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I peench you!

ExpressoBold asked for a better picture of the inglenook. Really, black and white doesn’t do it justice, and it will never look right without a roaring fire. But here’s a cheap ‘n’ nasty cellphone pic that at least better shows the array of torture implements that came with.

Most of these were here when we bought the house. They are a bewildering variety of shapes and unknown functions. After a decade living with them, though, I think they all come down to poking things, pulling things or pinching things.

Plus the bellows. I bought the bellows.

Better pic when the cold weather comes. Which is looking like Monday, FYI.

Comments


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 20, 2018, 9:21 pm

Note the strange, irregular size and shape of the bricks, particularly at the back.

Area had significant work done on it in the 20th C, but we’re not sure what.


Comment from ExpressoBold
Time: September 20, 2018, 10:11 pm

Thank you! …and I will remind you of your promise! I don’t know why I have such a fascination with fireplaces, inglenooks and such. Thank you again!


Comment from Anonymous
Time: September 20, 2018, 11:03 pm

Maybe there was a different actual firebox in there, made of brick. Maybe it was one of those deals with boxes for baking and at some point someone went modern when they invented those newfangled cast iron stoves back in the day.

Things folk like because they’re “quaint” get ripped out when they’re just part of the house that want’s updating because they’re ‘old’.

Why, I expect MrsD will do that with me any day now
🙂


Comment from Janna
Time: September 21, 2018, 12:10 am

You said you were hauling a ton of coal. Do you burn coal in this stove? I finally faced reality and installed a gas insert in my fireplace. I just can’t haul wood around like I did. Of course, pushing a remote control button is not nearly as satisfying as poking on a real fire.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: September 21, 2018, 12:19 pm

We burn smokeless coal and/or wood, Janna. Generally speaking, you can burn ordinary coal in rural areas in the UK, but it’s banned in cities and many towns, because of air quality concerns.

Smokeless fuel is more expensive and doesn’t burn in such a pleasant way but it also doesn’t clog up the stove and the chimney with soot, so you can get away with one sweep a year. If we used coal, the chimney would need sweeping maybe three or even four times a year and at £45 a time that would get expensive.

Of course, the stupid hippies are trying to get coal banned altogether here. In fact our useless government plans for mains gas, coal, oil and wood all to be banned by 2050. They seem to imagine that electricity can do everything, that’s its generation and transmission somehow take place without any effect on the environment and that they can get rid of every gas cooker, gas boiler etc etc in every house in the UK!

I’m waiting for the penny to drop at which point I will take some pictures and Stoatie can post the images of British politicians dangling from lamp posts!


Comment from Wolfus Aurelius
Time: September 21, 2018, 12:46 pm

Cold weather? What is this cold weather of which you speak?

Autumn begins tomorrow (right?), and we here in The Pesthole will be oozing around in 88 F. weather for the foreseeable future.


Comment from Janna
Time: September 21, 2018, 2:49 pm

Uncle B, I’ve been waiting for the penny to drop here for a year. Trump is doing a good job with the EPA. Rolling back the insanity. Except California, but, eh, its California.
With the circus in Washington, if the Repubs don’t find their balls soon, I think it’s gonna get very ugly. I don’t think they’ve thought things through to the obvious conclusion.


Comment from DurnedYankee
Time: September 21, 2018, 3:12 pm

Heh Janna – that’s because to them the obvious conclusion isn’t the obvious conclusion.

They can’t imagine what you’re imagining except to laugh at the idea while sipping chardonnay and nibbling brie en croute in the ‘post 5:00’ clubs where the uni-party meets after their daily frisk and fleece kabuki performances up on Capitol Hill.


Comment from Steve Skubinna
Time: September 21, 2018, 7:21 pm

Uncle B, I’m sure a Tesla Power Wall would fit right in to the style of your cottage. And with the unfailing sunshine that Blighty is justly famed for, it would pay for itself in a couple of weeks.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: September 21, 2018, 7:54 pm

Don’t get me started on solar power! Someone nearby has recently desecrated their house with a set of giant black sails. How come aesthetics count for nothing when they are being sacrificed to the Green deity?

And, what’s more, how much of their installation cost did I end up paying?

There’s a solar ‘farm’ nearby that used to grow potatoes a few years ago. Now all it grows is subsidies.


Comment from Armybrat
Time: September 22, 2018, 12:13 am

I see many buildings here in Taxachussets with those damn ugly solar panels on them. Makes me giggle every time I see them! This far north, we are less than 6 hours of sunshine/ day during the winter…that is when the sun shines. Which it doesn’t for 6 effing months of the year. It’s gray. Gray with mist, gray with rain, gray with snow and just plain gray. The other 6 months it rains or mists a good 3.5 of those months, leaving about 2.5 months of sunshine per year. I bet the payback on those solar panels is calculated in multiple decades, by which time the technology is long considered primitive, requiring expensive periodic upgrades to “maintain efficiency, with said upgrades never included in the cost of purchase.


Comment from DurnedYankee
Time: September 24, 2018, 9:18 pm

You folks need to stop bad mouthing the master plans of our betters with your esthetics and your damned realist economics!

Solar is good, good, good, good. Anything other than wind, and that includes messing with poor little fishies with your damned hydroelectric dams, is bad bad bad, bad.

How do you expect to achieve the ultimate goal of eradicating most of mankind so Gaia can breath free and the few wealthy serf owning masters remaining can have their massive nature preserves if you keep obstructing them and complaining about them siphoning off your wealth to pay for their rancid phony elitist dreams?

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