Dining rooms have changed a fair bit over the years – nowadays, they’re a far cry from the linoleum-floored kitchens of yore, with their olive green brocade drapes and upholstered metal chairs. But then, the 70s was a different time, right? One thing that hasn’t changed all that much is the table at the centre of the dining room; pretty much throughout history, the mark of a aesthetically pleasing dining room has been a solid wood table, especially during the Christmas holidays. With mid-century modernism swinging back into vogue, what’s old has now become new, and we at Woodcraft couldn’t be more thrilled that time and again, people are choosing to deck their holiday dining rooms out with hand crafted Canadian wood furniture, and give our pieces away as gifts.

With the Christmas season in swing, now’s the right time to start looking at various ways to modernize your dining room – not overhaul it completely, but give it a bit of an update in time for holiday entertaining. At Woodcraft, we keep our ear to the ground (and, yes, we’re not ashamed to say we even look at a fair amount of Pinterest boards), so we figure we have a good handle on current trends, and our uniquely designed solid wood furniture certainly reflects that. To that end, let’s take a look at some of the current trends for dining room furniture, and give a few examples of how to pull them off.

Minimalist Designs

Simple lines: in a nutshell, that’s how minimalism pertains to furniture. While some people still opt for ornately designed buffet hutches and sideboards (which definitely have their charm, especially when you’re carving a big turkey!), many people have started gravitating towards simpler, sleeker and sparser designs, making use of open space in their dining room. For an elegant example of minimalism in furniture, check out our Boulevard Table, a geometrically straightforward design accented subtly by a bevelled edge on the tabletop – it makes a great holiday gift for that trendsetter in your life. Or check out the Queen West Dining Table, whose clean line and industrial-inspired design really pop in an open space.

Reclaimed Wood

This trend is on fire right now (not literally, of course), and it’s easy to see why: furniture pieces, like our reclaimed wood dining tables or coffee tables, take a piece of wood with history and character and create a wholly unique statement. That lived-in, time-sculpted look matches perfectly with a natural colour palette and antique accompaniments. Plus, it’s cool to wonder what the wood was used for in its past life! If you want to introduce some reclaimed wood character into your dining room for holiday entertaining, check out our Austin Reclaimed Wood Dining Table, which features an epoxy-finished slab of reclaimed wood atop a polished steel base.

Live Edges

Similar in its charm to reclaimed wood, another trend right now is having wood furniture with a “live edge”. But whereas reclaimed wood gets its character from the fact that it was previously used, usually industrially, live edge furniture gets its character from quite the opposite: the fact that you can still see nature’s mark on the wood. See, what live edge means is that the edges of the wood are left untreated, in all their knotty, knobbly glory, as a reminder of nature. This really works well if you’re cultivating a natural, unfussy vibe in your dining room, or you’re looking for a gift for that naturalist in your life. Paired with an earthy centrepiece like a pine branch or pine cone, maybe some balsam fir incense, this table will absolutely get questions from your Christmas dinner guests.

If you’re looking to modernize your dining room, or give the gift of solid wood furniture this Christmas, give us a call and ask about our delivery service and our deals on solid wood furniture going on right now. The holiday season is the perfect time to start reevaluating the design in certain rooms of your house, and you may as well start where everyone gathers together.

Just off the top, it’s pretty clear where we at Woodcraft stand on the issue of veneer vs. solid wood; after all, we’ve been in the business of handcrafting solid wood furniture for over 40 years. It’s helpful, all the same, to compare veneer to solid wood, looking at its attributes, the reasons for its popularity and, ultimately, the ways in which it makes an inferior piece of furniture. We’ll also take a quick look at laminate and reclaimed wood, two of the other popular choices for furniture these days (spoiler: we’re fans of the latter, not so much the former!)

First off, it would be helpful to define the two terms, “veneer” and “solid wood”. Veneering is when you apply a very thin panel of wood – about 5mm thick usually – on top of another type of wood with adhesive. The wood underneath is an inferior quality of wood, usually either particleboard, medium density fibreboard, or a low quality solid wood. This is done to cut costs usually, and the process of veneering has been around for a surprisingly long time, with evidence of its use dating all the way back to ancient Egypt. It was used on the pharaohs’ sarcophagi, which is actually pretty cool, so veneer does have that going for it!

