Progress of the fireplaces

The living room fireplace is now installed.



It looks lovely and will be so cosy in the winter. Check out the teacup cushion on the blue chair as well. Makes me happy to look at it as its so pleasant.

Here is the progress of the middle one.



The builders were here all day yesterday, and some of this morning, coming again tomorrow, Thursday, and we're finally having the wood burner installed in the hole on Saturday. I say finally but actually its all be rather quick. We didn't expect them to start until next week so its going pretty quickly really.

For the middle room we also have these awesome chairs.

They have quite a history as they belonged originally to my father in law's father, who is 90 in January, who was a doctor. He had them in his consulting room. Then my parents in law had them in their flat when they were students (this is all in South Africa), then they moved to England and the chairs remained in storage for years, until they came to Wales on a van last weekend. We're going to give them a sand and some treatment and I plan on making some nice cushions for them. They'll go either side of the wood burner and add to the cosiness :)

I was sad this morning as I have been reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens and I finally finished it. A truely amazing book, I don't understand how somebody can have the lives of so many invented characters in their head, and pull all their stories together and not leave any loose ends. The book is very heavily based on Dickens own life, which you can tell as he writes about each situation as if he had actually experienced it. It is also comforting to read as it goes back to the time when men had manners and were polite and well mannered to women, and women were gracious and kind. Ohh, if only people were still like that. There were also, obviously, disadvantages to living in the period, such as the great discrepancy between classes, and the thought of the character of Steerforth and his mother that the lower classas have no emotions and can handle any situation as sadness barel affects them. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and plan to come by some more of his books. I've taken to reading the classics recently - I read Dr Zhivago not long ago, which is nothing like the film, at which I was surprised, having seen it so many times. And when I was younger I read most of my Dad's collection of Dostyevsky's.