Tag Archives: Knapp woodworking

Have you ever thought, were can I buy an impressive large Pine or Oak Mantel well here it is Made by Knapp Woodworking and sold through Victorian Fireplaces. The Colossus pine mantel 66 inches wide or can be made a touch smaller at 60 inches, we do regularly make these mantels larger at say 70 inches wide and that's big. We sell most of these large fireplaces north of the boarder, and as it happens a customer has just been on the phone from Scotland saying that she has one of the Colossus pine mantel and a Large Adam pine mantel in her home, she is moving down into England and wants the same two in her new home, Of coarse we can create what ever the customer wants. The Lady also said that the people buying her house in Scotland just fell in love with the two fireplaces and that's what clinched the house sale, its nice too know that we have helped towards a house sale, as well as creating Beautiful Fireplaces here at Victorian Fireplaces.

If you would like more information on the Colossus pine mantel or The Large Adam pine mantel just give me a call and I will go through all the options with you.

01522 536373 ask for David.

Decorate your Fireplace at Christmas

Victorian fireplaces would like you to think about your own Fireplace and getting it prepared for the festivities.

Yes Christmas is just around the corner 29 day's to that lovely time, that smell of the Christmas dinner being prepared, I can taste the smell of those mince pies wafting into the lounge where all sanity has gone, wrapping paper strewn all over the floor as children rip away to find what's inside. Baffled Grand parents with new electronic games, Huge flat screen TVs blaring out the new xbox game,- lost instruction books, - damn no batteries!! - "I am going to walk the dog".

Its a lovely time and no Fireplaces to think about, well only yours,  the one to get decorated. Here is a link to a website I found that you might find interesting. Kirstie Allsopp and decorate your fireplace with these great decoration tips.

Now if you haven't got a fireplace perhaps now is the time  to think about it just in time for Christmas delivery or Even the new year and beat the vat increases, by ordering it now.

This fireplace featured in this Christmas picture is a Large Adam mantel hand carved in solid pine is a fine example of the type of work that is created in the great historical city of Lincoln.

Manufactured by Knapp Woodworking and sold here at Victorian fireplaces.

Now have you thought what's the best way to decorate your mantel.

New mantels from Knapp woodworking

The Oak Keswick is available in Oak or Pine and is made from solid timber as with all mantels supplied from Knapp Woodworking it is of outstanding quality. This picture is just a little taste of the new mantels coming from Knapp Woodworking next month, August.

In a few weeks time we will be celebrating our Twentieth year retailing fireplaces "what a mile stone".

I will just repeat it 20 years amazing. Just shows you that there is fireplace  shops selling mainly on the web like ourselves that have been here a long time and intend to be here a lot longer providing a superb product and service to our customers.

A bit of our fireplace history

It just seems like yesterday that I first bought a cast iron fireplace from a fireplace supplier, to resell on.

In the beginning I was buying and selling old Antique fireplaces and putting them with my own hand made pine fireplace mantels which I was making in the shed at the bottom of the garden. Because of our success in the first few years retailing and restoring our antique fireplaces we needed more quantities of original fireplaces. the problem in Lincolnshire is that it is rural. (not enough terraced houses) eventually the old fireplaces started to dry up and became harder to find in any great quantities, to sustain a proper income. So I made the decision to stop selling the antique fireplaces and concentrate on new reproduction fireplaces. so I went looking for a supplier of reproduction Victorian fireplaces.