Solid wood, on the other hand, is a lot easier to define: it’s solid wood. To elaborate a little bit, unlike veneer, the solid wood furniture from Woodcraft is the same wood all the way through, so if you’re getting a live edge coffee table or solid wood bedroom sets made from oak, for example, you know that it’s just oak. Furthermore, at Woodcraft, we pride ourselves on using top quality Canadian wood for our furniture, giving it that extra special something.

As for the other two: laminate is basically just plastic that’s painted to look like wood, and is more common in floor than it is in furniture (though if you do come across a piece of laminate furniture, don’t buy it unless you’re really going for that kitsch factor). And reclaimed wood, like the kind we use for our reclaimed wood dining table and coffee tables, is good quality wood that’s been taken from its original application (like say, a barn or a barrel) and made into something more modern. It’s a very chic and fun way to give your home a little rustic accent.

The main problem with veneer furniture, seeing as it’s made with only a thin layer of quality wood, is that it is liable to peel and blister. Once your veneer furniture peels or blisters, which it will do if exposed to too many temperature changes, it essentially becomes worthless, as it has lost the only valuable part of it. Veneer can also chip easily, and if it’s dented there can be no buffing it out.

With solid wood on the other hand, if you get a dent or chip, you can simply repair it, since it’s all the same wood all the way down. The same goes with water stains: if you need to sand it down, that’s no problem. Some proponents of veneer will tell you that solid wood can split, therefore rendering it useless, whereas veneer can handle dry and moist environments. It’s true that it’s hard to use a solid wood piece of furniture if it’s split, but in order to split solid wood you’d need to really put it through some tough weather; and there aren’t many solid wood bookcases kept in the backyard!

When it’s used in common speech, veneer means “a cover or disguise masking something undesirable”, which about sums it up. When you invest in furniture, you want to invest in the genuine article, which is why you should always stick with solid wood furniture.

Apparently, the winter here in Ontario is supposed to be pretty bleak this year, if the Farmer’s Almanac is anything to go by. It’s a bit of a let-down, given last years fairly mild winter, but we’ll press on as normal, bundling up in our big coats, scarves, toques and gloves. What we can’t dress up for winter, however, is our furniture (though how cool would a buffet hutch look in a big down jacket and hat!). Solid wood furniture, as the name suggests, is pretty solid stuff – it’s durable and long lasting, but it does like a little TLC every now and then.

A lot of these care tips can absolutely be followed year-round, but a couple are specific to winter, as its temperature changes can be bad for furniture if left unchecked. Your solid wood furniture from Woodcraft is an investment that will last you a lifetime, but it helps to protect that investment from time to time by showing it some love, and it’s with that in mind that we run down a few of the ways you can ensure your furniture makes it through the winter as new and beautiful as the day you bought it.

A big thing during the winter is, ironically, heat – we have our radiators blasting, our heating vents and fireplaces and ovens, all giving off a very direct heat. Try, if you can, to position your solid wood furniture away from these heat sources, Wood contains some moisture in it, and preserving that level of moisture is key to keeping it looking new. At the same time, avoid placing hot object on your furniture as well; in other words, when you buy wood coffee tables for your home it’s also wise to invest in some coasters! And when you’re sitting down to a holiday meal, and you want to put that roasting pan right on the oak dining table you bought, make sure there’s ample padding underneath (could even be a folded cloth or a wood cutting board) for the heat to diffuse.

Winter is also a particularly bright time of year, and the sun’s rays, if not all that hot, are quite strong. For that reason, try and avoid placing your furniture in direct sunlight. If you happen to like your solid wood furniture in a place that’s near a window, that’s fine, just make sure that during the day the blinds are closed, so as to limit the wood’s exposure to the sun.

And another thing in the winter is humidity, or the lack thereof. The winter dryness is probably something you most commonly associate with your skin, but it can be bothersome for furniture as well. At Woodcraft, we recommend you use a humidifier and control the humidity to around 40-45%, which will defend your furniture against the possibility of cracks or joint splits. For this same reason, it’s not advisable to store your solid wood furniture in the basement or attic, because the humidity can fluctuate quite a bit over the course of a year.

When you go to clean your new piece of furniture (which by the way, you can get at a great price if you check out our current promotions on our website!) we advise you use a soft cloth and follow the wood’s natural grain; and if you’re looking to pick up for than dust, use a damp cloth, but then dry it immediately. Wood furniture is a great investment, and it really isn’t all that finicky. Just like a plant, it thrives when you pay it a little bit of attention. Unlike a plant, it will be in your family for decades to come!

