Anyway. Our front room is looking ace, and I wanted to focus on one little bit of it that was a bit unique about this particular phase of our work - picture rails. The walls in this particular room were so wayward and wonky that our poor plasterer (absolutely top guy called Mickey - leave a comment if you want his details) had to do quite a bit of remedial stuff to make the walls straight.
All this meant that our beautiful picture rails had to come off and be put back up again...
Fortunately they came off really easily; the paint stripping however was a bit of an ordeal. Soooo many layers of paint. Best way to strip them was just a bradawl and some wood chisels. Very satisfying in a funny sort of way, taking them back to their original wood state. Beautiful. Made me think about the people who first put them up in this house and whether or not they had to cart all the wood for them using horses....
Once stripped, we then had to paint with copious amounts of primer (well, the stupendously helpful Lady About Southend did a fair bit of this..), then lovely white eggshell.
But of course, the trickiest bit was putting them back up - especially when the ceiling isn't that straight and you can't really find a straight line, even if the spirit level tells you otherwise... Some help from Man About Southend and a little trick from woodworking - the story stick. Oh, and of course the various bits didn't quite fit as they used to because the walls were now slightly differently shaped... So, sawing funny angles again - 60 degrees as well as the usual 45 degrees.
All in all pretty chuffed. Of course the best thing about picture rails is being able to move pictures around so easily - and (yay internet) people still make hanging systems for them.
Oh, and a quick nod to MsJane, whose fantastic photographs are now on our wall, and in the first picture at the top of the post...
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