Evening in the red dining room at our 1893 Victorian.
On the west wall, you can see high school graduation photos of family. At the left column is my mother Lorraine, and below are her parents Earl and Eva. At the right column is my father Gale, and below are his parents Gilbert and Leatha.
During our first walk-through of the house in Feb 2007, we walked around chunks of ceiling plaster that had fallen on the floor. I looked at the space between the three dining room windows and thought to myself, I could hang two columns of family photos there.
My sister Pam re-designed pairs of store-bought curtains for the red dining room. She added fancy tassels. The curtain material bought had perfect colors but not the right style. Pam turned them into Victorian style elegance with ruffles, poofs, and tassels.
Above: turning the camera view to the right, I snapped a photo of the west front porch door. A door with original etched glass featuring two herons.
A few years ago, I took this day time photo of the west front porch door (open), and showing the original screen door.
Here's the door that leads to the front foyer. Our 1893 Victorian house had no original fireplaces. The heating consisted of parlor stoves used throughout the house--well into the 1930-1940s. The second owners left information for us to read--about what a chore it was to keep those parlor stoves running to keep an uninsulated house warm during the winter months.
I bought an electric fire place for the red dining room. It has pretty convincing faux flames. And, it just seemed a whole lot safer thing to do.
Heating our House:
Jon and I are the the third owners. We restored and refreshed our house over a journey of eight years. We blew insulation into the perimeter walls of the entire house, and added storms and screens over the wavy glass windows.
First thing to fix when we bought the house in 2007--we added a new gas forced-air furnace in the basement and a wood burning furnace right next to it. Since 2007 we heat the house during the winter with wood.
Six years ago we bought an outdoor wood burning furnace, and (sold) the wood burning furnace in the basement. The outdoor wood burning furnaces heats: our house, the wood working shop, and my 800 sq. ft. studio (total about 5,000 sq. ft.) and does a great job. Jon is busy all summer and fall sawing, splitting and stacking wood to keep us in warm comfort.
I am going to show you the above photograph again, and compare it to a John Singer Sargent painting that reminds me of our red dining room in the evening.
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Our little (faux) birds named Edgar, Allan, and Poe wish you a splendid Halloween.
I made this post today, to get you acquainted with our red dining room. I will be filming some sewing classes videos here--for my new series "Little Purses".
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