We love adding a touch of Heirloom to our client’s properties. Even if it is simply a railing here and a light fixture there, we truly feel that we’ve played a part in making that house a home the families will cherish. And sometimes, we get to play much larger roles, installing signature pieces throughout a property, truly leaving the Heirloom mark in a home. The Heirloom Companies recently completed numerous projects at the Round Hill House for our dear clients, the Boones.
Stair Railings—Our bread and butter, we remodeled the Round Hill House’s stair railings as the existing railing was too short and did not stand up to code. However, James was intrigued by the unique wooden hand rail and determined it was a custom, hand carved feature. Desiring to maintain the home’s character, we gingerly cut the hand rail into sections so that we could save it for the remodeled railing. We did away with the old balusters, replacing them with hand-forged, silicone bronze pieces with decorative twist designs. We also remodeled the property’s exterior railing, forging it in iron and updating the home’s overall exterior façade.
Gates—We worked with Arbor Engineering, the project’s landscape architect firm, to create the Round Hill House’s driveway gate and garden gate. Developing Arbor Engineering’s original design intent into a reality, we crafted the garden gate from western red cedar and included hand-forged metal strapping. We added a copper cap on top of the gate so that water would be unable to sit and gather atop the feature.
Lanterns—When we originally took on the Boone project we were asked to only work on the staircase and the gates, alone. However, Mr. Boone visited our showroom in Campobello and was immediately intrigued by a few lighting features we were creating for other clients. Mr. Boone commissioned us to lighten and brighten his home with a few of our signature pieces. On the home’s exterior, James designed matching lanterns crafted out of hand-forged iron. In order to ensure the lanterns would properly complement the property’s existing exterior features, James and the rest of the Heirloom team developed full-size drawings that they took out to the property. They held the drawings up against the house and determined their original designs needed to be a bit grander so that they would seamlessly blend into the property’s overall style.
The lantern toppers are finished with a bronzed copper technique applied to the leafing. We created the leaves using a technique known as repose in which all metal pieces start as flat sheets and are then chiseled and hammered into the desired form—in this case, leaves.
Kitchen Lighting—Rounding out the Round Hill House, we also worked on the kitchen lighting. We used a textured bronze technique for the pieces and placed two different molds in the lights so that when someone looked up, the coffered ceiling would also be showcased.
