When we first moved into the home this floor just amazed me. It’s incredible that a floor over 100 years old still looks this beautiful. I forever daydream about what it was like when they were building this home. What did the workers look like. How long did it take.
Thankfully, The floor in this room was not in bad shape. It had not been damaged like so many of the other rooms in the house. It wasn’t painted, wasn’t layered with tiles, and wasn’t carpeted over. A miracle considering every single other room in the house was this way. Someone had common sense in not destroying this masterpiece.
butlers door into kitchen
The floor itself is made up of maple and walnut. It alternates like a candy cane and is absolutely beautiful. Victorians stuck all their money into their dining rooms and entryways. They were so infatuated with impressing their guests. Fancy woodwork and floors showed off to their friends how rich and wealthy they really were. Those party animals always entertaining and throwing fancy dinner parties, showing off to their farmer friends. I would love to have been a fly on the wall in these situations.
If you notice in that first picture, You can see on the far left an awkward patch. We believe that there was a fireplace here at some point, or a fire source of some kind to heat the rooms. In the photograph the patch doesn’t look that bad, but in real life it was pretty terrible. I don’t have a good picture of the patch close up. Chad our floor guy was able to salvage maple boards from a basketball court and walnut from somewhere unknown to me. He did an excellent job on the patch and you’d never even know it was there!
As for the room goes, of course it was loaded with wallpaper. There’s a plate rail that goes around this room so the bottom half of the room was a fancy pink striped number and the top half was floral ish design. Looking at it in pictures, It always looks better then it actually was. In real life it stunk, it had many areas were it was falling off and missing. I always wonder if the plate rail is original. I don’t believe it is. Sometimes I think about taking it off because I do believe it cuts the room in half and makes it feel less tall. We also think about doing some wood trim on the walls to fancy it up in there. That built in cabinet you see I also don’t believe to be original. I do believe there was something there, but this one just feels too cheap to me. The drawers and doors are definetly too light weight to be a real victorian built in. A lot of times the built in would have been on the wall that the kitchen is up against. In this case it would be the opposite wall. Sometimes they would be open between the center and you could pass things through from the kitchen into the dining room. This one just isn’t fancy enough. Someday I’m going to have stain glass made for the doors to fancy it up a bit. I also want to add eastlake hardware for the pulls like the rest of the house.
wallpaper for days
We painted this room a very light grey color. I’ve never been crazy about the color after doing it. I plan on painting this room black. I’ve wanted to do a black room in this house but couldn’t decide which one. I was hesitant of the woodwork with black walls but I have learned in the last 2 years that I absolutely love black and brown together, so someday when I have a chance I’m going to paint it black in there. I think it would go with the moody blues theme of the parlor and living room. Although this is a farm house, I suppose my vision is always a bit glamorous like a victorian home, with a farm house spin. Who knows what the heck to call my decorating style.
The room turned out beautiful. Its bright and beautiful and cheery. The floor is constantly asked about and is such a hit in this house. I imagine the same for those partying victorian ragers.
We still have that one window that’s painted white, that needs to be stripped. It seems extremely noticeable in this photograph so I guess i’ve gotten used to living with it that way. However, it’s on the long restoration list.
This room still needs an update decor wise, but considering where we started with the wallpaper, it’s a million times better.
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