Home expands with dramatic dining room

PITTSBURGH - Kate and Chris Eyerman didn't get a new dining room just for Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners, but it certainly helps when gatherings outgrow the granite-topped bar where they and their two daughters eat most meals.

"We usually have 12 people for holidays," Kate Eyerman said.

That doesn't feel like a crowd in this 18- by-15-foot space with a 15-foot cathedral ceiling, and there is plenty of elbow room at the nearly 10- by-4 1/2-foot table.

The cherry Arhaus table arrived just a few days before Christmas 2012, the final piece of a nearly four-month project that also included a kitchen expansion and the addition of a bathroom, bedroom and large mudroom.

But the biggest piece of eye candy was the dining room addition, whose exposed white oak timber frame extends outside to the new covered patio.

Atlantic Timber Frame created all of the room's oak trusses, which are decorative in the interior but structural on the outside. Sandstone used throughout the house, including a new fireplace mantel, came from the same Columbus, Ohio, quarry that supplied the home's original builders.

Where they previously had no back door, the Eyermans now have two French doors that bring in sunlight and views of their 2 1/4 acres of grass and apple and pear trees. As a bonus they now have an outdoor living space just steps away.

"We eat out there quite a bit, and we entertain there," Kate said.

Her husband agreed, saying that they hope to add an outdoor fireplace and extend the patio even more into the yard.

"It's like an outdoor living room," he said.

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Home expands with dramatic dining room