Dining room restoration

Project updates and progress reports
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Mick_VT
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Re: Dining room restoration

Post by Mick_VT »

Texas_Ranger wrote:Spraying isn't that new - when we removed some of our original 1914 floors we found plenty of overspray in the original wall colours on the subfloor. They used pump sprayers that look very much like garden sprayers back then.


Interesting, though I wasn't basing the date on it being sprayed, more my knowledge of the house and the fact that the spraying seemed to be from the same period as some early sheetrock / wallpaper that I uncovered. Even so it was still just an educated guess :)
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Re: Dining room restoration

Post by Texas_Ranger »

Mick_VT wrote:
Texas_Ranger wrote:Spraying isn't that new - when we removed some of our original 1914 floors we found plenty of overspray in the original wall colours on the subfloor. They used pump sprayers that look very much like garden sprayers back then.


Interesting, though I wasn't basing the date on it being sprayed, more my knowledge of the house and the fact that the spraying seemed to be from the same period as some early sheetrock / wallpaper that I uncovered. Even so it was still just an educated guess :)


That totally makes sense!

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Re: Dining room restoration

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Long overdue on an update to this project....

I stalled out for a few months, other things taking priority, but got restarted in (I think) October by hanging new sheetrock on the ceiling.

I finally made a call on the Millwork. I had been going back and forth between a decorative hardwood such as Birch, or going for a final painted finish, for which I planned to use Poplar. The Birch route would have come with a whole host of problems, not to mention that the 1860s doors are of very low grade wood and not great shape so would need to be replaced (or painted) to match the same standard of trim. Then there was the existing casings, all of which are Hemlock. I could have added Birch veneer, but it all started to seem like a lot of work and expense for what will already be a big step up in opulence for the room, even in paint. The final confirmation decision came down to price. When I got the quote for the millwork in Popular it was about 40% more than I had guessed, so it sealed the deal.
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Re: Dining room restoration

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My plan all along for this room has been to bring it to a standard above what it would have been in 1860. The interior decoration of the house when built was very utilitarian. Plain casings and baseboards, wide Hemlock floors, cheap mill grade pine four panel doors. In around 1900 a few updates were made to add a bit of modern flair.

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At this time the guy on the right of the picture above (one J Baxter Sargent) lived in the house. He made major landscaping adjustments to the front yard (leveling and lowering it by around four feet) and adding an entry porch to the front door) seen here:

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The porch is long gone (presumably taken out by snow in the early 40s), I found some evidence of it when I stripped and repainted the house. Including repairs which indicated that the removal was not deliberate and was quite forceful. What does remain in the house is the remodeled entry hall complete with its c1900 newel and bannister. There is also a hard maple floor in the dining room that may have been his handy work. This, along with the fact that the PO had removed around 95% of the original interior trim (replacing it with very cheap grade pine, poorly installed), lead me to the decision to continue Baxter Sargent's work and update the dining room to have modern elements from around 1900.

I am doing this in a loose fashion. I may use some hardware from before 1900. My rationale: this is rural Vermont, fashions did not always move quickly, and local hardware store would have more likely than not have had older stock on the shelves for some items. There is also the renowned Yankee frugality: reuse everything and get the "last squeak" from it. So older hardware may well have survived a remodel.

I am also ok with some newer items. It is no longer 1900, other things could have been added or changed over the years. My target look for the room once done will be somewhere vaguely around 1900 - 1915. Furniture may come from anywhere in a 50 year span but should work visually together. Anyway I am getting ahed of myself, at this point details have still to emerge / formulate in my mind.

One rule I do have is do no harm to remaining original details. This means the four panel doors stay, as do the window-sills, hard maple floor (even though it is in poor shape).
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Re: Dining room restoration

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I had ruminated over trim choices for a good few months. My inspiration was the reprint of the E. L. Roberts millwork catalogue from 1903. In this catalog there are several room designs in their "unselected Birch" (this is where the idea of potentially using Birch came from). The designs were contemporary, and I assume quite modern for 1903, so they gave me several ideas for a "look". I settled on a style actually used for a bedroom in the catalog and set about trying to locate a mill that could make very similar or the same trim without resorting to having custom knives ground for each profile. In the end I found an online catalogue for Copper Beech Millwork in Greenfield MA (http://www.copperbeech.com) and I could start the process of trying to tie up the Roberts profiles to theirs.

