Clues: it's very, very heavy (400kg it said on the box!), it's been in the warehouse at the shop for just over two years (we're told that someone else still has one in storage at the shop from 2006 so we don't feel so bad), Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has one or two at River Cottage, Florence Nightingale was passionate about them and the company has a letter of appreciation from her in their archives. To quote Rolf Harris - can you tell what it is yet?
It's our Esse woodburning cooker and it was just so exciting!
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| Bob and Phil unbolting the Ironheart from its moorings to the pallet |
Here it is unwrapped and me about to pretend to cook on it. Unfortunately, we can do nothing but look at it for now. It has a backboiler on it so we can't light it until it is plumbed in and has water in it otherwise the boiler may buckle and then it'd be useless . . . so, patience! As you can see, it has two 'rings' on top, but you can actually fit quite a few pans on it as the rings are joined up in the middle and different areas are different temperatures. There is also an oven on the right and the woodburner bit on the left with the glass door so you get the benefit of looking at the flames. It looks really well in the inglenook as though it was made especially to go there. I'm very glad we got the floor ready in the inglenook before it came so it could go straight into place - it's definitely not the sort of thing you can just move out of the way when you feel like it. Good job Phil came round to help too, we needed all three of us and the delivery driver to manouvre it down the slope, up the step, down the step, turn around, down another step and finally into place. Phew, good job done!
To get the floor ready, we cleaned it with a special cleaner - we'd already got the worst off with the pressure washer when Mum and Dad were here a few weeks ago, but felt it needed doing a bit more. Then we grouted - this was our own invention, but it may well have been done before. As the tiles have very little gap between them, we mixed some very fine dry sand with a bit of lime and brushed it into the cracks, wiped the excess off the surface and then sprayed the joins to get it to set. Traditionally these tiles would not have been grouted at all, but as these are old and worn some of the gaps a a little too large to just leave. After that, we sealed them with Liberon's stone floor sealer. As it is water-based I was quite amazed at how well it worked - they were really porous, especially the more worn ones, and I was expecting to have to put loads of coats on, but after just one coat you could drop a little water on them and it would sit on the surface (I put another coat on just to be sure). We've only done all that in the inglenook - it's a little time-consuming to say the least and the rest will have to wait.
The blue tit couple with the nest in the quarry sign pole must be getting a little fed-up with their offspring by now - they seem to have been feeding them for ages. For the last four days they have been trying to coax the babies out by going up to the nest with tasty morsels in their beaks, dangling it in front of the chicks and then flying up onto the gate with it and tweeting at them to 'come and get it', but so far it hasn't worked. They'll be humungous chicks when they finally do come out - if they can squeeze out of the hole by then! A few days ago we shut the chickens in their run while Bob went out on his Harley (having spent half an hour trying to find them when he first started it - eventually found them over the hills and far away cowering under a bush in a neighbour's meadow). When Bob got back and went to let them out, two were hiding in the house and in there next to them was a fluffy baby blue tit - so funny standing there with it's new big friends!
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