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Showing posts with label chimneyhomes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chimneyhomes. Show all posts

Thursday, 26 March 2015

Nesting, An Ageless Urge - a story from a customer

Nesting, An Ageless Urge

A recent conversation with a friend reminded me that home nesting is a strong urge that can happen at any age.

Sarah’s parents were downsizing from their three-bedroom, suburban house to a smaller flat in the city. Comfortable in their retirement, James and Lucy realised that the beloved family home was turning into a bother.

“We all loved the old house. My sisters and I grew up there, but Mum and Dad have an active lifestyle with lots of travel. The house upkeep was becoming challenging, so they started looking at newer and smaller places near the centre,” said my friend.

Sarah explained that James and Lucy brainstormed the layout, furniture, and décor in a new house that would support their current busy retirement and a gradual slowdown due to age. A master bedroom with walk-in shower. An open kitchen with an island. An office converting to a second bedroom for the visiting grandson. One level and no stairs.

Additionally, James and Lucy wanted a wood-burning fireplace to complete their retirement nest.  Sarah knew that her parents enjoyed a roaring fire during family holidays and they would often build a fire for themselves.

“So many important family events happened with a crackling fireplace in the background, and my parents did not want to give that up.” Unfortunately, they had to scrap the idea after seeing several open houses. 

“Many newer developments or flats don’t offer the big, wood-burning fireplaces. They can be messy and smoky in smaller living rooms. We said goodbye to our old house and its fireplace.”

Despite that disappointment, Sarah said her mum settled into nesting mode as the new flat move-in construction neared completion. She relished creating a comfortable space that would support her and her husband’s active lifestyle.

“Everything was coming together nicely, and Mum was passionate about making this as reflective of their lives as possible. She felt, however, that something was missing in the living room along one wall. She and dad did not need a large entertainment system, since they are pretty comfortable with streaming stuff. And they did not want to build their new nest with a TV smack in the middle.”

So Lucy decided to research alternatives to wood-burning fireplaces in modern homes and discovered bio-ethanol fireplaces offered by Bio Fires company. Self-contained, real-flame fires burning from eco-friendly ethanol fuel, Bio Fires fireplaces require no gas connection or power supply. 
Sarah explained while some bio-ethanol fireplaces can be free-standing, her parents chose a model that hung on the bare wall in the living room, instantly making the house feel complete.  





The low maintenance and self-containment of the Bio Fire fireplace were all attractive to Sarah’s parents, but the real fire flame sealed the deal.

James and Lucy also liked having an “on demand” fireplace easily lit with a long match, allowing them to recharge by the fire after a long flight home or at the end of a normal day.

“Mum and dad are healthy right now, but we know that over time carrying and lifting logs would become impossible. This kind of fireplace allows them to enjoy their nest regardless of their age. ”

My friend said her parents continue to enjoy the perfect final piece for their retirement nest.

Wednesday, 19 November 2014

Chestnuts roasting by an open fire …

Chestnuts roasting by an open fire… 

Sorry for the seasonal opening. It’s a bit early for that kind of thing, isn’t it? Nonetheless, it is an enduring yearning, isn’t it? The homeliness of your home, how welcoming it is, is often measured by your fireplace, your hearth. That’s why the writers of seasonal songs often allude to the fireplace.

And this connection between hearth and home has ever been so. Anthropologists looking at the earliest habitations of mankind will always take the presence of fire – or in its most primitive form, a fireplace – as evidence of settlement. Mankind has clearly valued the fire as a friend and ally since the earliest times. These times themselves reach further back. The discovery of the remains of what are being called ‘human-controlled fires’ in South Africa recently dating from a million years ago have added 200,000 years to the timeline of mankind’s use of flame for comfort and, some argue, cookery.

http://genius.com/3122973/Nas-new-world/When-we-made-fire-by-two-sticks-rubbin-together

Clearly our dependency on the ability to control fire has shaped the way we have gone about designing our homes. Even if we flash-forward through the millennia to relatively recent times, we still find that our Stone Age ancestors had the fireplace firmly at the heart of the home. Later Neolithic houses have been unearthed which show that the fireplace was a stone box, designed to contain the fire. It was the Romans, of course, that applied some thought to the clever use of fire and the distribution of heat with their fancy hypocausts delivering hot air up through the floor.


But generally speaking, the open hearth was the main way of heating dwellings of any size for centuries. The smoke would go up and out through the roof (if you were lucky) or, from around the 12th century and if you were a rich show-off, you might even have had a chimney.

Ah chimneys. They soon turned from being symbols of affluence to symbols of industry. How chimney sweeps came to be known as lucky is a bit of a mystery. Mostsources point back to a story about King George and a horse. And where would Mary Poppins have been without her friend Bert the chimney sweep (even if his mockney accent was a bit unusual!) For the rich, of which Mary’s employers certainly were, the fireplace could be a lavish bit of one-upmanship. Fireplaces themselves became ornamental and desirable. Architect Robert Adam made his name designing the great fireplaces of Georgian Britain. An Adam fireplace was a very desirable showpiece in the well-to-do home of the 18th century.

http://the-octopus-garden.blogspot.co.uk/2010_08_01_archive.html

These days, you don’t have to engage a great architect to have a feature fireplace. A Bio Fire will bring all the homeliness you need and there are lots of traditional and modern designs you can choose from to suit your home décor. Best of all, you don’t even need a chimney. Sorry Bert! Whether or not you choose to wear the usual seasonal knitwear as you warm yourself and enjoy the flicker of a real flame is entirely up to you ;-)

http://www.ticatoca.com/view.php?product=1217

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