This formal dining room is one part of a whole house construction, built to complement antique oak furniture. The wood-filled interior is based on Scandinavian design. I can thank my Norwegian carpenter father for teaching me woodworking skills. The dining room features crown mouldings, wainscoating, and natural wood windows with extensive trim. There is one concession to modern methods. The curved moulding above the bay windows is a manmade composite material, stained to match the rest of the woodwork and chosen because it was considerably cheaper than a natural product. Beautiful woodwork is enhanced with the use of color on the walls; sage green in the dining room and yellows, blues, greens, pinks elsewhere; also a Scandinavian custom. The house is unusual in that it is built in the desert southwest, where woodworking is uncommon. Big thanks to my master carpenter, Chuye, without whom I could not have done such intricate work.
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Crown mouldings, multiple layers, featuring an embossed leaf and vine design. Multiple mouldings, five layers. Stained and handpainted, every leaf!
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Top mouldings of the wainscoating. The vertical strips of wainscoating came in pre-cut packages. I added the double layers of leaf mouldings and the baseboard trim. Leaf design is all handpainted to reflect the garden theme of the dining room and contrasts with the desert outside the windows of this Southwest home.
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Overall view of wainscoating, various natural woods stained in a golden oak color, and color washed in green.
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Woodwork in a dining room in a storybook home. Wainscoating, crown moulding, baseboards, windows are all natural woods. The wood types shown are pine and/or a hardwood, probably poplar, stained to complement the antique oak furniture. Flooring is rose and green marble, which reflects the colors of the wood very nicely in the bright desert sun.
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And for those leftover scraps, a miniature log cabin, built to scale, with a matching table.
