Haveli Dining Room

We already had a dining room table and chairs, purchased from Rural Roots in London, ON when we first moved into our house (see left picture below). It was, as they put it, an example of "upscale Canadian handcrafted wood furniture," and was the only piece of big, real wood furniture in our home. When we contemplated redoing the DR, we first considered ditching the table, as it was somewhat scratched and kind of Arts and Crafts rather than haveli-like in appearance. The company that made the table went out of business (perhaps because of shoddy workmanship--we had to have it replaced once by the manufacturer), and it never seemed to hold any polish. However, it was still a substantial piece (84"L x 48"W) and quite a costly one ($2500 in 2003) that we would never be able to resell anywhere near cost. So, after applying some tung oil and beeswax + citrus, the table took on a nice shine, and we decided to keep it as a centrepiece, after pimping it out Indian style (see right photo).

This ultimately took the form of an apricot glass vase ($39) from Harmony Crafts in Guelph, which we filled with peacock feathers (2 for a dollar) obtained from Maharani Emporium in Gerrard Street in Toronto's Little India. We place this on a gorgeous chocolate and red runner ($39) by our friend Trish at Rang Home Decor, across the street from Maharani. Two elephants ($12 each) imported from India for sale at Bouclair (of all places) topped off the tabletop decor.

Rounding out the table itself, we added two chocolate leather end chairs (an inexpensive $119 each at Sanskriti in London, ON) to contrast the six original beige microfibre chairs we already had, along with an 8'x10' Peshawari rug ($800), also from Sanskriti. The story of this rug will be told in a post about the White Elephant Haveli living room.

We should perhaps backtrack to talk first about colours and painting the walls, which we actually did three times. Having lived all of our lives in houses with white, beige, or off-white walls, we were afraid of colour when we began our haveli odyssey. So, we started with smaller and/or enclosed spaces where the colours would not dominate too much. Thus, our first experiments with more vivid paint included the yellow mudroom and then the dining room, both of which are more closed off in what is largely an open concept house. For the DR, we wanted a colour in the orange family to pick up the cherry hues of our adjacent kitchen cabinets. Unfortunately, getting the right one took three tries and much repainting after a couple of attempts that were too hot and bright.

Once the orange was laid on the walls, we discovered it matched, by pure chance, the apricot vase on the table and that it went nicely not only with the dark chocolate furniture but with green tones. An excursion to Wood Sense Interiors in Burlington and Oakville brought back some golden-green silk curtains that shimmer in the light. We moved in some plants and discovered the rug, with its tones of orange, salmon, and olive, afterwards.

Capping off the furnishings in the room, we needed a hutch or tall storage unit to enclose our dishes and glasses. We previously had an EQ3 B2C unit in "espresso," a contemporary piece you can see in the "before" photo at the very top of this post. Eventually, in the warehouse of Sanskriti, we found a heavy unit with antique doors. We resealed the finish (some Indian furnishings need further finishing) and dolled it up by painting the knobs and other protrusions with gold paint.
We topped things off with another of Trish's chocolate runners with sequins and began to fill the interior with brassy cups and boxes. One day, while visiting Wood Sense, we ran into the green and orange brass-covered horse that now rears up from the heights of the unit; we were amazed how perfectly he matched the colour scheme of the room.