Ambella Home Archives - Letters from EuroLux

Distressed Furniture

If you are looking for distressed furniture styles, then obviously our antique French furniture is naturally distressed from at least once century of being loved and used! Sometimes though, our customers want new pieces that just look old… they want antique-inspired furniture that is newly crafted but with an aged and distressed look. We have plenty of options for new furniture and home decor on our website so we are happy to help out! Today I’m going to tell you how some of our furniture makers work their magic to achieve their distressed furniture finishes.

Some of the best antique-inspired furniture is crafted using the same techniques that were used for the original antiques. Jonathan Charles Fine Furniture is a good example – their reproductions include hand-cut marquetry and intricate carved details. Then their pieces are aged to look like an antique. This Jonathan Charles distressed bureau in the Queen Anne style gives you a taste of their skills!

Jonathan Sowter, founder of the company and a cabinet maker since he was 12 years old, says: “If you take a piece of furniture and finish it fantastically, people could imagine it’s an antique. It’s all in the finish.”

That requires special knowledge to get the distressed furniture look. Sowter says that his craftsmen understand where a piece of furniture would have bangs and knocks and scrapes after years of use, and where it wouldn’t.

“Even shading around the handle,” Sowter says, “because when you clean antiques for hundreds of years you don’t always clean in and around the handle!”

This close-up of a section of the oak bureau shows what he means. The bureau is a replica of Queen Anne desk designs dating to 1710, more than 300 years ago. The desk looks incredibly authentic, you could certainly believe that it’s been used for three centuries.

Another way that distressed furniture gets its aged look is through hand-planing. The furniture makers at Scarborough House are brilliant at this.

This heavily distressed Scarborough House chest cabinet is one of their many hand-planed pieces. Combining a rustic look with beautiful parquetry for visual and textural interest, the sturdy and heavily distressed cabinet is cleverly planed by hand to give that genuinely old look. It’s the kind of technique that takes years to perfect!

Another way that distressed furniture gets its antiqued look is through hand-rubbed finishes. This Ambella Home Bonita king bed has a hand-rubbed antique ebony finish that makes it look far more interesting than if the black finish looked too perfectly “new.”

Woodbridge Furniture Company makers are also masters at distressed furniture, with their hand-rubbed and waxed finishes.

This lovely little Woodbridge side table with a dovetail construction drawer is crafted in solid wood and finished with a hand-rubbed distressed cherry veneer. It is not only a very practical side table (I can imagine it as a bedside table too!) but it looks great because the gently aged appeal is very charming.

Whenever you buy distressed furniture, you don’t want the distressing to be too obvious otherwise everyone can spot that bad distressing a mile away and they know it’s a new piece. The best distressed furniture keeps everyone guessing!

Here are more examples of beautifully distressed furniture on our website. Prepare yourself to be seduced!

Aimee owns EuroLuxHome.com with her husband and best friend, Greg. Aimee sources amazing antique furniture, vintage lighting, & high-quality reproduction furniture to help her customers decorate their homes in a unique way. She loves her 8 (you read that right) fuzzy children and is renovating a 1920s bungalow in South Carolina. Find us on Facebook or connect with EuroLux on Google+. Or you can sign up here to receive this blog in your inbox.

Picking the Perfect Desk For Your Traditional Home Office

by EuroLux Home

My last blog post was about Creating a Beautiful Home Office and today I’ll zone in on picking the perfect desk, whether you have a home office or not! A desk needs to combine function with good looks. There’s no point have a desk that looks amazing if it doesn’t provide the storage and work space you need. It’s also miserable having a desk that is adequately functional if you don’t take pleasure every single time you sit down to use it. Life is too short!

The Unique Antique Desk. If you love antiques and want a true original in your home office, then an antique desk is a joy to use as it carries so much history. This one is an antique French Gothic desk that we currently have in stock, dating to 1850 and heavily carved in solid oak. It hides a little surprise as the antique Gothic desk has been gently modernized for the 21st century. Someone added a slide-out wooden keyboard tray that blends so well, you’d think it was original!

