KITCHEN: fireplace

A major obstacle to putting in the wood burning stove was the fact that the fireplace was pointing in the wrong direction. The opening was in the 'maid's room' which we call the snug, or the breakfast room. This was the site of the old boiler. An important part of the initial concept was to keep this room intact. It would have been great to put a stove in there but the kitchen had to take precedence. To achieve this the chimney breast needed to be reversed so the hearth was in the kitchen.

April 2011: This is the position in the old kitchen where the cooker stood. The new ingle for the stove would make much more sense of the chimney breast in this part of the room.

Everything to do with fireplaces comes under the current Building Regulations and planning permission is needed for any alterations. For this stage of the project we would also need the chimney relined so it was time once again to call in the professionals. You can avoid the Building Control route with a fireplace if you use a HETAS registered installer. HETAS (Heating Equipment Testing and Approval Scheme) means they can self-certify the work and issue you with a certificate of compliance.

All aspects of a fireplace modification have to comply with a very specific set of regulations. Lintels have to overlap supporting walls by a set amount and the hearth itself has to extend a set distance from the stove door. There are also rules about air supply, flu and carbon monoxide monitoring. It is important to get all this right if you want your stove to function well but is also crucial for safety. As with propping up the house, the installation of the stove wasn't a sensible place to economize so we commissioned a specialist HETAS installer to carry out the crucial elements of the installation such as the chimney lining. Our installer also advised us on the bits that we did ourselves such as building the new hearth on the kitchen side so although it was an expensive exercise we still saved money on some of the work.

April 2011: This is the other side in the breakfast room where the old boiler was. The boiler flu would need to be upgraded for the stove.

April 2011: The floor would need to be rebuilt on this side where the old hearth was. This would then be bricked up to form the back of the ingle for the stove on the kithcen side.

April 2011: The newly formed ingle in the kitchen.

April 2011: The inside of the ingle was rendered. We were advised by our HETAS installer not plaster on the inside to avoid cracking.