Showing posts with label dining room. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dining room. Show all posts

Heating Things Up!

As you may have noticed, we have four very beautifully ornate fireplaces in our home!  They are gorgeous, but none of them work!

                                                Living Room Fireplace Pre-Heater
                                            


 Both the living room and dining room fireplaces had gas lines to them though!  The night of the very, very cold day in our house during the house tour, I went over to our friends house across the street to warm up.  They had just installed an old gas heater that they had had restored and installed a gas line to their fireplace.  I sat next to it and warmed my toes and it felt just like I was sitting next to a crackling fire.  That was all I needed!  The hunt began!

 Luckily, Rodney was even more enthralled with the idea than I was so he was the hunter!  Ebay, Craig's List, stopping at antique stores along the way home from a trip to Louisiana.  One day, while I was out Christmas shopping, he headed over to an antique store in Lewisville, Texas and he found two really great heaters, both perfect for the spaces where we had the gas lines.


                                            Living Room Heater Pre-Restored
                                
                                     
                                           
                                               Dining Room Heater Pre-Restored
                                    

But they needed work both cosmetically and we needed to make sure they were safe. We had a plumber come check the safety of the existing gas lines (they were perfect) and our friends had paved the way and they had a gentleman just a few miles from us that specialized in restoring old gas heaters.  We had to decide what color in a High Heat spray paint (not a ton of choices) we would like the grids on both painted and the base of the rusted out Living Room Heater.  

We dropped them off several weeks ago and yesterday I got a call from Albert, the gentleman, who restored the heaters.  He was done and wanted to know if I would like him to drop them off and hook them up!  Well yes!  Not only would it be a fun surprise for Rodney who was in flight home, but it was getting quite chilly out.

On the Dining Room heater, Albert had polished up the brass, painted the grid metallic silver and had lubed and restored any of the parts that were faulty.  He hooked it up and fire and heat!  Albert told me he had looked it up and that it was a 1930's "Ironton" Heater.
                                  

                                  
                                                    Living Room Heater Post-Restoration
                                                              Grid-Silver
                                                           Base a metallic bronze
                                             

                                             
Enjoying this late February morning in the Family Room with my cup of coffee and my gas heater "heating things up!"  And apparently, tomorrow will go to the 70's, so won't need it then!  Perhaps, in March or perhaps again next fall?  No telling what Texas whether holds!

 

Finally Finished

Over Easter weekend, when my parents were in town, we worked on repainting our dining room chairs. (You may remember the sneak peek I gave you last week!) They were previously a wood finish, but I asked my mom and dad to help me create a patina finish for the chairs. My mom has done a number of patina finishes on things in her own home but also found some inspiration from Pinterest to gather ideas for the finish on my chairs. If you're interested in doing something similar, check out her Pinterest page for ideas!


My dad sprayed the base coat on the chairs, and my  mom and I spent Easter weekend doing a paint finish on them. The upholsterer did a fabulous job covering them, attaching the seat cushion, and embellishing them with a solid cording and brushed chrome nail heads. 


Here is a close-up of the great work done by the upholsterer:


Now that, the chairs are complete, the dining room is really coming together. The upholsterer is still working on solid slipcovers for the four smaller chairs. I eventually would like to get a rug to go under the dining room table.  


Thanks again to my parents for their help with this project! We are so glad that our chairs are finally finished!

Helpful House Guests

This weekend for Easter, my parents were in town to visit so we put them to work! I knew my mom would want a job to do so I gave her the job of arranging the shelves around the built-in hutch in the dining room. While I knew I had the right items to put in the shelves, I was drawing a blank on how I wanted everything arranged. Luckily, that is one of my mom's gifts!

She happily took on the job and even found inspiration on Pinterest to get a vision for the shelves. To our surprise, she even came up with an idea that required Rodney to purchase a few more bottles of wine. Here is the dining room wall now, with the entertainment hutch filled with glasses and the shelves perfectly arranged thanks to my mom.


On the left side of the hutch, my mom arranged our collection of white vases and pots, various seashells, and framed pictures of us at the beach. 


Here are a few close-ups of the shelves from top to bottom:






On the right side of the hutch, she helped us think of ways to store our ever-growing collection of wine. 


Not only did she purchase the wooden box for us (pictured below on left) from a local wine store but also came up with the idea (right) to put diagonal boards across the shelves to store the wine. This project required Rodney to purchase more wine in order to fill the shelves, which he did happily! 


My dad was also very hard at work the entire weekend! He and my mom were very helpful as they did a beautiful paint finish on our dining room chairs. For now, here's a sneak peak at my dad hard at work on the chairs... more on that to come later in the week! 


Thanks Mom & Dad for all of your help this weekend!

Feeling Settled

For the past three weeks, the dining room was the "piling room." The room was filled with odds and ends from around the house, so spending Friday getting everything in order helps us feel like we are finally settled.

On Friday, as we worked in the dining room, I hung a collection of fern pictures. The collection was purchased when my Aunt Dee was collecting, pressing, and framing ferns in old frames. I started collecting them when we moved into our last house.


Here is a shot of our dining room, finally no longer the "piling room":


We also hung a few fern pictures in the back corner of the kitchen (left) and some family beach pictures in the back entry by the dining room (right).

After working on the dining room this weekend, we are feeling much more settled! We are looking forward to having our girls and my parents here next weekend for Easter so we can all enjoy the new house together!