Vaulted Granite Cellar (Cave)

Our vaulted cellar. Originally done up for my growing wine collection but now I can't afford wine and my collection has dwindled, what better place to condition my home brewed beers...

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worm... Oh hang on, wrong story.

In a hole in the ground beneath our home was a dirty, wet and smelly cellar. For the first 3 years we ignored it, in the hope it would just go away. Realising that if it did, our house would collapse we began to refurbish it.

The original idea was it would just be a place to store a few items and at one end have a nice place to store my wine. All was well to begin with but for some reason when it rains, the water gets in through the stone steps (about half way down, through the ground) and so, clean and tidy as it now is, it still gets wet.

My wine collection has dwindled to the point of not really being a collection any more, more of a slight gathering but it's a beautiful cellar - lovely and cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

The dashing and incredibly handsome me with my wine, now gone :(

Dilemma... maybe a hole in one corner with a sump pump in it would suffice. It seems a shame to concrete the natural stone steps up as they certainly are a feature and should my venture become a working brewery would be a splendid location for degustations (tastings) for potential clients.

I think the clay floor can be tidied up with a layer of gravel. I can't concrete it because it would become a subterranean pond - unfortunately we know a few expats who did exactly that and then had to smash their new concrete cellar floors out.

My biggest concern is the damp and right now I don't really know how to proceed. For now though it's a great place to shove the wife out of the way when she starts playing up.

The present wife in our hobbit hole... I mean cellar.