Pretty much universally, people love the look of solid wood furniture, with its sturdy, striking, eye-catching qualities that remind us of nature and of the value of craftsmanship. But “wood” is not a catch-all material, and in fact the type of wood chosen for a particular piece of furniture will have a great impact on the way it looks, feels and ages. A wood can either be hardwood (meaning that they come from deciduous, angiosperm trees), or softwood (meaning they come from coniferous, cone bearing trees), and within those two categories exist even more variation.

In this post, we’ll look at we think are some of the best types of wood for hand made wood furniture and give you a rundown of some of their individual quirks and characteristics.  To say that there’s a hierarchy of woods – that some are just all around better than others – is a misleading way of thinking about wood as a material. Different types of wood certainly have different qualities, but someone might prefer the look of, say, pine, rather than oak; while another person might value oak for its solidness over pine. There are a lot of different ways of looking at wood, and it all boils down to what you want, the person who will be enjoying this piece of furniture for a lifetime.

Oak

Oak is a hardwood in the truest sense of the term: prized for its strength and hardness, this awesome wood has a long history of use in barrels, to keep precious whiskey and wine from pouring out while imparting a unique taste to the libation. But we’re not here to talk about whiskey and wine – oak is also a terrific and traditional choice for making furniture, dating back to the Vikings (and if it was good enough for Vikings, it’s good enough for us!). It often has a pleasing, wavy grain, and is very durable, able to withstand warping over time.

Pine

Pine is lovely and light, with distinctive, rustic knots and a sharp, light colour. Generally less expensive than oak, pine is nevertheless a great option for solid wood furniture, especially if your house is humid or you plan on exposing the furniture to the elements a bit. Because it’s a softwood, its closed cell structure makes it better at resisting water, which is one of the most common ways a piece of wood deteriorates. If you want to take a look at some stunning pine furniture, like our deluxe bookcase, you can visit our Mississauga location or whichever location is closest and ask one of our friendly, knowledgeable staff members for an example.

Maple

The most Canadian of all the woods, eh? Maple, a heavy-duty hardwood with a light, creamy colour that takes well to stains, is surprisingly affordable given its supreme durability and good looks. At Woodcraft, we also use Wormy Maple, which is a type of maple that has been artfully, naturally affected by Ambrosia beetles, nature’s artisans; this unique wood features cool streaks and great structural integrity.

Those are just a few woods to choose from, but of course there’s also reclaimed wood furniture as well as numerous other types of solid wood. At Woodcraft, we’re all about delivering what the customer wants, which means we offer a great range of materials and stains for you to customize your dream furniture. In the end, not all solid woods are the same, but one thing does remain the same: we put the same passion and integrity into every single piece of wood we come across to create a piece of furniture both modern and timeless.

There’s really nothing finer, in the middle of winter when the weather’s crummy and the ground is covered in sleet or snow, than huddling together with friends over the dining table or in the living room. That cozy atmosphere, encouraged by good conversation, good food and drink, is the kind of stuff that makes the winter great… or, at least tolerable. But entertaining isn’t always a cakewalk.

When you’re running around trying to make sure the turkey cooks on time, the gravy reduces properly, the yams cook through, the Brussels sprouts are seasoned well enough that they somewhat mask the flavour (which one of the kids in attendance doesn’t like!), when all of the work of entertaining starts piling up, the last thing you want to worry about is whether you’ve done enough to make your place look good. That’s why at Woodcraft we believe that holiday entertaining ought to start with high quality solid wood furniture in your dining room and living room – you want your house to be cozy, warm and inviting, after all.

For the living room, you’ll want a couple different “centres of attention”, spaces around which people can congregate and sit their drinks down on, chat and eat appies. These are most often going to be a coffee table or an entertainment unit. For a piece of furniture that screams cozy as well as good taste, you should be looking for live edge coffee tables made from solid wood with a natural edge, which will make your guests feel like they’re eating hors d’oeuvres off a piece of art.