The Vintage French Desk. If you love French Country style and prefer a lighter wood desk, this gorgeous 1950 vintage French Country secretary desk is a great choice. The golden oak is very nicely carved and it’s well-sized for today’s interiors at just under 3 feet wide. If you want a French Country desk, then features to look for include sweet little cabriole legs, and elegant but simple carvings like the heart-shaped swag on this pull-down desk front.

The Partners Desk. Sometimes only a very substantial partners desk will do! We now carry antique-inspired furniture by Scarborough House. Their high-quality, hand-crafted pieces include a wide choice of desks like this oval Scarborough House partners desk. The handsome brass handles, crotch mahogany and a leather surface make it an impressive addition to your study, home office or professional office. If you buy a partners desk, always pick the handsomest and highest quality desk that you can as it will pay you back over the years. A good desk endorses your professional image to clients and business colleagues.

The Versatile Desk. If you don’t have a home office as such, then you might want a desk that blends in with your living space. This Ambella Home Modesto desk is a good example. The antique-inspired desk features lots of ornate carving detail, a generous desk surface and drawer storage space to keep the room free from clutter. But when you aren’t writing at your desk it just looks like a lovely decorative piece of furniture. Pop a bowl of flowers on top to add to the accent table effect!

The Lots of Nooks and Crannies Desk. Sometimes you don’t need tons of storage space but you do want lots of separate compartments to keep everything well organized! This Scarborough House Sheraton Writing Desk is a charming example. Aside from all the drawers and cubbies, the exquisitely crafted crotch mahogany desk looks amazing. The brass handles and leather writing surface make it seem so authentic. I think that Jane Austen would have been at home writing Pride and Prejudice at this desk!

The Artist’s Desk. If beauty triumphs over all in your home office, then you are probably looking for a highly decorative desk that makes you smile at its craftsmanship. (You’ll be happy to keep your documents tucked out of sight in a filing cabinet as long as the desk looks fantastic!) In that case, you have to admire this superb Jonathan Charles desk from the Kensington collection. The French style desk is hand-painted by Jonathan Charles artisans with gold floral detail across the pretty curved apron and legs. A dark leather inlaid writing surface tempts you to stay all day. There is one drawer to keep your favorite pens and essential notes, but this gilded desk is more like a French Haute Couture dress. You buy it for the sheer wicked pleasure of it and because it makes you look so good!

Boy, now I am feeling very bored with my own desk that I’m writing this at! I hope you enjoy picking your perfect desk whatever style you like. Please leave a note in the comment box to tell me YOUR idea of a perfect desk!

Aimee owns EuroLuxHome.com with her husband and best friend, Greg. Aimee sources amazing antique furniture, vintage lighting, & high-quality reproduction furniture to help her customers decorate their homes in a unique way. She loves her 9 (you read that right) fuzzy children and is renovating a 1920s bungalow in South Carolina. Find us on Facebook or connect with EuroLux on Google+. Or you can sign up here to receive this blog in your inbox.

Retrofit Sink Chest

by EuroLux Home

We love it when our customers get creative with pieces they buy from us. This chest of drawers retrofit into a sink chest is a great example.

Our customer Edwin Miller of Edwin Miller Interiors found this new French style chest among our selection of new and antique chests of drawers and thought it would make an excellent sink chest!

The antique-inspired chest of drawers (item number BG-265) is crafted with a solid wood construction and toned brass French hardware. The curvy carved apron front and cabriole legs add to the French style charm and the gorgeous distressed finish gives the chest of drawers an authentic antique look.

Edwin had the three-drawer chest converted to a sink chest and it does look fantastic in his client’s guest bathroom!

The vessel sink is a perfect match for the chest of drawers and you can really see the quality of the wood finish in this photo. Edwin Miller’s website notes that he is known for his high quality “finish selections, attention to detail and expression of client individuality, emphasizing refined sophistication.” We can see from this lovely retrofitted sink chest that he’s done it again!

If you don’t feel like converting a chest of drawers into a sink chest yourself, you might want to check out some of our beautifully crafted antique-inspired sink chests.

For example, this Ambella Home Augustine sink chest features detailed rope carving, a white porcelain sink and a beautiful Emperador marble top. The three-drawer petite sink chest has a rich mahogany finish.

We work with quite a few people who are building houses and the Ambella Home sink chests are always a big hit.

