Dining Room

Baltimore's Center Club is holding two "grand reopening" celebrations next week to unveil the results of a $2.7 million renovation completed over the summer. The private dining club at 100 Light St. has scheduled a reception for government, business and civic leaders on Sept. 9 and a members-only reception on Sept. 10. The project represented a show of faith by the club and its board of governors in downtown Baltimore, where it started in 1962. The club's first significant upgrade in 20 years, it included a new harbor-view dining room, wine room, bar and lounge area, dance floor and private dining rooms.

The ambience at the house on Foreston Road is so congenial and open, its two front doors seem to symbolize a double welcome for family and friends.But the architectural detail, says owner Joe Tillman, really dates back to the early 1800s. Residents of the once-bustling village of Beckleysville in northern Baltimore County probably borrowed the two-door tradition from Pennsylvania Germans."There's at least five houses like this in Beckleysville," says Mr. Tillman, who owns the home with his wife, Kate.

A dining room roof at a historic hotel and residence in Frostburg has collapsed, but no one was injured. The collapse at the Hotel Gunter happened just before 9 a.m. Saturday. Frostburg Fire Department spokeswoman Megan Blubaugh says firefighters arrived after a fire alarm went off in the building; the roof of the dining room crumbled while firefighters were inside. The hotel opened in 1897, but the roof that was destroyed was part of a one-story dining room later added on the back of the building.

Paul's Place Outreach Center is a wide-ranging community center in Southwest Baltimore's Pigtown neighborhood. The center has a dining room where lunch is served five days a week. Paul's Place also includes a clothing center, literacy program and computer lab, as well as programs for children. The mission of Paul's Place is to improve the quality of life in Southwest Baltimore, according center's Web site. A quote in the dining room reads, "Hope, personal dignity and growth in a welcoming, safe and respectful environment."

My dining room is traditionally furnished, with Italian Provincial-style pieces. It's time to give the space a more contemporary look, perhaps by introducing a mixture of styles. How do I start?As always, you should start by planning. And to get you going in the direction you describe, I offer this photo of a dining room transformed by New York designer Celeste Cooper. Even though she retained her client's Directoire-style furniture, she gave the room an avant-garde look with new colors, lighting, art works and carpeting.

There's an 8-foot framed opening between my living room and dining room. It strikes me as an unattractive architectural feature, partly because the furniture styles of the two rooms are not compatible. The opening also gives guests a distracting view into the dining room both before and after dinner.I've considered installing doors, but they would have to be large and there's no wall space for them to open outward. A pair of bi-fold doors might be a good option, though I've never seen any I liked.

Joyce and Karl Ardo wanted a house by the water and a room with a view. The couple focused their search on Wilde Lake, an open area teeming with wildlife in the middle of Columbia. It was 2004, during the real estate frenzy, and several waterfront townhouses that they bid on fell through. Then in August, a single-family house on the lake came on the market. Ardo toured the home before her husband got there. It was exactly what she had envisioned. "My idea was to revitalize a house," she said.

There's a lot of love at Nora's Kabob. Brothers Sevi and Raymond Sinanian, who opened the Ellicott City restaurant last month, are quick to profess their affection for the flavors of their youth, including the almighty pomegranate, and for their mother, for whom Nora's is named. Fortunately, the duo is more than just talk; their devotion to flavorful Middle Eastern cuisine shines through in their food. Though the service isn't perfect, the Sinanians' appreciation for their customers is clear.

Regi's in Federal Hill was hit by an electrical fire on Tuesday morning. The fire, according to owner Alan Morstein began in an outside walk-in refrigerator and spread into the restaurant's back dining room.  The main dining room and bar were unaffected by smoke and water, Morstein said. "Had it not been for our neighbors who alerted Engine Company #2 on Light Street at the first signs of the fire, we would be rubble," Morstein wrote in an email to his customers.

One brilliant reversal has transformed an impractical floor plan into an easy-living space for a young family.So discouraged with the layout of their small town house, the family was considering a new home despite the fact that they loved their neighborhood. Enter designer Eileen Brown and a great idea: Why not simply reverse the existing floor plan? "We reconfigured rather than reconstructed," she says. "The way the builder built these town homes, the dining room was right next to the open kitchen, and the corner of the living room was unusable.