There’s nothing better on a cold winters day than curling up on the sofa in front of a roaring fire… well we don’t have the sofa yet as the kitchen is stacked in that room but we do have an amazing new/old inglenook and wood burner.

to these beautiful flagstones we found under the concrete floor. This is our fireplace journey…

This isn’t a job we took on ourselves as we had no idea what we were going to find and if the lintels were still in place to hold up the chimney, so after a recommendation we got in touch with Darren at Dalisa Fireplaces and the journey to open the fireplace began…

After the fireplace was opened, and finding no nasty surprises we had a few days to clean the fireplace up as we waited for the stove to be delivered. After scrubbing as much of the 200 years of soot off the stonework on the inside we used a needle gun to clean the dirt, plaster and paint off the lintels and it was starting to look great.

Reusing the flagstones to create the hearth was the brilliant idea of Jason (our builder from Sands Group) and as they were likely quarried from the same stone as the lintels they were a perfect match. Tony had the job of searching through a big pile of them to choose the ones he felt would work best… and as you can see he chose well.

We had considered painting the back wall as there was no way it was getting any cleaner, but now that it’s finished the soot just completes the aged character of the fireplace… with the hearth the crowning glory as it looks like it’s always been there.

Levelling was fun (for me to watch not for Tony) on our wonderfully uneven flagstones but with a little bit of patience it soon stopped wobbling.

The Stove

It took quite a long time to decide on the stove as we didn’t have a huge budget and there are sooooo many to choose from we didn’t know where to start. We had to keep it to 5kw, not only because our rooms aren’t huge but we also don’t have any air vents and we didn’t want to make holes in 3ft stone walls.

After quizzing Darren and Tony from Dalisa Fireplaces we decided on the Hunter Herald Slim 5, a British made, multi-fuel stove with a good reputation, and even though it looks quite small in the inglenook it’s actually one of the widest stoves (58cm) in our price range.

Now to light it and pour a glass of wine! 

Finally a huge thanks to Dalisa Fireplaces.

Thanks to Tony and Wayne who have done an amazing job from start to finish, with very little mess considering all the soot and stone that came out of the inglenook.

And to Darren for all the advice and help. A great team, highly recommended.

Thanks guys 🙂