New tile around the fireplace; herb garden and a swarm; links!
Kitchen Reno CornerDear Katie in last week's comments asked to hear about the new tiles around the hearth, so here you go!
Back when we replaced the old insert with the new wood stove, we had to bring the situation around the hearth up to code. The code here says 18″ from the glass needs to be made of a fireproof material (including the option of putting a hearth pad there).
So here is the first change — a post about it here:
Before we repointed the bricks and whitewashed them:
And after:
To make it to 18″ on the floor from the stove door, I just needed one row of 4″ tiles. My mother (Habou as we called her), ever the squirreller-away of pretty things, happened to have a bag of Mexican Talavera tiles in her studio, which she cheerfully handed over. Nothing made her happier than pulling out something that would work for you! And honestly, looking back, I realize how much I relied on that!
These beautiful tiles weren't quite right for the application — they are not really floor tiles and chipped easily. I was always in a bit of an anxious state, what with the dragging out of the heavy fender, dropping of logs, waving of iron poker, and so on. I did love how they looked!
Further, you can see how the one board beyond the tiles got dried out and had its finish degraded — can you see that it's discolored? The heat from the stove actually goes beyond the 18″ and it would have been better to have put another row of tiles in, but I didn't have any, and they would really have been even more vulnerable.
So when the floors had to be ripped out for this renovation, I thought about what tiles I wanted to go there. Anything porcelain, even heavy-duty floor tiles, was going to have this same issue, to some degree, of chipping.
I thought it would be great to have stone tile. My thinking was that if the stone chips, it's still stone all the way through. I love those European stone floors, don't you? I had a vague idea about that…
I went through all the types: marble, limestone, granite, slate. Even brick. Some were too fancy, though lovely (marble); some were way too big (limestone) — it becomes a real issue of how you are going to cut it.
I couldn't find brick tile that I liked, and whatever it was had to be thin (I couldn't use actual bricks!), so we could achieve the all-important flushness with the floor, as this is, like every other area in the kitchen, a pathway and in this case, tripping hazard. And would I whitewash it, and so on.
I have fireplaces in this house elsewhere… most have a big marble piece in front of them.
The black marble one in the dining room actually has a brick hearth, maybe brick-like porcelain, I'm not sure. It's not what I would have maybe chosen myself!
Yet it works.
In fact, I had to go look at it to know what it was — I couldn't remember when I was just thinking about it! To me, it's “normal” and not anything that struck me one way or another. That made me realize that I didn't have to get matchy or too particular. I just needed something classic and useful.
This is the value of old houses and ways. We can tend to get obsessive about things that our forebears just really didn't worry about!
I actually brought home slate tiles — I think they were 3″ x 9″ — but as I thought about how I wanted the herringbone pattern, the space for them seemed too limited for their size. I think slate would have gone really well here, looks-wise, but I realized I needed a smaller tile.
It could use a mopping! Ashes…
By the way, I went to several specialty tile places, and it was at the big box store that I found what I wanted: Basalt Herringbone Honed Mosaic tile. (I'm not promoting this in any way — not sponsored!)
The marble version was tempting. It's really beautiful. But in the end, I thought this was more rustic in keeping with the general aesthetic here and not clashing with the whitewash, though I admit I was nervous about all the black! We used a charcoal grout.
You can see that I designed it to cover a much larger space than what we had before.
My thought was that it would guard the wood floor from the heat and also provide a tactile warning underfoot to the person walking there that there are… obstacles, e.g. a raised hearth.
I think in person it's not as busy-looking as it is in photos.
I liked the sort of frame in the dining room, defining the hearth, so I had the contractor do that here:
It's time now to put the fireplace things in the garage and clean up around here, but I think it all turned out pretty well!
It's very durable and I don't have to worry about damage. This is a working fireplace for sure! I just wanted to eliminate that anxiety.
I hope all this detailed discussion helps you think about how to solve problems and pull together various design elements. The homemaker can do so much to make the home inviting and pretty, but it takes thought! Lots of pondering! It's so easy to get sucked into the marketing and trends. How to step outside of all that and achieve a timeless, classic environment, given our place and means? I mean, what is classic in Massachusetts might not be so in Arizona. And most of us don't have a bottomless pocketbook.
A big part of how I proceeded was to examine how things were done in the past, including pinning many, many pictures to my Pinterest of old things. I made a board for this particular problem and didn't actually find many examples of things that fit my situation in general, much less of of a whitewashed fireplace with wood floor, but I did find one with a black herringbone hearth and that's what inspired me and helped me settle on the basalt.
In this project, I tried to find materials and methods in the here and now to capture that older way that ends up being so homey and welcoming.
Garden and Bee Corner
The Chief caught a swarm! He's so happy about that. We now have three hives! Our friend JJ set one the trap up in our yard. He's had great success with them, and sure enough, the bees came!
The vegetable garden is coming along too. I returned from Colorado two weeks behind, but things are mostly in now. I hope next week to show some of it!
This week I caught up with annuals — the virtue of being late is you can shop the BOGO sales! And I think the herb garden and porch are looking fine with the pots of geraniums and so on, not to mention that the front of the house got painted while I was gone! Much needed and oh so satisfying!
My sage bloomed, which I don't recall it ever doing before:
I planted some lemon verbena:
And I simply can't do without red geraniums!
On to our links!
bits & piecesMarried fathers matter. Happy Father's Day!
The Mystery of Similarity by D.T. Sheffler. “Despite the grand, cosmic conclusions, Platonism begins from very simple, ordinary observations. These observations are so simple and ordinary that we are liable to miss how mysterious they really are and how difficult it is to understand the deeper structures of reality that must be in place for these simple, ordinary observations to hold true. Part of the enchantment that Socrates weaves over our minds with his persistent, annoying questions is that he makes the simple and ordinary seem difficult and strange in order that we might begin to think about the ordinary for the first time. Among these ordinary mysteries—and leading straight to the heart of Platonism—the common experience of similarity is perhaps the most strange of all.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the Cosmic Music of the Beginnings
30 Medieval Manuscripts, Digitized
Natural Light is An Essential Nutrient: Decades of Forgotten Research Show How Much Modern Lighting Has Harmed Human Health. I'm not necessarily able to understand everything in this article, but it seems just common sense to me that we need natural light and are depriving ourselves of it in general. I come from a background of Egyptians loving to go to the beach and hang out there all day, who also brought umbrellas and took refuge in the shade. They didn't bake out there but they also did not avoid it at all. Let's use more hats and less sunblock this summer and try to access some vitamin D!
An excellent interview of Joy Pullman, who speaks with a definitive grasp of her subject: Gender politics and how they are changing our already burdened administrative state.
from the archives
Emergency Summer Reading: The Gift of Modesty — I do think a big part of modesty is finding pretty things to wear instead of all the trashy fashions out there. It's easy to say “don't expose yourself” — much harder to say what one should wear! Fortunately, there are more options now. Feel free to link in the comments to what you have found!
Ask Auntie Leila: Summer in the home school
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