When the Square House was built, people didn’t have the sheer amount of possessions we have today. Closets were uncommon and often impractical. When converted to a two family, two closets were added on the first floor but, alas, they had to go. Beyond what appears to be an original pantry, I had almost no storage downstairs. To bring the house up to today’s needs, I added four decently sized closets on the second floor and purchased an armoire for the first floor. Here are the closets:

second floor landing

the back bedroom suite from left to right: closet #!, entry to bathroom, closet #2, and entry into the bedroom

back bedroom suite closet #2

back bedroom suite closet #1

third floor front bedroom

kitchen pantry

second floor common bath

second floor laundry

back bedroom suite bathroom

front suite walk-in

The armoire was bought sight unseen on EBTH, a local online auction site. It is like a cat with many lives. Clearly, it was exposed to water at one point . Gauging from the damage, probably from being stored in a damp basement or leaky barn. It was brought back to life but the detailed veneers must have been damaged hence the door panels were missing and the drawer fronts had some unimpressive secondary wood. The person who did the restoration made some good and some bad decisions: having used a wiping oil finish works well with the piece, a bad choice was replacing the panels with what looks like speaker cloth and also the choice of handle hardware for the drawers. All this gave me license to play.

You can see the carving detail and the cloth used where the panels were.

The original handles were probably wood. These had to go!

A mock up drawing of the new panels. This being the square house, I couldn’t resist making a cube.

Armoire in the front entry with Joseph Winterhalter’s piece in the background.

Detail of the Armoire in place.