Fireplace in Pictures

	24^th September 2002 This picture was taken before we bought the house and shows the original foyer insert (wood burner) to the left of the double doors. The doors opened into the adjoining building. The rear of the fireplace had been bashed through and the original granite mantlepiece removed. The mantlepiece used to sit on two large stone supports at about the level of the top of the net curtains (approx 2 meters). You can just see the right hand stone protuding but the left hand side is hidden in the encasing for the insert. We didn't even know if it still existed.
	26^th June 2003 Doors removed and in progress of blocking up the hole. Behind the breeze blocks is noise insulattion and then plaster board to make good the wall in the adjacent building. That building was in the process of conversion into a gite and the wall was necessary to separate our house and the gite. Inspection of wall behind the insert revealed that the other support stone for the mantlepiece was intact. All we needed was to find the mantlepiece. We searched around the grounds of the house but nothing and then we heard from the original owner that they thought it got broken when the fireplace was dismantled.
	24^th October 2003 On the other side of the village there is the identical house to ours. Even all the out-buildings are located in the same place. Inside the layout was the same and so we took a picture of thier fireplace as a guide for the maçon who we were going to employ to re-instate the mantlepiece and 'hood' above. It was my intention to do the stonework at the back of the fireplace to save money.
	1^st December 2003 I finished off the blockwork and then maçon arrived to have a look at the fireplace to give us a devi (quote) for the rest of the job. He would have to source a new mantlepiece. When he arrived he had a look up the chimney and saw that the old mantlepiece had been removed but nothing, except an old tin cow feeding trough, had been put in place to hold up 8 tonnes of chimney breast. A sharp intake of breath a quick trip in his van and he returned to put 5 acro props under the stonework to support the weight. He also cut a hole in the plasterboard in the floor above to see some cracks forming where the chimney breast has started to move. Downwards!
	17^th December 2003 As luck would have it, the original granite mantlepiece was found. It was buried in the floor under the insert to the left of the fireplace. In a previous picture you can see some brickwork under the insert and the just about make out the hole in the floor in this picture where the mantlepiece was hidden. A pleasant suprise to find the original stone and it saved quite a bit of money.
	20^th December 2003 The macon finished in time for Christmas and I temporarily put the insert back in place resting on a couple of breeze blocks. That's Caroline posing next to a table with milk and mince pies for Father Christmas and a carrot for the reindeer. We had Christmas day a few days early for the children because we had to go back to England.
	23^th May 2004 Winter is over and now the weather has warmed up the insert was removed ready for the next stage of renovation..
	28^th May 2004 The stonework was being built up to match the surrounding walls. Most of the stone was scrounged from around the grounds by the house and some 'debris' stone recovered when we had a couple of windows enlarged for the gites. I just used a sand and cement mortar and packed the stones as best I could against the breeze block retaining wall. They were only decorative and non structural, but did help a little with sound insulation. I tried to leave reasonable sized gaps without cement on the face of the stones for the lime and sand pointing later.
	2^nd August 2004 Yes it did really take this long. I got distracted by a tonsillectomy, the start of our gite season, and lots of interuptions.Anyway stonework finished and just the hearth to do.
	12^th August 2004 Almost there. The hearth was made using very large granite paving slabs resting on blocks with a faced-up front and sides in matching stone. Caroline pointed the stonework with a 5:2 sand and lime mix, brushing the excess off as it dried out. The two black 'eyes' of the fireplace are authentic recesses I fashioned into the stone.
	15^th August 2004 I installed the wood burning insert, refitting all the bits back together and connecting up the flue and hot air feed. The silver pipe to the left with the kink is a hot air feed from the fireplace right up to the third floor of the house. Above the 'fire box' there is a separate heating box which generates huge volumes of hot air out of two vents on top of the fire. One is capped off but the other is ducted up through the house to pipe hot air round the house. There is a fan to blow extra hot air, but we have never used it and often have to close the vent upstairs because it can get too hot. The fire is rated at 11 KW, and there is another identical unit the other end of the house that feeds hot air to the second floor. Thats all the heating we have for the whole house, and only when it gets very cold for prolonged periods do we keep both fires running 24 hours a day.
	17^th August 2004 A quick bit of galvenised sheet metal work folded around the top of the insert was used to hide the pipework. It's shown here covered with paper ready for spray painting.
	18^th August 2004 Finished, well nearly. The 'hood' was sprayed with a heat resistant matt black paint and just about completes the job. Some of the stonework around the fireplace and to the left needs a clean up and re-pointing, but it looks alot better than 5 acro props. It's taken a while, but it was done peicemeal and I had lots of interruptions, with the gites and the guests always coming before any work could be done on our own house. I very pleased with the end result.
	18^th August 2004 Finished off by adding a brass strip between the hood and fire insert. It's now been in operation for many months and I've shown it with the Christmas decorations over the mantlepiece.

Running a Gite in Brittany

Fireplace in Pictures