Or check out our Turbuckle TV Unit, which you can see on our website in rough sawn wormy maple with a hazelnut stain, which gives it an industrial chic look. It’s a great addition to any holiday party that involves gathering around the TV (like, say, if you have young ones around who are getting bored of all the grown-ups talking), or if you want to show slides from your summer vacation and relive a bit of the warm weather! For something bigger, with just as much charm but in a more contemporary, simple design, check out our Newport 65” TV console w/ side Towers – it doesn’t have the same kid of top surface as the Turnbuckle, but it makes up for it with tons of storage space, which is good when you need to stash away knick-knacks before your guests arrive.

In the dining room, the centre of attention is and always will be the table. It’s where you eat, share stories, play footsies – an elegant wood table is the single most important piece of furniture during the holidays. For a timelessly elegant design and superior build, we suggest you take a look at our “Woodcraft Classic” Dining Table, which comes customizable according to what size you need and what type of wood and finish you want, so you can tailor it to your dining room’s pre-existing motif. Or if you’re more of a “round table” type of person, and want something more modern, you can’t go wrong with our Jackson Reclaimed Single Pedestal table, which makes use of reclaimed solid wood and a metal base – it will serve as both a table and a topic of conversation.

There’s so much great wood furniture to choose from, it’s difficult to know where to start, but when we think of the holidays, we think of natural-looking solid wood and dark finishes. Not that you necessarily have to travel down that path, but it certainly does foster an atmosphere of comfort and warmth. All you have to do, once the furniture is in order and ready to impress, is turn your attention to those 15 side dishes you chose to make.

Shopping for the holidays is a funny thing; you want to get your loved ones a gift they’ll actually use, while still impressing them with a bit of a “wow” factor, and because of this it can be difficult – if not downright impossible-seeming, at times – to figure out what to get them. Clothing can be a real crapshoot, as you have to account not only for their taste (an ever-shifting opinion, if you have teenagers) but also the size and fit, so it’s no wonder December 26^th is the busiest day for returns and exchanges.

Why not give them something timeless, something undeniably good looking and useful to boot? You probably guessed it already – why not give them Woodcraft wood furniture this holiday season, a gift that will last decades, appreciating in value while it’s appreciated by its user. Whenever they use it, for decades to come, they’ll think of you – something you can’t quite say for a cell phone, which tends to have a lifespan of about two years. Here, we’ll look at five gift ideas, each made of solid Canadian wood, and who in your family you might give it to.

For the working parent – The Glenn Executive Desk

This desk just oozes class, with its bevelled trim, turned feet, sophisticated array of stain options and robust structure. For the mom or dad in your life who works in an office, or for that matter anyone who likes a good corner of the house where they can think, read, write and manage papers. If this is a tad too “buttoned up” for your tastes, also check out our more modern styles, like the Parkdale Desk, with its hip metal framing and wormy maple, or our Waterfall Desk, which evokes a Mid-Century modern design.

For the kid heading back to college – The Brent Bedroom Collection

Ok, so this one is for more than just your kid heading back to college; it’s one of our all-around amazing solid wood bedroom sets and it comes complete with a bed, nightstand, armoire and more. It is a unified statement that pulls any room together, and comes with a custom choice of wood – maple, pine, oak, to name a few – as well as your choice of stain.

For the fashionista in your family – The Highland Armoire

Most of us likely have someone in our lives that goes gaga for clothes, and while, as mentioned, it’s a little dicey trying to give them clothes as a Christmas gift, you can definitely give them a beautiful place to store those clothes. Our Highland Armoire is the right mixture of rustic and modern, a perfect statement piece for someone who knows what looks good.

For the Gamer – The Brent 84” TV Console With Hutch

This sizeable entertainment unit is perfect for that person in your family, young or old, who enjoys gaming, or just kicking back and watching Netflix. With a great deal of storage capacity, this can be your catch-all entertainment unit, holding your TV, speakers, gaming consoles, books, and whatever else you want to store. It pairs well with any of our solid wood coffee tables, also; if you go online, you can view our live edge coffee tables available in all sorts of stains.

Picture this: the ink has just dried on the mortgage agreement, and you roll up to your new house, proud and ready to make it your own. As you look around at the empty rooms, each a blank canvas, you begin to imagine all the many possibilities this house holds – that room will be our bedroom, and this room will be our living room; that room will be painted eggshell, while this room will get more of a blue treatment. What you need to consider next is the furniture, the centrepieces around which all the action happens, like the tables, chairs and beds.

