Fireplaces

Ages ago my parents had the mantelpiece taken down from the chimney breast and had it wallpapered. At that point a new fireplace was meant to go in. Now they're looking for one.
My father embracing the technological age went onto the internet to see what was available; not quite with it as he headed straight for the two main stores that he knew would stock such B&Q and Homebase. They spotted on in Homebase they liked the look of and went out to take a look; found that for a few pounds more they could get an all in one with a fire to replace their ageing one. At this point I get called in.

I'm almost surprised, but recently I have been brought more and more into these discussions as my parents recognise my inherent taste. It's not as if my father starts at the lowest priced 'anything' and has to be forced up he just has a tendency to settle if the jump is to great for his taste.

So off I go to Homebase and get shown the fireplace in question. The surround is fine, nothing wrong with it. The fire is a convection heater with fan which would be better than their current bar fire and it's a fine colour. The total is also a fine price. So is there a problem, of course there is.

The first one is that's in the style of an old fashioned coal fire with a grill to 'keep the coal in' and a grate to 'scrape out the ashes'. This is fine and they look good except they're separate both to the fire and themselves; they don't even attach anywhere. So you've two pieces sitting in front of the fire that will happily fall over if knocked. Why are they detached, why can't they even be hooked to the fire? The only reason to detach them is to get at the workings of the fire which is the same reason you want them there in the first place. Anyway £149.

Next up are the controls. They sit under a hood that you lift up. You've got four toggles Power - on/off, fan, heater one and heater two. So okay can you have the heater on, but not the fan? Never mind the point is these are on the heater itself bottom left with a sticker top right saying "This gets hot". Yup put the controls on the metal plate that gets hot - good idea.

Nothing else to see we went to B&Q, wow their version was even worse; same loose grate, but I picked it up and laughed "It's a Christmas decoration". You know those moulded plastic Santas etc that are 3D but can lie flat on a wall exactly the same as that; £249.

They did have one nice fire with surround for £499, but you could see where it had got bashed at the corners to reveal the equivalent of wallpaper over wood. Nice but not worth the bump in price.

They did have one nice surround, but measuring it we found it was too wide, needed to be no wider than 1300mm.

So we came back empty handed, I then measured the chimney and found it was 1320mm but I couldn't recall the size of the surround now. Tcch we'll look again later.

But what a cheap pile of crud.