Home is  Where the Hearth is!

 Whether building your dream home or simply revamping an old favourite the best place to start engineering a warm personality into your home is most defiantly the undeniable heart of every home, the fireplace.

The fireplace is the centre of the home, the place where family life congregates and the warmth this special area creates both practically and aesthetically impacts upon the entire being of the your home. 

The design of such a vital part of your home demands your attention in making certain you make the right choices. Taste is of course entirely subjective, what is perfect for a barn conversion for instance may not suit a Georgian manor. 

Gaining a contrast is important in colour, texture and materials employed, after all you want your creation to stand out.  

Creating the WOW factor can be daunting but my advice is to stick to natural products such as, natural stone, timber, hand made brick or marble, the list is certainly not endless. .

Trawl the local reclamation yards for fabulously beaten up large old timber beams which make great mantles, alternatively old stone lintels when turned upside down make super mantles also. 

The wobblier the better, hand made bricks are becoming increasingly scarce, rarity impacts upon value, so don’t be surprised to find that special “must have” square of clay costing you a whopping £1. When you consider an average fireplace may take eight hundred or so bricks, this represents a major outlay. 

Don’t stick to one material, I believe the best fireplace we have produced thus far is a blend of, stone, brick and old school playground stone paving. A natural stone frontage with the back of the hearth completed in hand made brick and a deliciously bashed about upside down stone lintel completing the picture. The contrasts combined perfectly, with the fireplace complementing the house as each product employed in the build of the fireplace was also used in the build of the home. 

When you have created your special inglenook why not spread the same look to the next warmest room in the home, the kitchen? Cooker hoods look great made of brick or stone and help to maintain the consistency and focus on the special features in your home.

Remember, the investment you make in time and money will be repaid handsomely by the warmth and welcome these feature will create in your home. Get it right and that glass of your favourite wine curled up in front of your log burning stove on an autumn evening will never have tasted so good.

 Stone Homes is a family run development company which has evolved through the enthusiastic desire of the founders Jo and Dale Robinson, to establish themselves amongst the North East’s premier bespoke builders, specialising in high quality individual homes for the discerning buyer. 

Stone Homes are currently building at Mouldshaugh Farm, Felton and Adderstone Mains nr Bamburgh.

 www.stonehomes.co.uk

Dale Robinson     Stone Homes