THE MAIN FLOOR

There are three bedrooms, one and a half baths, a drawing room (formal parlor), living room, formal dining room, scullery & kitchen, morning room, and three porches (front, side, & back) on this floor... shall we take a stroll?

The Front Hall

Passing through the front door of the house brings you into The front hall. It's four doors lead to either the Drawing Room, Living Room, Master Bedroom or Stairs to the second level.

Amazingly enough, the Lincrusta (pressed paper) wainscoting still has it's original surface (pretty good for being over 110 years old). We could not have selected a pattern more fitting as the geometric Persian motif blends perfectly with our collections.

The aluminum light fixture in the hall is said to be "of the era".

Ahhhh, but the fabulous picture above was not how the hall used to look. When we purchased the house, the grand opening to the Drawing Room had been closed off with a "false wall" thus making the entrance hall quite dark, cramped and unwelcoming. With the help of VPA friend, Greg Winslow, we were able to tear out the wall and return the front hall and Parlor to it's original footprint. The pictures below say it all.

The Drawing Room (Formal Parlor)

Let's continue from the front hall into the drawing room...

The most beautiful room in the house also took the worst beating. It requires extensive restoration of the wood trim which was painted over and refinishing the woodwork around the bay windows, not to mention the floors- which are trashed.

From its days as a boarding house, the parlor had been turned into a rental room. The grand opening of the parlor from the front hall had been "plastered" in with a false wall. We removed the false wall (thanks Greg!) and have restored the footprint of the house back to its original state.

The beautiful bay window had been ripped open to create a door to a (now nonexistant) bathroom that had been built on the front porch! We've painfully restored this front window (at least as it appears from the outside of the house). More is yet to do, here's some "in progress" pictures.

Above three photos taken August, 2003
Above three photos taken February, 2007

This room will be kept as a true Victorian Drawing Room with a heavy Chinese influence. The color pallet will be jade green cinnabar, golds and black and will have shades of an Opium Den. If you are curious as to what that might look like, keep your eye on this page...

The Parlor has a set of pocket doors that opens to the living room which are in perfect shape with their original patina intact (how lucky we are!).

View looking from the Parlor into the Living Room (with Dining room in background). Shall we step into the Family Parlor?...

The Living Room

The main stars in this room is the stained glass bay window and the fabulous overmantle.

There is the rather large bay window in the living room (about 13 feet long). Lower Left: the sun rotted drapes hide the fact that the entire window below the stained glass panels was missing. Middle and lower right: $1,200 dollars later, the window is completly restored. (Did we mention that owning a Victorian is for professionals only? Kids, don't try this at home.) Having a sense of humor is pretty critical too.

The Fireplace

This magnificent overmantle is ten feet tall and has hand turned pillars with carved features. There are four arched alcoves at the top of the fireplace. Here is the overmantle as it sits March 2003.

The beveled glass mirror is in excellent shape and in it's reflection you can see the stained glass panels of the huge bay window that is at the other end of the room. The mantle sits at chest height and the oringinal tiles of the surround are all there, save one (which thankfully, was saved).

We don't plan to do anything to this magnificent piece except replace the firebox, install a metal tube down the old chimney and replace the missing tile... then we can enjoy many evenings bathed in it's warmth.

Pocket Doors

There are two sets of pocket doors on the main level of the house. As you can see from our friend Tina standing in the doorway (lower right), the pocket doors are approx. ten feet tall. The ceilings are about thirteen feet tall.

Left: Pocket doors to the Drawing Room (Formal Parlor). The wood work around all the doors in the house are phenomenal! The wood is intricately carved and is two toned redwood burl and redwood.

Rennaisance Revival Interior

Most of the twelve doors on this level of the house have their woodwork intact. The doorknobs and hinges are beautifully crafted and are original to the house. To attempt to find matching hardware for an entire house would be quite a feat, so we are grateful that these are intact.

Notice the Sanskrit design in the center or the door knob and the Persian motif of the wainscotting? It could not be more perfect!

The Formal Dining Room

View of the dining room as seen from the living room.

Before	March, 2003	February, 2007
Above three photos were taken February, 2007

On the right below is a photo of the built in china cabinet. The six drawers below all have their original brass hardware. The cabinet is very deep to accommodate the largest platters, pitchers and stemware.

We plan to honor the established bird theme. Notice the wood panels that are the wainscoting in this room. Each panel depicts a different species of bird in an exquisite hand carved Audoban-like scene. The wainscoting runs around the entire room!

The view below is from the butler's door looking through the Dining room, into the Living room, and finally the Formal Parlor (through the pocket doors).

Maid's Room

This room directly off the kitchen is the Maid’s room. It's a lovely little room where the morning sun comes streaming in. Guess this room was aptly placed, as the maid would have to rise with the sun.

The Scullery & Kitchen

We finally had had it with the "Screaming Zonker" yellow cabinets and unfinished mish-mash of painted/stripped/and somewhere in-between looking woodwork. We went into the carriage house and pulled out some paint we had (a nice sage green) plus some clean white gloss paint.

We do plan on doing a complete kitchen remodel, but that's in the future, so this little "freshing up" of the kitchen space will do for now.

These three pictures are of kitchen BEFORE we moved in

The Back Porch

The Master Bedroom

The Master bedroom received a base coat of butternut paint (we'll stencil the frieze and ceilings later). Miranda made proper window treatments for the room keeping everything in complex rich colored neutrals. The floors were painted a light brown to offset and show off the 1840 solid walnut Renaissance Revival bedroom suite with marble tops. We still
have yet to install the "coffered ceiling". But it's very comfortable for now...

Above three photos were taken February, 2007

The Blue Room

This sweet room is located directly off of the Family Parlor and has traditionally always been the Lady of the house’s bedchamber. This room is discreetly connected to the Gentleman’s bedchamber by way of a bathroom. It was Margarite’s bedroom from 1930–1970, and is now Miranda’s dressing room (and a guest room). In November of 2005, we painted it a soft French blue to match the window treatments and bed canopy that Miranda made. She plans to stencil a frieze in rich chocolate brown and pale gold just above the picture rail. This is the only room in the entire house with a pastel color pallet.

Library/Media Room

We have turned this room into the Library and Media Room. It's received paint, but needs to have its border of antique maps, and the ceiling treatment of a giant compass star with Northwind mural finished. We also plan to do built-in library shelves on each wall.

Guess we should put a little hidden Port & Brandy bar in there too somewhere.

Master Bath

We've got a lot of work ahead of us to make this nice.

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