Usually visitors' first question upon seeing the box beams in the dining room is whether we think there is something similar hidden above the adjoining living room ceiling. This is a blurry photo, but you can see the plainness of the living room (photo taken right after repainting the room last summer).We don't think there were. Mostly because the current ceiling is at the height of the original dining room ceiling. And we can't see above it when we poke a hole in the wall from another room.
We do believe the quarter-round currently installed is new. At some point (probably during the general "update" in the 1950's, when the kitchen was remodeled, and the dining room ceiling dropped, and the new windows installed in the dining room) that they also stripped off all the cornices from the downstairs woodwork. It remains only in the back room (currently a tv room) and the upstairs hall.We will be installing matching, fancier, crown-molding in both the dining room and the living room when the mural is finished. I'm pushing to have the cornices re-installed (we can get the same cut at Rejuvenation House) but that would be fairly expensive.
2 comments:
You don't think they ripped the box beams out of the living room, then put up plaster board. And then just gave up in the dining room?
Is the ceiling plaster/lathe? or is there plaster board over it?
Ooooh, a really good point I hadn't thought of. We will have to check the materials of the living room ceiling.
On the other hand, houses of this period often had plain ceilings in a room opening to a box-beamed ceiling. (After the dining room discovery, I checked out about 20 books on the period's homes and blueprints from the library and studied them in great detail.) So it's easily possible that it was always the plain-busy combination -- but there would have been more ornate cornices and crown moulding (or whatever you call the stuff around the top of the walls), and very likely wainscoted walls around the living room, too.
But a materials test will tell us much about the ceiling. I'll get back to you on that.
Post a Comment