Dining Room Reno, Part 2: Time to Rebuild

The backstory:  We needed to upgrade the HVAC, which entailed installation of a large duct from the basement through the dining room and up to the second floor. This presented new design opportunities for the room, allowing us to create a dining room cum library and study.

Our initial goal was to install floor to ceiling bookcases flanking the window. Yet after sketching it out on paper, it somehow didn't seem right. The bookcases would be quite narrow, given how large the return ended up. So we opted for a low bookcase that skims the bottom of the window. In fact, the top of the new case replaces the window sill, making the unit look nice and tidy. We also looked at the dismal old window and decided to replace it.

Notice the boxes for the new wall sconces to the side of the window. Rebuilding the wall gave us an opportunity to add more lighting to the room, which faces north.

This also gave us the opportunity to extend the wainscoting from the entry and kitchen into the dining room, as we had planned for a few years. Finally, we could insulate the "new" wall behind the sheetrock (with an extra piece behind the bookcase, for good measure), which we've tried to do in all of our renovation projects in the house. Although the brick holds a lot of heat, even on sunny winter days, the house was built uninsulated. Brrrrrr.

Here's the matching "fake" chase on the other side of the window.

Here we fitted in the pieces of wainscoting. We used Georgia Pacific's Plybead, rather than genuine beadboard. We chose this because it was easy to install on top of the existing baseboard. The downside: each of these puzzle pieces required priming on all six sides (including the back and edges) to prevent them from warping over time. The prepping, priming and painting involved with these pieces probably took longer than any other step in this entire project.

Christmas came and went, as we waited for the new window to be delivered. Then in March of this year, we started up again, installing the new window, trim and the last pieces of wainscoting around the window and bookcase.

Next:  Dining Room Reno, Part 3: Renaissance

Previous:  Duct and Cover

Making the Rounds

Here's a brilliant freestanding bookshelf from Anthropologie. I'm sure this isn't the first round shelf unit ever (I'm thinking 1980s Memphis), but this iron and mango wood beauty is light and sculptural.

More Books in the Dining Room

Here's one more beautiful example of freestanding bookshelves (in the dining room!), this time from Alessandra Branca, by way of House and Home. The shelves are simple enough; the wallpaper's giant paisley gets all the visual attention, along with the red upholstered chairs.

One item I forgot to mention in my post on freestanding bookshelves:  they must be secured to the walls, especially if you have kids running around. I would say this is important even in areas that are not traditionally prone to earthquakes, as we now know!

Dining Room Reno, Part 1: Duct and Cover

It began as an idea.

How could we affordably manage to upgrade our HVAC system and deal with the resulting alterations to our dining room, living room, master bedroom and daughter's bedroom? The answer turned out to be relatively easy to design, but difficult to execute.

Our heating and air conditioning layout, for the most part, was as old as the 1940 house. Like most systems installed during that era, the returns were not designed to adequately handle the supply airflow, resulting in a poorly balanced system that barely heated and cooled the first floor. Forget the second floor.

Our HVAC savior proposed installing a new mega-return from the basement through the dining room, and on up to the blog daughter's bedroom. Great, we thought. Now how do we deal with this ugly metal box in the corner of these rooms?

This was just the excuse we needed to integrate the new chase with a built-in bookcase. Yes, friends, the bookcase dreams could potentially become a reality. Although the end result is not what we initially intended to build, it turned out to be exactly the right solution for our space, and we couldn't be happier.

The story started nearly a year ago. The first weekend of October 2010 in suburban Washington, DC was especially mild and lovely. We should have been outdoors enjoying ourselves. Yet what were we doing? Demo, baby! It was a down and dirty, noisy, painful dust-up. And at the end of the weekend, we succeeded in prepping the spaces for the contractor to come in and begin installation of the new system.

Cutting up the floor and gouging out holes in the wall is really quite scary. But we forged ahead and finished the demo on time.

Fast forward to November. The new ducting and equipment were installed. Now we had to start the hard part:  putting it all back together.

Next time:  Time to Rebuild