The cast iron fireplace remains an elegant solution to house that roaring fire on those cold winter nights. It is for this reason that such fireplaces are still being used despite being many years after their heyday in the Victorian era. That and the fact that many homes across the country still have such fireplaces installed within them, even if many are boarded up or covered in layer after layer of paint.
If you are interested in purchasing a cast iron fireplace however then you really need to know where the best places are to look. There are essentially two types of cast iron fireplace available. There are modern reproduction fireplaces, or original fireplaces that have been removed from someone’s home, cleaned up and offered for resale.
The first type, the modern reproduction fireplace, will be found in specialist fireplace retail stores. They will be able to provide a complete service, from site survey through to installation if you choose this route. The second type is more likely to be found in reclamation yards, which tend to be full of items from period properties and the fireplace might be in poor on unprepared condition. You may well get a bargain from purchasing a cast iron fireplace from such places but of course you will almost certainly have to undertake some restoration work yourself and arrange for transport and installation.
The variety of designs you can choose from is wide. There were an awful lot of fireplaces installed in Victorian homes as a real fire was often the only form of heating there was. Choosing a reproduction fireplace design is easier since there is likely to be a catalogue available for you to peruse at leisure. Finding a genuine antique that has a particular design on the other hand would be a much taller order. Indeed to find a particular design might well be nigh on impossible and so you should probably spend you time looking for a suitable design rather than a specific one. The search for a genuine cast iron fireplace is likely to be much more fun however as many people can spend hours wondering around reclamation yards.