A few tweaks

It's hard to believe that it's five years since we had the fireplace opened up and the wall around it stripped back to the original stonework.  Five years it is, though, and over those years the wood-burner we had fitted really hasn't aged well at all.  So we decided to bite the bullet...

and have a new one fitted, along with a new hearth.  This time we thought it prudent to go with a well-made stove from a well-known company and chose the All New Island I from Charnwood which we purchased through an extremely helpful company, Bonk & Co in Inverness.  In particular we wanted a stove with two opening doors to make it easier to get the logs in, something that wasn't always the case with our old stove.

The original hearth wasn't the right size either, not even for the old stove to be honest, so we had that replaced too.  On reflection we could probably have gone for a slightly smaller hearth, especially since the new stove is set further back into the chimney recess, but the size of this one doesn't encroach too much into the living room and gives us lots of space to stack the logs ready to use.  We are really pleased, as I'm sure you can imagine 😊

We've done some rearranging in the garden, too, and replaced the containers that were here...

with barrels instead.  We wanted to use those containers elsewhere and as an added bonus, we were able to fill up the new barrels with some of that soil mountain 😉 

They actually look very much nicer than the containers that were there originally.  I haven't decided what to put in the barrels yet but the plants will most likely be perennials of some kind, perhaps evergreens.

And here are two of those containers set out in their new positions in the back garden, along with the metal table and chair which both came with us when we moved up here.  I put the herbs back that had originally been in them ~ I think they were glad to get out of the pots I'd temporarily put them in!  Because the bay and the rosemary are now in their own big pots, I was able to get the remaining herbs into just one container.  Which reminds me, said bay and rosemary are both doing really well in their nice big pots ~ I'll try to remember to take photos to show you how much happier they look now 😊

We obviously had to empty out the containers to be able to move them, so took the opportunity to do a little repair work to their bases and gave them three coats of wood stain to smarten them up.   

And just to finish off, here's a photo of my sister and I taken on our recent little jaunt up to Shetland 😍