Edgewater dining room restoration

Edgewater Dining Room

This room was restored in conjunction with the Edgewater living room. As with that room, the header moldings on all the door and window frames were missing. (We milled reproduction moldings, patinating them to give them an aged appearance, then installing them and staining and finishing them along with the entire frames.)  But there was even a more glaring problem in this room.

Before
After
After

As you can see in this photo, a previous renovation project had included the addition of a great room beyond this doorway. But notice how unfinished this passageway looks without a door frame!

We finished off this doorway by milling and installing a reproduction door-frame that matches the original woodwork in the dining room. See the picture to the right for a close-up and the second ‘after’ image at the top of the page for the whole room context.

As a guideline for our whole room restorations, we pay particular attention to anything that is suggestive of “raw space,” as was this unfinished doorway. Finishing off the room by adding this door frame–and, similarly, milling and installing a missing piece of picture molding along this wall–transformed this raw space into a place and, more specifically, a dwelling place…that is to say, a place in which one wants to stay, to linger…to dwell!

Working with the room as the unit of measure, concentrating attention on achieving internal coherence by transforming raw space into dwelling places, is a fail-proof way to to achieve this transformation. Without this door-frame, this room felt unfinished. Fabricating and installing a frame that looked like it had always been there gave this dining room a greater sense of presence. Counter-intuitively, it actually makes the room feel larger than it did before.

Here is a list of services we provided in restoring this room:

  • Molding, baseboard, and trim reproduction millwork, patination, and installation
  • Baseboard, trim, and both window and door frame finish removal, staining and refinishing
  • Window restoration
  • Window jamb repair and restoration
  • Design consultation
  • Paint consultation
  • Plaster repair
  • Ceiling and wall painting
  • Coordination of finishes with Edgewater living room restoration
  • Hardware refurbishing, replacement, and supplement