We can order sink chests of all sizes for our customers, from large double sinks to petite sink chests to tuck into a powder room.

This mini Ambella Home sink chest may be small – a slim 23.5 inches wide, to be exact – but what it lacks in size it makes up for in looks! The antique-inspired sink chest has a mahogany frame and an Imperial Beige marble top. Swirl mahogany veneers add to the decorative effect of the very pretty sink chest. I’d team it with a pair of sconces on the wall on either side of the sink for an elegant glow.

Thanks to interior designer Edwin Miller for sending us the photo of retrofitted sink chest – we hope his clients enjoy using it for many years!

Woodbridge Corner Table

by EuroLux Home

After our customer Bob sent a photo of the Woodbridge corner table he bought from us, I started looking at other creative ways to make the most of every inch of space with corner furniture. Bob S. in Castro Valley, CA, ordered this Neo-Classic corner table: The new Woodbridge Furniture Company corner table is beautifully crafted with a solid wood construction and hand-distressed cherry veneers. The elegant design is inspired by 19th century Neo-Classic originals and it’s a neat 3 feet wide. Bob emailed us to say “It looks great in the living room.” You can see how well it tucks into the corner!

Bob is using the table for his lovely lamp but you could also use it as an accent table in a hallway, as a TV stand for a small flat screen TV in a guest room, or even as a corner nightstand in a cozy cottage bedroom. The two drawers and lower shelf provide plenty of storage options or a place to stack your magazines, even in a compact space!

Here are some more ideas for corner furniture.

This new Ambella Home corner cabinet from the Agatha Contempo collection makes a very handsome statement. It is nearly 8 feet tall and shows how a corner cabinet creates extra display options in a room that perhaps doesn’t have much wall space. You could enjoy this fine piece of furniture as a china cabinet too. A corner cabinet can be used to create a focal point in a room, or perhaps to soften the angles of a very square or linear space.

A corner chair makes an unusual addition to a home, like this new Jonathan Charles corner chair from the Country Farmhouse collection, superbly crafted in walnut wood. It makes maximum use of any neglected corner and the rich barley twists and classic finials guarantee that the corner chair will be a great visual accent too. The rush seat suits a Country Farmhouse living room or kitchen or any traditional or rustic decor. It’s a super chair for a small entryway too, making it easy to change your boots without taking up tons of space!

Traditional Kitchen by Excelsior Design-Build Firms Lake Country Builders

Finally, this traditional kitchen in Minneapolis shows that even the kitchen sink can benefit from the corner treatment! The deep farmhouse sink allows the best views from that large corner window. Putting the sink in the corner also frees up more counter space for people to work at.

Do you enjoy using corner furniture in your home? Do you use it to make maximum use of your space or just because you love the look? We’d love to hear your comments!

The Art Deco Bedroom

by EuroLux Home

Our EuroLux Home Houzz page has already been featured in many Houzz.com ideabooks and we’ve even won a Best of Houzz 2015 award for our customer service! But it’s still a thrill when I receive an email saying “Hi Aimee, Congratulations! You were hand-picked by one of our writers to be featured in an editorial ideabook on the homepage of Houzz.”

The latest piece of happy news from Houzz was to inform us that this Ambella Home bed from the Manhattan collection was featured in an ideabook on The Beguiling Art Deco Bedroom. Who could resist that title? The article talks about how Art Deco “exuded both opulence and minimalism” with glittering finishes and stark style lines.

The Ambella Home Manhattan bed, which comes in both king and queen sizes, clearly reflects the Art Deco look perfectly! Glamour comes calling in the beautifully crafted white leather-like headboard upholstery, studded with a classic pattern in silver-tone nickel nailheads. The wood base makes a sleek partner to the headboard.

People say that styles come back around every 50 and 100 years, and Art Deco is definitely “hot” right now. You can see the Art Deco influence in the Hollywood Regency furniture I’ve written about recently. Our own 1920s vintage bungalow dates to the same era.

We have some great Art Deco buffets and other furniture coming soon on our next container of antiques from France.

That transatlantic ship should arrive in a month or two, and we can’t wait to unwrap the pieces of antique French furniture that we bought!

