Fire Place

While Sparks gets stuck into his left-over jobs, Dad starts to bring together the bits for the fire place, carefully dismantled during the build for reinstatement later. Sparks is wiring fire alarm kit, sockets, lights and switches in the Tígín and the milking shed. Dad digs out the various marble panels which make up the fireplace, from both sheds. The marble panels get a soap down to remove chicken poo and general dust and look lovely. The main marble is a lovely swirl of greens and reds with occasional streaks of blue or white. The detail is gold coloured paint and half-circle bosses of paler marble. The main arch of the fireplace has dark red tiles which are a bit damaged but we can work with them and repair them. There is a hood above the fire which seems to be metal with a leaf design in relief, so dark with grime we all assume it is iron like the fire surround and will need black-lead grate polish. But Dad notices a slight sheen coming through the grime and wonders if it might be brass. Taking a wad of Brasso to one corner, he confirms that it is bright metal underneath. Mum decides to bite the bullet on this one and, with the Leveson Enquiry running on the lap top, she decides to spend as long as it takes to get rid of all the grime and polish the thing. She seeks advice from Maisie L who is our main source of Kim and Aggie style cleaning advice.

Maisie suggests using tomato ketchup, smearing it on and leaving it so that the acid can cut down through the grime. Mum works away and the boys see progress every time they pause for breath. It is a labour of love. She is at it all day so the boys finish other jobs and start re-assembling the fireplace ready to install it, thermal-panel adhesive, cement and fire cement. You can see from the pictures that Mum eventually wins, and it is a thing of beauty. Mum gets to fit it back into place. It must be cleaner and shinier than it has been almost since new. We are all able to sit in the comfortable chairs, finally able to light a fire in the main hearth for the first time since they started breaking the house apart in January. Nice one, guys. Deefs