The Fireplace Tale

The fireplace has now received its final makeover (at least for now). The art of re-pointing old stonework has not been mastered, but at least the basic theory and practice have been learnt!

This is the picture from the estate agent in July 2005:

The first thing we did when we bought the house in October 2005 was to throw out a lot of the clutter and give various areas a lick of paint. So after a few days this is what the fireplace looked like:

Then in November 2005 Paul and I visited and (due to the cold!) removed the fireplace and installed a woodburning stove:

Then back in early March 2006 Sue and I removed the plaster exposing the stone:

And now on to the final tranformation. Sue and Alex removed the old lime mortar (not difficult but very time consuming) and then with expert tuition from our Dutch Neighbour Inez (who has repointed the outside and inside of their HUGE barn) they repointed the stonework. This is a two stage process with the first being to plaster the mortar on, and then 2 days later brush it away from around the stones. The result was very impressive:

Now with this experience behind them we can start taking off the plaster from the main walls!