This is a photo of my favorite Art Deco buffet due to arrive in that next delivery of French antiques. The beautifully carved lines make it so distinctive and you really can’t replicate the warm and mellow tones of the aged wood.

This unusual Art Deco bar cabinet will arrive in the same container of antiques. It is photographed against a strange hot pink wall, but please don’t hold that against it!

The carvings and gleaming mirror and glass are all gorgeous. And looking at this, it’s crazy to think that the excitement of the jazz age was really a whole century ago…

I’ll write a blog post about Art Deco soon as part of my series about learning furniture history and styles. Then I can talk more about the details and feel of the Art Deco style and show you more fantastically decadent photos.

Till then, you can browse the entire Houzz ideabook on The Beguiling Art Deco Bedroom. Sweet dreams!

Vintage Life: We Love Penny Tiles!

by EuroLux Home

Greg and I knew from the start of our 1920s bungalow renovation that we wanted to place penny tiles in the bathrooms to keep the vintage look of our home.

We started with the smallest room first: the half bath located off the living room/dining room. We chose all white tiles with a dark grey grout to emphasize the shape of the tiles.

The beadboard trim was created with original beadboard from the ceilings and it is painted a bright white while the walls are a rosy lavender – I love it! I just can’t get a good photo because the room is so small, but I’ve added a beautiful Italian vintage Capodimonte chandelier complete with pink drop roses.

Next came the upstairs guest bathroom and small side closest, where we also chose all white penny tiles.

I’m concentrating hard, here! This was our first experience with penny tiles and we have to say that they are a little more difficult to lay than large tiles. Penny tiles come on square sheets, but the sheets stretch, which makes it a bit difficult to get the spacing exactly even.

Our floors aren’t perfect, but I think they show vintage charm! This is the finished upstairs bathroom. We carried the beadboard trim motif upstairs too but we had to use new beadboard sheets as we had run out of the original old beadboard. The trim is painted a bright white while the walls are a pretty green tea. It isn’t installed yet, but this is where my restored pink claw foot tub will go! What do you think?

For the master bath, we chose marble penny tiles featuring varying shades of grey and white with hints of blue and yellow. We set it off with a dark grey grout.

We used the last of the original beadboard, painted bright white, in the alcove where my restored yellow claw foot tub will go.

We also added a bling-y vintage Rococo chandelier with sparkling crystals. Ta-da!

Although it is not installed yet as we haven’t finished tiling the large walk-in shower and the adjoining wall, we have converted an antique Louis XV sideboard into a double vanity by removing the top and replacing it with Alabama white marble with grey veining to complement the tile floor.

We’re considering placing a pair of the new Ambella Home Star Mirrors over the vanity. Here’s a photo of the mirror – let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

If you just can’t get enough tales from the tile side, our last Vintage Life: Time To Tile! blog post talked about our adventures with the pretty Mexican tile in the kitchen, sun room and utility room. Grout on!

Choosing Antique-Inspired Furniture

by EuroLux Home

We know from our customers that buying a piece of fine antique furniture is always a special experience. But sometimes it makes more sense to buy new antique-inspired furniture for your home. Perhaps because it’s hard to find the exact antique piece to suit your space.

High-quality reproduction furniture is very impressive and easy to live with and it’s a good investment too. These pieces are often hand-crafted using the same methods as original antiques. Look at furniture by makers like Jonathan Charles Fine Furniture, Ambella Home Collection, Woodbridge Furniture Company and Currey & Co as well as lighting by Dale Tiffany, and you’ll see why they are so in demand amongst homeowners who recognize superb design and craftsmanship.

Let’s take a look at three important elements to consider when you are choosing antique-inspired furniture.

High-Quality Materials

Everything starts with high-quality materials whether we’re talking about solid wood, exquisite flame mahogany veneers, wrought iron, or superbly cast hardware. Or how about hand-rolled art glass?

The craftsmen at Dale Tiffany use the same hand-rolled glass techniques as were used to make original Louis Comfort Tiffany lamps. They also hand-cut their unique and colorful glass to replicate the famous Tiffany stained glass designs. The Dale Tiffany table lamp in the photo shows the gorgeous effect of the fine glass… you can’t fake that! (See more about the authentic Dale Tiffany creative process including a video.)