More to come later... I need to go work on the project for a while :D
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Re: Dining room restoration

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Here is the bedroom room design from the E L Roberts catalog

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Details of the moldings here:

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I am combining a few of the elements. That "cornice effect" with the picture rail is one of them. Also as this room is much smaller than the bed chamber in the Roberts example, and also because I needed to work with limitations from the original elements left in the room, I scaled some of the proportions down accordingly. e.g. the casing needed to be 3-3/4" not the 4-1/2" that Roberts used.
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Re: Dining room restoration

Post by phil »

I'm having trouble figuring out what the cornice effect is. In the picture you can see two moldings the ones that run above the door an it's casings. It appears there is one picture rail and another.. or is it two moldings near each other? hard to tell..

I like how they used the chair rail to separate the color difference of the room. since my living room seemed to have evidence of a molding about that height I would like to replace it but I should probably be looking through more old books to get some ideas of what mine would have looked like and what I can aim for , obviously mine is a later date, 1924. i think I had picture rail about 16 inches or so from the ceiling and the top of the wainscott at eye level.

I noticed that in the picture they show the picture rails but they seem to be more of a design implement and they have hung the pictures where they want not necessarily using the picture rails. I think I had the assumption that since they are picture rails they are to be used to hang all your pictures but now I am starting to think , no they are more there for fashionable ornamentation and not so much to be used to hang up everything imaginable.

I'm leaning towards installing my original baseboards but with about a 1/2" spacer behind and then later when the room is in use I could sneak in and do some Faux panel wall application right over the drywall. this will step out the wall and cover my spacers. Id finish the top with a chair rail or wainscott cap. then use the picture rail about the hieght of your photo above but probably just one.
I think my house originally had either cedar or fir wainscott but the price is to high for this point in time ( unless I went with MDF) but the faux panels would be cheaper and I don't 'need anything custom milled except the chair rail and picture rail. I have a great molding place near me so I can get it there in fir. all my trim is fir. .

anyway off to your project.. I wasn't intending to "steal the thread" jut making some comparisons

Phil

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Re: Dining room restoration

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phil wrote:I'm having trouble figuring out what the cornice effect is. In the picture you can see two moldings the ones that run above the door an it's casings. It appears there is one picture rail and another.. or is it two moldings near each other? hard to tell..


Look at it as a cross section Phil, the combination of the molding laid flat on the ceiling and the picture rail placed close to it on the wall creates something that appears like a solid cornice, but in reality is two part and incorporates a picture rail. Maybe this will help...
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I added a third molding, it is the unprimed strip. It is just a very small (3/8") cove that I thought added a little more depth, it kind of follows the curve of the back of the picture rail, while still allowing enough depth for the picture rail hooks.
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Re: Dining room restoration

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Ok, time for an overdue project update.

I took two weeks off over the holiday to really focus on this project. In that time I have gone from bare lath walls and no trim to trim complete, sheetrock hung and mostly taped. I am now into the laborious mudding, filling, finishing stage. So here are a few pics taken this morning. I just realized I do not have any good pictures of the finished windows (other than the wonky one) I will post one of those later...

View towards the pantry door, you would never even know there used to be a door to the kitchen on the left of it (to the right of the window) :D
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Looking towards the hall and bathroom (yeah the bathroom is off the dining room - old houses, oy!) The shoe molding is not finished of course, those are just some test pieces. The rest will go down once the floor is redone
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Speaking of floors I was never 100% sure what the wood was as it had a few layers of very yellowed poly over it. Before fitting the baseboard I take advantage of the ease of access to sand the first 6" of floor up to and under the base. This floor is, as expected, Hard Maple. Adn, when I say hard I mean HARD 40 grit paper in my large random orbit sander polishes it! Refinishing will be fun :lolno:

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Finally here is the new (salvage) built in, that if you read the older posts, you will know replaces / reimagined what might have been there before the 1950s remodel. Note the ceiling sag. Due to it's age and one time dereliction, this house is crooked absolutely everywhere. All angles in the trim were at least two degrees off of 90, some up into double digits. The hook will hold the slag lamp shade that you can see in the pantry. That shade has a circa 1910 center draft kerosene lamp in it. It will sit above the dining room table. Offset from it will be an period light fitting that will have a couple of low wattage bulbs for use when the kerosene lamp is not lit
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Re: Dining room restoration

Post by Willa »

Wow ! That's a lot of progress !

Where did the small ceiling medallion come from ? You mentioned family in the plaster trades ?

When it's all done it will look like nothing had ever happened to your house*. Those are the kind of renovations I especially appreciate.

* Meaning the work that you did is very sympathetic and blends right in.

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