During this time I was selling these fireplaces from an antique stall just out side Lincoln, when I started getting the reproduction fireplaces I wanted to sell them in a different way to the other fireplace shops, so I racked my brain and came up with a brilliant idea, I would sell these fireplaces in magazines by mail order (I open up a can of worms with that one). Right I decided on a price for these fireplaces sets which happened to be £599.00 for a complete gas fire set. I then had to think on how to advertise them, and which magazine do I choose , I thought only one good magazine is needed and the orders will come rolling in. How wrong could I have been. I choose the BBC homes and Antique magazine as my first effort. If my memory serves me right, it was a December addition that my first advert went in. By the way I decided to use the classified section at the back of the magazine to advertise our lovely fireplaces in, a six by one advert, ( it does seems so small now) with a little line drawing of our Victorian fireplace on it, and the words phone for our brochure "nationwide delivery", What brochure I completely forgot about a brochure. the following week I  quickly arranged for a photo session with a local photographer to photograph three fireplaces, two tiled cast iron inserts and an arch one with three different pine mantles around them. My brochure, well a single colour sheet with three fireplaces on. Great!

In the Beginning of November the December addition of  BBC Homes and Antiques came out. Because I advertised in the said magazine a copy of it came winging its way in the post to my front door brilliant, I wouldn't have to pay for a copy. On the due day the post man duly popped that lovely antique magazine through my letter box I ripped of the see through plastic cover and straight to the classified, I went. My little black and white line drawing was there shouting at me, Nationwide delivery phone for a brochure. Oh it did look good. Now I have to wait for the phone to ring. If I have the magazine there must be a few thousand more that has it too. My mind was working over time I will be inundated with calls what am I going to do how will I deliver all these sold fireplaces. I pinched my self and took a reality check, I will Wait for the phone to ring, and did I Wait. Six weeks later I got my first call for a brochure. I quickly sent out my single sheet brochure with the extra sheets of information on our lovely three fireplaces, again its a waiting game for the enquires to come in. Over the next few weeks I decided to advertise in several more magazines, ones like House beautiful and Ideal home, now these two magazines because of the bigger circulation figures, brought in quite a good response, and soon I got my first sale. Off to Surrey with the first fireplace sale. All I had to deliver this fireplace was my old Volvo estate car with a great big roof rack on top, its amazing how many fireplaces you can get in and on top of an old Volvo. As the months went by I advertised in more and more magazines twelve in total, and the enquires and orders came rolling in after a year or two I decided to buy our first van what a difference we started to look more professional. That was the turning point.

In 1998 (eleven years ago) we got ourselves a web site to sell our fireplaces from, one of the first in the fireplace industry, and at that time the first fireplace company solely selling from our web pages we  were true pioneers then. The domain name we used then was www.fireplaceshop.co.uk and started promoting it, that was in the days before Google and broadband (how different it is now). Yahoo was the main search engine then it wasn't as hard to get to the top of the search engines then, as it is now. We spend a small fortune promoting our name now. As the web site started to become popular the sales increased and I started employing people and one van went to two vans. We started manufacturing the pine and oak mantels in larger quantities selling them to the fireplace trade and public. We now have a thriving Fireplace mantel factory trading under the name Knapp woodworking and as you can see a fireplace website that is renowned in the fireplace trade as one of the best and what a lot of our competitors try to emulate. we have just recently added a large showroom to our warehouse so our customers can choose the right fireplace and see it in the flesh so to speak.

Now what about the future, well because our competitors read this blog quite avidly (as I do with theirs)  I won't go into all our plans but what I will say is that we are striving to make our service one of the best not only on the web but also from any shop on the high street. Our products ranges are growing in quantity and style on our website on a daily basis, not only fireplaces but also fireplace accessories and one of the biggest range of tiles available just watch all our fireplace categories grow with new products day by day.

The Belfast fireplace again winner for sale's last week. All the Belfast sets have been sold with oak mantels Roundel mantel and Reeded mantel both these mantels are at 54 inches but as always with Knapp woodworking mantels they can be made to any size you require. Shown with  the Bedford mantel in solid oak, a beautiful fireplace and as always suitable for solid fuel, gas and electric fires. The Belfast is best with mantels 54 inches wide or wider. We have The Belfast fireplace on display in our showroom, and takes pride of place in a very large mantel 68 inches wide a real Colossus.