methods that have been used for thousands of years. Men using simple tools and their eyes.  Nothing really different from the early stone mason (not always a fireplace maker of course) We do of course have access to power tools to cut the massive stone blocks, and we have advanced metallurgy some way, so that our tools are stronger and stay sharp longer.

The aviation industry when from the Wright brothers to Concorde in about 70 years. If they’d moved at the pace of stone masonry, we’d still be with the Wrights!

Of course some parts of the stone industry are incredibly sophisicated: One couldn’t have had large, flat, polished granite worktops a few years ago, The same with stone flooring and the cladding of buildings: The use of computer controlled cutters and polishers means stone can be an economical material on the largest of projects.

The fact is, the humble stone fireplace, cannot really be improved! A skilled mason can make one relatively easily and probably quicker than a machine so perhaps that is why our methods haven’t really changed.

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.