• August 28, 2024

Evanston Mansion Renovation – Library and Family Room

Join us as we dive into the details of the gorgeous 128-year old Evanston mansion, which SSDB has the privilege of renovating. In this episode we’ll look at the exquisite floor detailing and original pocket door of the library and how the room relates to the enormous family room with stained coffered ceiling and original fireplace mantel and stone. 

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 one of the most beautiful mansions in all of Evanston that was built more than 100 years ago. So we’re now in the library. This is another room that we’re going to tackle. Part of what we think about when we start working on these really, really large houses is to make sure that we find these places where you can have moments of quiet and moments in smaller spaces. We’re also going to do some things to remove what we feel like is not original or restored to the house, which includes the panel molding that you see here. Right now, the only source of light in this room is through this enormous window or the cove light that’s above. So we’re going to add a decorative fixture, some recessed lights. There’ll be a wall of cabinetry here that will also have lighting built in so that this can really become a space where if the owner wants to come in and close their original pocket doors, it can become kind of a sanctuary space. Another kind of interesting detail is this floor. And there’s a pattern where we have the boards coming together, coming together, coming together. And a big rectangle in the middle, which is centered on this doorway, which is centered on the doorway to the family room, which is centered on the fireplace. All the way at the end of this sort of sight line centered on the window behind me, which I love.

Welcome to the family room. It is enormous. We have very, very few plans for this room because it’s quite beautiful just the way it is. We are going to do a couple improvements, though. We’re going to paint. We’re also going to take this gold applied wall molding off. They sort of interfere visually with what’s happening with this gorgeous stained coffered ceiling, which we are going to keep. We’re also going to look at adding some recessed lights to highlight art that’s going to go over the fireplace. The mantel, the mantel stone is all original. We’re going to keep it and just clean it up.

One of the things that we get asked a lot about is when you approach a house like this, how do you approach it from a design standpoint and modernize it without stripping out so much of the character? And the improvements that we’re looking to make here are to sort of scrape away some of the previous renovations. They’re really not contextual to a house of this era, but we also don’t treat it as a museum. So we need to make sure that it’s going to function for a family, have the appropriate amount of light, have lighting control, and have spaces that are carved out. So when they are doing great entertaining, like in a big room like this, it’s not dark and it’s not dim. So that’s one of the reasons why we’re going to spend some time very carefully adding lighting to this coffered ceiling.