When it comes to our houses, we sometimes have to make difficult choices. These aren’t life or death decisions, but they do effect our environment, how we live, change and impact on the places we call home.
In some ways it’s a little easier for me. Most of the work at No 19 I do myself and this means that when the situation changes (and it almost always does) I can stop what I’m doing, rethink, and change my plans accordingly.
My mother is an amazing woman who’s had a lot to deal with in recent years. I’ve seen a strength in her I never knew existed. Like many of us, her home is her anchor: it’s her security. The house she lives in has kept her together at times when everything else feels like it’s falling apart.
Although she may be strong and is happy to bake a cake, she’s not the type of woman to pick up a hammer, she’s not a DIYer, and she happily admits that she doesn’t like change. So when the idea of putting a wood burning, multi fuel stove into her living room came up, saying she was sceptical would be an understatement!
Built in 1905, my mother’s house was sympathetically restored after being lived in by one owner up until the 1990s. Almost all the original features had been saved. And once decorated, it was filled with all the same kinds of objects I love to collect (I think I get my passion for flea markets and junk shops from my mother)
The stairs had their balustrade, the stained glass in the entrance hall had been repaired, and even the windows retained their original form and wooden frames.
When she and my stepfather bought the house, the front room fireplace had been blocked up with a gas fire which is something they would never use. So they had it carefully taken apart and they reinstalled an open fire.
This made the room. It was beautiful, warm and cozy. On cold winter evenings when the central heating wasn’t quite enough an open fire made the living room a place to be. However, over the years things changed.
My mother and stepfather had a sun room built onto the back of the house which joins the kitchen, overlooks the garden and is a warm and lovely room to spend time in. The living room carpet was removed and the wooden floors restored, which although looked beautiful, didn’t help with keeping that room warm. More recently since the price of electricity and gas has gone up so much, almost everyone I know has been cutting back and keeping their heating turned down.
The last time I came to stay with my mother was in December and the house was freezing! I couldn’t bear it and I was happy to have the hand knitted cashmere socks my mother's friend Jules gave me for Christmas. I think I'm just used to the heat that a wood burning stove provides, and maybe my complaining about the cold got my mother thinking about the possibility of having a stove herself.
I have a huge kitchen at No 19. This was originally the stable and has solid stone walls, no insulation and currently a broken cat flap thanks to Wolfie. The room used to be literally freezing until I moved a large wood burning stove in from the front of the house which totally changed my life. Now I can happily say that the kitchen is the heart of No 19 even during the coldest of north Bohemian winters.
While I was still in the UK last time we took a trip to a local town to visit Sandiacre Stoves, a specialist in our area. They not only sell stoves, fully install them in line with all the safety regulations, but they were so helpful that we were able to gain a much clearer idea as to what was possible in the space we had. (There's a link to Sandiacre Stoves at the end of this article)
Visiting a stove or fireplace specialist in England is what I call fun day out! I love fires and stoves. The place was absolutely lovely. It was a stylish shopfront adorned with all kinds of log baskets, coal buckets, lanterns and fireside accessories: basically everything you could possibly want to maintain your stove and make it look beautiful. They even have cast iron cookware! However, my mother was not the only one considering this heating option and there was going to be quite a wait.