Pulling down the moldings

In the first floor entry, dining room, and piano room, we are having the ceilings re-done. We have a plaster guy that is going to put up 3/8″ blue board and plaster over it to tighten up and clean up the ceiling. Before we can get that crew in, the crown moldings needed to come down. The crown in the entry and piano room was a picture rail molding that wasn’t installed or stained particularly well. We’re planning on upgrading the moldings to something a little more substantial.  Here are the picture rail moldings stacked up on the porch.

You can see they were in rough shape and would have needed a fair amount of work. Since the ceiling is being re-done, it was a good excuse to ditch them and start new.

I pulled them down in the Piano room first and I notices some odd brown paper under the moldings. It wasn’t until I moved on to the entry that I realized it was the original wallpaper. The paper in the Piano room must have been a different type because it looked like kraft paper and I couldn’t descern any original pattern. In the entry however…

There is the neat hand painted forest/tree paper. Very much back in style and great colors!

In the dining room, there was a painted moldings that really was quite pretty.

I do think it’s time to upgrade to something a bit more substantial to show off my tall ceilings but it really is sweet molding. Under that trim, was this bold graphic pattern in navy and gold.

Again, very much in-style with the stenciling craze these days but decidedly too dark for the room. If the entry still had the trees, I might have kept it but that navy print would have had to go.

I’m still working on scheduling the plaster guys but I’ll keep you posted!

Sarah