The Hearth of the Matter

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Diary post again, tonight, as I'm trying to ignore the interest-rate rise and sundry other cost-of-living impacts that are tumbling in on us all at the moment. Pictured - the last hearth update before finishing, I promise - is the final scratch-coat of render. In the front is the piece of dressed and modestly decorated slate I rescued from the garden when we moved in to the house twenty years ago. I'm pretty sure it would have been part of the original fireplace from the 1800s: the house is over 150 years old, and it seems appropriate to recycle the piece as the front of the hearth, a couple of feet from its original location as one of the two uprights, either side of the ingle.

When Paul's finished the plastering, I'll bed the slate on mortar and back-fill the gap between the rear to the hearth he's made, so we can get the regulation coverage for the front door of the stove, before we get it installed. Thereafter, I'll be re-flooring the room with engineered timber, and Jane & I will be stripping back the remaining textured paper from the walls and repainting. The main thing, though, is getting the hearth and stove sorted and working before the winter really kicks in. Keep you posted...

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