• August 28, 2024

Evanston Mansion Renovation – Dining Room and Porch

In this episode we’re talking though the 128-year-old home’s beautiful dining room, preserved curved windows, and the gorgeous outdoor porch. Our goal for this renovation is to preserve the unique, original character of the home, while giving it a modern touch to allow for optimal functionality for its owners.

Follow along!

• Episode 1 – Exterior and Foyer
• Episode 2 – Library and Family Room
• Episode 3 – Dining Room and Porch
• Episode 4 – Kitchen and Pantry
• Episode 5 – Stairwell and Landing
• Episode 6 – Primary Bedroom and Bathroom
• Episode 7 – Porch and Third Floor
• Episode 8 – Lower Level
• Episode 9 – Laundry and Guest Bath
• Episode 10 – Kitchen and Pantry After Demo
• Episode 11 – Primary Bath and Closet After Demo
• Episode 12 – Laundry and Guest Bath After Demo
• Episode 13 – Third Floor After Demo
• Episode 14 – Temporary Primary Bedroom

Transcript

Welcome to the dining room. This might be one of the most special rooms in the entire house. There is a giant bay window here which lets in tons and tons of east light and something that is very unique to this house that you do not see very often is that these window sashes and the glass are curved. The storm panels on the outside are also curved wood frames and curved glass. So, at the time when this was built, this was extremely special. When we come into a house and see something like this is still here, it’s exceptional.

So, while the windows are totally exceptional, the ceiling is a little cuckoo. So one of the things that we’re going to do here is keep all of the paneling. We don’t know that it’s original necessarily, but it clearly is historic. But all of the cherubs and vines and the ceiling and the medallion and the lighting fixtures are all going to be replaced and just kind of tone everything down.

As you’ll see as we go through this tour, almost every single room and every single bedroom upstairs has a fireplace, which I think is totally cool. And again, a hallmark of the era of when the house was built. We have another fireplace in the dining room. It’s more of a rumford shape, so a little bit taller than it is wide. We’re going to keep all of the stone because it’s very, very beautiful and in good condition. But we’re going to try and figure out a way to make the difference between the mantel and the wood paneling a little bit more cohesive. I don’t know how we’re going to do that yet, so stay tuned.

Another neat feature in this house is how much of the original hardware is still here.  These doors, which are original, still have this beautiful surface-mounted chrome hardware and you just give it a turn and voila, out to the porch we go.

Something that the previous owner did, which we are going to undo, is that they siliconed all of these windows shut. When this house was originally built, this was an outdoor porch, so the walls and the windows that you see around me were built at some time after the porch. The owner really wants to sit out here and enjoy the breeze and enjoy the beautiful vistas. Directly in front of me, outside, there’s a beautiful koi pond where you can hear water bubbling. It’s a very tranquil space.

It’s very interesting, like the architecture and the detailing, and we know this was added later because, you know, like we have this little mini window and then a column. You can see there’s another column out there. So it was very well done and very thoughtfully done and we’re just going to make sure that it can be used by the owner.