You can look at it a couple different ways. There’s always the possibility you’re going to have existing furniture, but, with the new amount of free space, perhaps that furniture either doesn’t make sense or just seems… inadequate. There’s also the possibility that you’re coming in fresh, that you’ve bought your first house and are ready to design its interior from scratch. Either way, you’re going to need more furniture, and as the homeowners here at Woodcraft will tell you, solid wood furniture really is the smartest investment.

Buying wood that’s been handcrafted from Canadian lumber and designed by artisans who imbue each piece they make with precision and uniqueness gives you a product that will appreciate over time. That’s one of the advantages of handcrafted wood: you can buy a piece now, use it your entire life and it will have gone up in value – now, if only cars could do the same! When you buy a rickety piece of furniture from a large company, you get what you pay for, which is a few years use and then the trash compactor.

And then there’s aesthetics to take into account. You’ve just made the biggest purchase of your life, buying this wonderful house; you need to do it the service of giving it a little character. Bring a bit of the outdoors inside with our live edge table or live edge dresser, which incorporate the natural edge of the wood into the piece’s design, giving the pieces a unique, woodsy charm. Or for a more polished look, take a peak at our Ottawa Valley Coffee Table or Ottawa Valley Double Dresser, both featuring a restrained, elegant trim that would look awesome alongside some vintage lamps or clocks.

So, we’ve got a good investment that’ll last a long time and look great, but will it look good with your existing furniture? Let’s take the dining room as an example: you want a wood table that can be a statement but not stick out like a sore thumb. Our Chrome X and Modern X-Base dining tables capitalize of a simple, minimalist design that pairs with pretty much everything, and, in the bedroom, our classic Brent Panel Bed’s low footboard and customizable stain allow it to blend into the décor. For a sleek, contemporary look that won’t overpower your dining room, we’ve got the Sterling Sideboard, which we absolute love (maybe we’re a bit bias, but we think you’ll love it too), which, as an added bonus, comes with a lot of storage space, making it both stylish and functional. Since we handcraft everything, you can customize the size on the Sterling Sideboard as well, allowing it to fit your space.

There’s also just something awesome about wood furniture that’s tough to describe – it has more soul than plastic or metal, and solid Canadian lumber especially has this sturdy quality, like you know you’re looking at a well-built piece of furniture. We’re as proud of the furniture we make as we were proud of the first homes we bought, and that’s saying a lot. Let wood furniture make your new home a unique, solid expression of your good taste – it’s an investment as solid as the wood itself.

Four legs and a top, but with so many amazing possibilities – the humble table may be the simplest piece of furniture you’ll buy, but that doesn’t make it any less special. The type of wood that’s used, the style and finish of the edges, the way the legs interact with the table top, all make a table unique, and whereas some furniture companies are happy to slap a few low-quality pieces of wood together to last you a few years, at Woodcraft we dedicate ourselves to quality. Woodcraft solid wood furniture is handcrafted from Canadian lumber and we pay that lumber the attention and respect it deserves.

Fall is the sweet spot for buying a wooden table. The al fresco (read: outside) dining that we do in the summer is not really an option any longer, so we move back in to eat dinner, but we still want to eat in a nice atmosphere. Fall dining is all about ambience; with the bold, natural colours and comforting food, you want a table that’s equally as warm and inviting. And you don’t want to leave it until winter to buy a table, when there’s so much else to worry about, like Christmas presents and whatnot. With that in mind, we’ve put together a fall guide to the finest tables, whether it’s a wood coffee table you’re after, or a dining table.

We’ll start in the dining room – depending on your personal style, you’re either going to want something a little more rustic, or something maybe more stylish and contemporary. Luckily, at Woodcraft, we have craftsmen with diverse tastes that are able to make either style. For a more rustic look, we recommend you check out our “live edge” tables, which refers to the way the natural surface of the wood, with all its beautiful knots and gnarls, is left intact as a edge. The raw outer edges of our Arcadia Live Edge Dining Table, for example, perfectly compliment things like hardwood flooring, brick walls and industrial style pieces; or, with a lighter stain, it can sit comfortably and elegantly in a minimally designed white dining room – possibilities are numerous.