Craftsmanship in Construction

Some of the best antique-inspired furniture is crafted with the exact same techniques that the makers used for the original European antiques. From hand-cut marquetry to intricate carved details, these reproductions are works of art in their own right. This amazing Jonathan Charles desk in the Queen Anne style shows just what we are talking about. The craftsmen and women certainly need to be as good as the craftsmen in days of yore. The only difference is that today’s furniture experts get to produce their work under decent lighting – they don’t have to work on fiddly inlays by candlelight! (See more about traditional Jonathan Charles hand-craftsmanship including a short video.)

High-Quality and Antiqued Finishes

Hand-rubbed and carefully crafted antiqued finishes add the finishing touch to the best antique-inspired furniture. Perhaps you’ll love an ebonized finish or the welcoming allure of an aged brass or oiled bronze finish. The gleam of hand-waxed wood, antiqued mirrors, crackle glazes, distressed painted wood, polished marble… there are so many choices.

This Ambella Home sink chest shows how refined and authentic the best finishes can be, imbuing your home with a sense of substance and tradition.

If you need more convincing, take a look at some of our client spotlights and other blog posts featuring antique-inspired reproduction furniture. Or tell us about your own favorite piece of antique-inspired furniture!

Ambella Home Accent Table

by EuroLux Home

Of all the beautiful Ambella Home console tables and accents tables that we stock, the Voronado accent table is one of the most dramatic. So it’s great to have a chance to show it off in this customer spotlight!

Nellie V. in San Diego, CA bought the Voronado fluted accent table from us. This is the table in the catalog shot. Glamorous, huh? It combines style with substance though. As with all Ambella Home Collection furniture, it is meticulously crafted. The solid mindi wood table features mirrored accents all around to reflect the light.

Here’s a close-up of the table top because it’s really hard to photograph mirrored furniture when the piece is in a room. It just reflects all the light and colors surrounding it! But this bird’s eye view shows the great shape of the sunburst design.

A close-up of the Voranado pedestal table scroll feet shows the attention to detail in the craftsmanship, as well as the textured gold leaf finish. So now let’s see the table in Nellie’s home in California…

You can tell how shiny and clear the high-quality mirrored table top is because it reflects the leather wall panels in every intricate detail. Those handsome wall panels have a little dark gold in them, which I’m sure ties in nicely with the gold leaf table finish.

The chairs boast a lovely satin silver upholstery. “I just got them, that is why I was looking for the table with mirror,” Nellie told me. “It actually looks much better live than on the pictures.” Well, the pictures make it all look fabulous enough so the in-person effect must be stunning!

When I first looked at the photos Nellie sent, I was wowed by what a gorgeous floor she has. I’ve never seen wooden floors with a herringbone pattern before. I wondered if she lives in an old house… so I asked her.

Nellie said that the house is a mere 15 years old and she bought it new. The herringbone wood floors were installed 5 years during a remodeling. “We were going for the old European look throughout,” said Nellie.

Nellie also mentioned that the room is round, so that informed her choice to pick a round accent table.

The Ambella Home Voronado accent table is a piece that could fit with a variety of home decor styles, but many people would consider it a great example of Hollywood Regency style. Hollywood Regency style harkens back to the most luxurious golden era of Hollywood around the 1930s and it combined a bunch of different influences. Those influences include the most glamorous elements of English and French Regency furniture as well as the chic allure of Art Deco design. Opulent gilded finishes are typical of the look, as are reflective surfaces from lacquered finishes to glittering mirrored furniture like this Ambella Home table.

I’ll write more about the trend and especially the mirrored furniture trend in another blog post later this month. Till then, thank you Nellie for giving us a glimpse inside your home so we can enjoy your exquisite mirrored accent table!

Family Games for the Holidays

by EuroLux Home

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Houzz.com saying “Hi Aimee, Congratulations! You were hand-picked by one of our writers to be featured in an editorial ideabook on the homepage of Houzz.” That was a great way to start the day! The article is called Games People Play and it featured this Jonathan Charles games table that we stock. We sell the games table on our website, as well as from our EuroLux Houzz.com page. The square games table on a nicely carved barley twist column is crafted in walnut wood with oyster veneer. An inlaid top forms the chess board.

