New Furniture

While the kids and I were home this summer, Mike decided to surprise me with a new bed, well at least a new bed frame.  There is a gentleman, Mario, who makes iron furniture who comes to the housing complex every Thursday for the small market we have.  We have never had a real bed frame, so Mike decided to get a wrought iron one made.  The neat thing about Mario is that if you can draw it, he can make it.  So he and Mike spoke and Mike drew up a design for Mario to create.

Here is the original design

Mario took pictures and sent Mike updates on how the construction was going......

And the final product........

It is really tall, much taller than Mike had intended, and the small size of our bedroom doesn't help much.  However, it is beautiful and so cool that it is a one of a kind piece designed for me!  I love it!

As a matter of fact, we liked Mario's work so much we decided to go check out his baker's racks.  He has several samples in his workshop, but he customizes them so no two are the same.  Lava stone is a popular material for many items in Sicily, including the shelves on the baker's racks.  Lava stone almost always has a very elaborate Sicilian style painting on top of it and this requires some special firing and treatment of the stone making it quite expensive.  In addition to the expense, Mario pointed out that if the shelf is used, the the painting is covered and it is almost a waste of money to have the lava stone on the baker's rack, and it would be money better spent on an item that would have more visibility. So we will save lava stone for a future purchase.  Other options we had were marble and granite.  I really like the marble, and it was the least expensive option, but Mario said that it scratches easily.  So we settled on the granite and picked a dark granite for our shelves.  Mike wanted the baker's rack to also be wine storage, so we opted for a larger portion of it to be a wine rack than others that we saw.  Here is what Mario made for us

Again, a beautiful piece.  There is a large shelf that we will use like a buffet in the dining room, storage for 54 bottles of wine, racks for 12 wine glasses, and two smaller shelves above.  The tile on the top is hand painted and is from Caltagiorne.  I really don't miss the lava stone and feel like the tiles give it the Sicilian feel.  Mike has some work to do filling the wine storage, and I have to figure out what I want to put on it, but I love it, too!