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Tour of the Restored Living Quarters

Bob tours the finished historic renovation of the Virginia governor's mansion and its historic office, the grand ballroom, dining rooms, the finished kitchen, and the new living quarters on the second floor.

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Tour of the Restored Living Quarters

computer-generated transcript - may not be 100% accurate

" We're really looking forward to having our Queen Elizabeth portrait come back to us and we expect to hang her here over the sideboard"

" Whose in the portrait that's there temporarily?"

" This is Governor James Barber, who was the 1st Governor to actually live in the mansion when it was finished in 1813. Of course, this dining room wasn't here, it was added in 1906 but we"

" Which is the same year as the Battleship Silver"

" Battleship Silver, but we thought like Governor Barber deserved the place [unk]"

" Even if it's temporary"

" Exactly"

" Yeah, well I loved seeing all the silver on. Barbara, again the choice of colors has a lot to do with"

" Once again, we used this beautiful rich gray which was to show off all of our fantastic silver that we have here and it just makes it sparkle and zing."

" I mean before, we had cream color on these walls"

" Cream color tone on tone once again, woodwork didn't show up and it really didn't do anything to help the beautiful appointments we have."

" Right, now it doesn't look like there have been that many changes to this dining room, however there have been some real major ones, and I would think the addition plays a big role in the use of the room, right?"

" It does, we were very committed to having an addition added so that we could have an accessible mansion, one that was accessible to all Virginians"

" And we achieved that by adding a new part to the mansion that has an elevator, a new elevator and new restroom facilities. It was a wonderful part of the project because we were able to combine 20th century technology with an old house"

" Right."

" How many people can you seat here in the dining room? "

" When the table's fully expanded, we can seat up to 32, so of course, your at opposite ends of the dining room at that point"

" Sure."

" But we do have many State functions where we entertain that many and it's exciting now to have a kitchen facility that actually can accommodate entertaining that many people in the mansion"

" When I first met him, when we first toured the mansion, he had what was the equivalent of an old New York apartment kitchen down there and now we've got a gleaming new facility which has not only the restaurant stove, the big gas burners and the grilling station and the ovens, I've never seen so many pieces of equipment in a kitchen, I don't really know what to do with all of them, but I know that you're gonna be a very well fed bunch of Virginians up here."

" Well we're happy that Mark knows what to do with them And we're excited to have a kitchen that is state of the art now because we do a lot of economic development and tourism here in the mansion and we believe that it needs to have that kind of ability to serve people that come to dine at the mansion"

" Right, especially at this level"

" Right"

" And the fact is that it's a home but it's really also a very public place"

" It is"

" And it's also a working environment. I know that in the basement we now have a lot of office space, right?"

" That's right. There has always been office space but we try to make more usable and better suited to accommodate the needs of the people that work down there."

" Our mansion director, Donna Case, has an office there as well as her assistant. There is an executive protection unit that is housed there, as well as just the basic fundamentals of a home. Our laundry room is there."

" So there are many functions that, working everyday functions that go on in this house that are accommodated in the lower level."

" And here in the dining room, I'm thinking just in one of my last visits here, we had the entire section of the wall behind us here, open, so that you could look through the brick work."

" That's right."

" And now, the wings coating has been repaired and everything is back the way it should be."

" Well that's right and to have those old air handlers removed so that we can now have our beautiful Demilune tables under the window"

" Really brings the mansion back to the quality and the state that it should be in."

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