Inspired by that mention on Houzz, I thought it would be fun to write a post on family games for the holidays. I also want to show you some of the superb games furniture we have in stock. Greg and I love to play trivia at a local sports bar in Columbia, SC. Therese, Greg’s aunt that used to work with us, and her boyfriend, Bill, join us every Tuesday evening. Our team is called The Info Junkies and if I can brag a bit – we win quite frequently!

No, we do NOT play trivia night at this fabulous vintage games table, but I wish we did! The table just arrived from France, and the mahogany and green leather set of Regency style table and four chairs dates to 1960. I can picture the Rat Pack seated around it playing poker. I doubt the Rat Pack was any more competitive than we are on trivia nights though!

Both Greg and Bill are fonts of useless knowledge and usually amaze us with the randomness of what they know. Therese and I help out too, but we definitely don’t have the stockpile of trivia that Greg and Bill do. Greg has a particularly deep knowledge of music from the 1970s to 1990s and we can both recite the names of the English Monarchy – in order!

For people who prefer to play a civilized game of chess rather than try to remember the name of every member of The Partridge Family, this new chess set globe is a winner! It is printed with an antique nautical world map and replica frescoes. The chess board is removable so you can play it outside the globe for an out-of-this-world game! (Groan.)

Shuffleboard is such a great holiday game for all the family, and this new Ambella Home shuffleboard table is sure to evoke nostalgia. The Elegant Scroll shuffleboard table is finely crafted with handsome decorative details, so it will fit right in to your traditional decor.

The matching new Ambella Home foosball table is bound to be fun too in your games room. The old-fashioned and ornate design is crafted with a fine patina and it looks like a games table out of an old pub.

We love the traditional family games, but we also love the newer games and puzzles too. John is a whiz at Sudoku and crossword puzzles and both Kathy and Greg love to play Bejeweled Blitz on their iPads.

Do you love darts, cards, pool, or charades? Tell us the about family games you enjoy for the holidays!

Best of November 2014: Creative Home Decor

by EuroLux Home

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and we’ve also seen some wonderful examples of creative home decor in our blog posts this month. If you missed my post on our latest antiques container that just arrived from France and our holiday discount, then I hope you’ll go and have a look at the link. We have some beautiful pieces of antique furniture and we’re still unpacking it all!

Our 15% discount on everything (antiques, vintage, and new) in our EuroLuxHome.com inventory is valid through December 8. We include free shipping too – just as we always do. Now there’s a holiday gift to make Santa smile! Simply enter the coupon code at checkout (chosen to celebrate small businesses like ours): ShopSmall

Among our favorite antiques and creative home decor blog posts from November, our story about Bob H.’s Renaissance Knight Buffet, Mural, and Window has to be one of the most memorable.

Bob was so inspired by the Renaissance knight on horseback carved on an antique buffet he bought from us, he had a mural made to match, and then a matching stained glass window for his impressive foyer. His Illinois home evokes European castles so the Knight theme is fitting. See the mural, window details, and more photos of Bob’s home in this blog post.

In another in our series of client spotlights, Amy B. in Wichita, KS, got in touch to show us photos of the Ambella Home Aspen sideboard in Amy’s home. She bought the sideboard from us earlier this year and did a wonderful job in accessorizing it.

Eclectic Dining Room by Other Metro Photographers Elad Gonen

For readers who are getting ready to redecorate soon, I shared some creative home decor ideas in my stories on Classic Painted Floor Designs and Red Wine Colored Decor. Whether you are painting floors or walls, I hope that you find some useful inspiration!

The most exciting story for us personally this month is that we finally moved into our our 1920s vintage bungalow.

Regular readers of this blog know that Greg and I have been renovating our darling 1920s bungalow (a.k.a. The Money Pit) since we bought it in October 2011. That vintage house has had a complete makeover from top to bottom since then! We’ve shared our Vintage Life Bungalow Renovation stories along the way, and we still have plenty of work ahead of us. We’ll share that with you too. But for now, as we moved into the house just before Thanksgiving, we are just very thankful to be living in our new home.

I look forward to sharing more creative home decor news with you through the month of December, and hearing about your own antiques and creative decorating too!