For that more stylish and contemporary look, our Metropolitan Dining Table is hard to beat. Its sharp-lined tabletop and arced pedestal cut an impressive figure, and with the option of customizing the finish on the top – smooth, rough-sawn, random plane or rough cut – you can ensure that it fits in with your décor. And to go along with more of a vintage, sort of mid-century look (which is quite popular right now) we created the Loft Table, a solid Canadian maple table which is classic, simple and, if we do say so ourselves, pretty darn sexy. Décor-wise, nothing really says fall quite like the natural look of wooden tables and chairs; it’s yet another reason to reconsider replacing your old table with one our solid, handcrafted works of art.

As for coffee tables – the dining table’s little cousin, if you will – we’ve got an array of choices. We like the idea of having a coffee table that’s simple enough to stand on its own as a part of the room, but which you can also adorn with stuff like centrepieces or a flower vase. And a coffee table needs to be able to be solidly built – if it’s going to hold a hot coffee, you don’t want the flimsy legs of an assemble-it-yourself table propping it up. Our Brent, Newport and Shaker coffee tables stand out as being a great marriage of style and functionality, each containing drawers where you can stow magazines or even cutlery (if, like us, you eat in front of the TV every once and a while).

The table may be a simple, humble piece of furniture, but it’s where the family gathers. This fall, give us a ring or send us a message and inquire about our tables – you can have it in time for Thanksgiving!

It is a truth acknowledged all over Ontario that a weekend at the cottage is the finest way to relax and recharge your batteries. Toronto, especially, can be a rat race, and so it’s vitally important that we have these sorts of sanctuaries where we can go and enjoy the finer things in life, whatever that means to you – family, a BBQ dinner with a few beverages, or just relaxing next to a good book. To that end, everything in your cottage should be carefully curated to maximize enjoyment and minimize frustration. Your cell phone should be on mute, your pantry should be stocked with your favourite foods, and your furniture should be sturdy, beautiful and functional. In this post, we’re going to look at three ways you can redecorate your cottage this Autumn to get the most out of it, with an emphasis on our passion, solid wood furniture.

Make Your Bedroom A Sanctuary

Whatever games and raucous conversations you get up to in the kitchen and living room, you want to know that when you hit the hay, things will be serene and comfortable. At Woodcraft, we make solid wood bedroom furniture with an eye toward comfort, crafting each piece to work alone or as part of a bedroom set. What you don’t want is to crawl into a ramshackle bed at the end of a long day driving and swimming, with its one leg that creaks back and forth as you toss and turn. There’s something so satisfying hopping into a solid, well-built bed, and the choice we give you to pick your stain means that you can tailor it to your cottage walls. We like the Simply  Country Sleigh Bed as a cottage choice, because of its country-style design and high footboard; you should see it in a red cherry stain – it’s really something to behold.  However you fashion your bedroom, one this is for certain: make sure your window screens are intact and your door is shut, because every year those mosquitoes seem to double their efforts.

Make Your Living Room Into An Activities Space

If the bedroom is the quiet space, the living room is its opposite. You want the space to be conducive to fun and leisure, which usually means not overcrowding it – just a simple couch and rustic, live edge coffee table on one side, a fireplace (ideally) on the other side, and a nice open space in between. If you wanted somewhere to stow your TV and board games, our Brent 74” Console w/ Hutch is a classic entertainment unit with lots of storage that would fit in perfectly to a cottage. Or for something a little smaller, our Turnbuckle TV Unit combines that salvaged look of an old workbench with a contemporary design and practical storage space.

Make Your Kitchen/Dining Room The Social Centre

There’s something uniquely comforting about sitting around a table with friends or family at the cottage, catching up on everyone’s life over a meal and a few drinks, or playing an intense round of crib or euchre. Whether your table in the kitchen (as in some smaller cottages we’ve seen) or a dining room, the social centre of the cottage needs a piece of furniture befitting its importance, and an oak dining table offers that, with elegance and space enough to fit everyone. Oh, and oak is pretty forgiving, meaning that if someone doesn’t use a coaster, you won’t have too much trouble getting rid of the water ring! With a tasteful centrepiece in the middle of the table, and a few copper pots hanging on the wall, you’ve got yourself one rustic kitchen or dining room.

Other than that, really, it’s all about making sure the deck has some comfortable lounge chairs, and the BBQ has enough fuel. Autumn is a great time at the cottage, with the weather cooling off just enough that you can spend all day outdoors and all evening inside, and redecorating with solid wood makes it just that much better.