Fire

According to the lady who grew up in Hillside the old dining room used to have a Parkray woodburner installed, but that was long gone when we moved in. Instead the fireplace was a bare and incomplete hole, with a nasty grey tiled hearth that blended in well with the bare concrete floor. As a result it was never our favourite room. The fact it was always freezing cold didn't help, and the only time we tried using the fireplace was a disaster with the smoke blowing back into the room.

Now in it's new role as the front hall, with the oak door, floor, and now pristine white skirting, the room has a new lease of life more befitting it's place as the entry point to the new Hillside. But the grey fireplace still exists to remind us of how it was. So we've been looking for an inexpensive way to turn the fireplace into something that is more inkeeping with the cottage and it's new decor. £300 would buy us a reclaimed cast iron fireplace not unlike the two that have been retained in the old bedrooms, and less would buy us a new Repro' fire. We've tried to avoid new, after all re-use is the second of the three R's and is fundamental to a lot of what we're doing. Not happy with paying that much for a fireplace that will hardly ever get used we've trawled the 'net to no avail for a few weeks.

Sure enough though, Ebay finally came up trumps and we've located, bid for and won a compact and understated reclaimed fireplace that will look perfect in the hall. We collected the fireplace a few weeks ago from somebody doing a similar renovation near Radstock so were able to empathise with one another on the joys of living on building sites. All we need to do now is source a hearth and we can then install the fire to complete the room. We're thinking of using slate, as we have with the woodburner in the lounge, and once a few other more essential things come off the 'todo' list it'll get sorted.