Guest Post Author Bio: Maggie is a retired teacher who recently discovered the joys of a fireplace.

In the process of buying a new house, you might wonder what new things you could bring into this property to make it feel more like a home. After furnishing and décor, one of the best ways of stamping your style on your new home is to install a fireplace.

Working in the fireplace industry there are certain facts about fireplaces I tend to see as so obvious they don't need to be explained. Every so often someone asks an unexpected question, which of course makes me wonder how many other people are unsure about the same thing. Recently one of our customers asked what a fireplace hearth is for, and I decided to share the answer in case anybody else is wondering.

We've just added some beautiful marble and limestone fireplaces from Pureglow to our product range. All are available with or without a fire, giving you the freedom to create the perfect look for your living room.

Where do you put a fireplace when you don't have room for one? This might seem like a daft question, but there is a distinct trend towards smaller rooms in modern properties. As well as making us feel hemmed in, these restrictions on living space create some real practical problems. How do we fit in enough seating to be sociable with family and friends? Where do we put all our stuff? And how do we make a small place feel like home rather than a rabbit hutch?

There's nothing like the ambiance and comfort of a real fire, but decades of reliance on central heating seem to have left some gaps in our understanding of fire safety. I've seen too many news stories lately about house fires which started because ash from an open fire or woodburner wasn't disposed of safely. Many people don't realise how dangerous hot ashes can be, assuming the risk of fire disappears as the flames die down. However, even when it looks as though the fire is dead embers can stay hot enough to start a fire for several days afterwards.

Fireplaces Are Us have a great winter offer for people buying Gallery fireplaces. For a limited time we are giving away a cast iron chimenea worth £105 with selected Gallery fireplaces. The chimenea is an open bowl model which comes complete with lid and tool.

As today is our last day of business before the Christmas break, we would like to wish all our customers the best for the festive season. Our normal business hours will resume on Tuesday 3rd January, and in the meantime our opening hours are as follows:

Our showroom is holding a winter clearance sale from 27th December. Stove & fireplace prices start from £199, and everything must go! Our showroom carries only a small percentage of the thousands of products we sell online, so please call the showroom on 01422 373540 before visiting if you are outside our local area to avoid disappointment if they do not have the product you are interested in.

I recently saw the above fire safety video which gives a shocking demonstration of the dangers of a real Christmas tree catching fire. The video shows two living room fires filmed in a laboratory - the rooms are fully furnished but have one open wall to allow filming. The first section shows a fire developing in an everyday living room, and the second shows the spread of a fire from a real Christmas tree. As the video shows, if your Christmas tree catches fire it will very quickly escalate much more rapidly. With that in mind, I decided this would be a good time to go over some essential safety tips for real Christmas trees.

We just want to let you know that as of today we will no longer be opening late on weekdays. This is necessary to ensure we have enough staff answering phones at the busiest times of day. While we regret any inconvenience to people who prefer to contact us during the evening, it is essential that we answer the phones quickly at peak times. Anyone calling outside opening hours will be able to leave a message requesting a call back the following day.

Once upon a time every new home would be built with fireplaces for cooking and heating, but the proportion of houses built without any fireplace or chimney has been steadily increasing since the advent of central heating and introduction of anti-pollution legislation in urban areas. Many people feel there is something missing from a living room without a fireplace, and need a practical and affordable way to fill the gap