The heart of the home. Well, maybe the second heart of the home after the kitchen? Anyhow our fireplace is huge and made from solid granite. Today I removed more of the bright yellow gloss paint from the stonework and continued to improve the lime pointing. The section at the bottom was completely missing. I’ve only just got around to completing the back of the hearth after fitting the granite hearthstones last year! added new stones and fixed them in place with the lime mortar.
Here are some before and after pics of the Fireplace
The colour of the lime is a little too white and not quite enough mortar is showing. This was my first attempt with a premixed mortar. I didn’t realise back then how much lime pointing I’d be doing on this project. So I’ve had to research hard and learn fast. The recent update to the bottom of the hearth shows a much better job in my opinion. I now need to tone down the white and maybe go over a few sections to improve this earlier work. Always learning. Here is a link to the post about our first burn in the ESSE stove
I found your website via you marmalade recipe on FB…I so wish I could visit our place in la Creuse but COVID has put a stop to that!
Nice work on the ongoing renovation, the house looks lovely 🙂
Is that an Esse Iron heart you have at house? We are considering getting one for the kitchen..did you install it yourselves or did you get someone in?
Best
Craig
Hiya Craig,
Thank you for getting in touch.
Yes, we did install the Esse ourselves but there are lots of suppliers here who will install them for you.
We do indeed have the Iron Heart and it is the best investment we’ve ever made. Wonderful to use. It takes some practice and there is plenty of advice on how to get the most out of the stove. I’ve put a few videos on our YouTube channel. I’ll add some links in another reply on this post showing how we fitted it and what we experienced.
Nicola & Simon x
Hi Craig,
Here are the other posts relating to our ESSE fitting.
https://notesfromlechassaing.co.uk/tag/chimney/
You’ll notice it was very difficult to shift into the house. We removed as much of the weight as possible. It took a whole day to get the ESSE into position perfectly. We purchased it from the UK as it was an ex-demonstration model used once. We looked at all the lovely new stoves. Traveled miles to see so many designs but none of them seemed to work aesthetically for me. Then we came across the ESSE in a showroom in Derbyshire just around the corner from our house! It was just meant to be when the supplier said ‘I’m updating my showroom with new stoves would you like this one?’ Couldn’t believe it!!!
Let us know how you get on?
In France, we had a quote of 8,000 for the stove and delivery and 2,000 Euros for the fitting and chimney liner OUCH.
It is the heart of the home so we decided to import it from the UK and hired a van instead.