Formal Dining Room: The "Chaos" of restoration !

If you own a old house and are restoring, chaos is your friend. At least for me it is. With about 7 weeks until we have the Burgman building open for our annual progress on the restoration, we tackled the dining room. Or should I say we are re-creating a dining room.

Back in  the day this was the formal dining room of the Burgman, just off the Garland reception room this would have been the formal dining room when built. Of course that was before the growth of the Burgman family because this room was pressed into service as a bedroom. We know this because closets were added ( a late 1800's/early 1900's sort of thing and their depth tells is it was earlier rather than later. Doors were closed in and this room , as often the case with old houses, was re-purposed.

Stripping the cast iron mantle that will house a gas burning insert

Trying to keep this room on the same Formality" as the Garland and Persian parlors requires some thought. Or first step on that journey was last year when we opened up the original doorway and added back colonnades that not only recreated the space but added more light to the dark hallway. We also decided that this room would have a fireplace mantle (to house a future gas insert) and that it would be done in a formal aesthetic.

Colonnades were added back into their original location

So the plan is as follows: we are continuing with the ebonized woodwork in the dining room.



1/4 inch Oak forms the background to the wainscot and trim boards are being routed to duplicate the door trim 

We are installing a wood wainscot.

This gold upholstery (30 yards of it) will make up the primary wall fill

The walls will be upholstered from above the wainscot, with a Aesthetic Rose gold upholstery fabric.

Above the top plate rail will be a stenciled frieze and the ceiling will be stenciled and new medallion  installed.

Hey seven weeks is breeze, right? Well of course not. the ceiling was replaced in this room at some point and they TEXTURED IT! so you might say well "just rip  it down and redo it" , right? Well, no because there is 30 inches of blown in insulation in the attic, and you guessed it , it would all fall down if we tore down that drywall.

Sooooo, we are removing the texture off the ceiling. One of the dirtiest jobs that a homeowner has to do, something hat takes a few minutes to do in the first place takes HOURS to remove, as you can see its a process and I will have to re tape the joints too because they didn't do a great job because they were texturing.

The good news is that with the wooden wainscot and the upholstered walls we don't have as much wall prep to do.

We will keep you posted!

Burgman Building: Facade painting and dining room projects

We have been so busy working I noticed I haven done a post in 10 days so here goes.
We continue to work on the front façade, I have gone up about as far as I can with the step ladder so its time to bring out the scaffold. Overall we are pleased with colors . The capital painting is the obvious next step.

The Dining room has been a project we wanted to tackle, just off the Garland Parlor and the Persian parlor it is a good size for dining but suffers from two many doorways. We think that doors to the hallway and the Garland Room were added at some point, with the closets being gone for the new kitchen we eliminate one doorway but ultimately all the doors need to be gone.

The hallway was very dark as a result too, so we made a decision to open up the doorway to the hall to 6 feet and in its place will be fretwork and Portieres, the doors to the Garland room and new kitchen will also do and be similarly treated with Portieres.


The small door was a closet added at some point it will go away completely. The door to the right is to the new kitchen and will become an opening with portieres

Here we have started the process of opening up. This was a non load bearing wall.
 

New opening really adds light into the hall
 

We are adding salvaged wainscot and there will be a chair-rail and baseboard for a more finished look

We removed the transom window in the hall to add height to the doorway and replaced it with fretwork made from a salvaged piece someone gave us.


The fretwork adds elegance but keeps things open and visual

We restored this piece which had been in basement for decades. We like free things!

So we have been very busy! More to come!