Monday 12 February 2018

Front Room Painting & Stairs Work

First off i'm disgusted with myself, I lost over 70 high quality images just before I went to update the blog, so all I have left are some phone shots, so apologies for the poor quality snaps below. Further apologies for the lack of updates, January was a slow month as I was away on business, plus getting trades back in after the Christmas break was slow going. So I continued with some more painting in the mean time.

Lastly, follow me on Instagram! I should have started this page years ago, I plan to update it much more frequently than the blog, at least twice a week:

https://www.instagram.com/georgianrenovation/

I started painting the ground floor front room. I started with a 50:50 mix of white emulsion and water to clean up the walls. After a light sand, I began with the colour:




Covering up the kitchen:
 

I went with a colour match of Farrow & Ball's Mouses Breath for the walls and Pointing for the joinery, using a high quality Irish paint, Colourtrend:





As mentioned above, i've lost bucketloads of images of the finishing up of finer details like the moldings on the windows, the skirting etc, but here are a few of the arch plinths where they join the skirting:




Pointing emulsion on the ceiling and cornice:





Starting the walls:









In daylight:



This is a Victorian dining table I picked up, along with a set of six Georgian chairs. Still not sure about the table size yet, the chairs will also be recovered:




Moving on to the stairs, after the ceiling on the underside was removed in certain sections so structural repairs could be made, new laths needed to be nailed in place so that a new section of plaster could be affixed. These are likely chestnut laths, separated by hand:



The underside of the stairs where the new ceiling is required:




Haigney restoration supplied and fitted the laths, this is the work after one day:









Unfortunately they got the section below wrong. The curved stringer on the right of the photo represents where the ceiling should meet the edge of the stairs, the laths are positioned a good four inches short of the edge of the stringer so this section will have to be redone:



The fiasco with McLyn Joinery continues, they started work on the stairs at the end of September 2017, have been onsite for a total of 9 days and have not been back since. Very poor scheduling and timekeeping from them, remains to be seen if they'll be back.

A few more snaps of the front room:






My new utility room is set to be installed within the next 10 days, along with new smart heating controls from EvoHome. The stairs ceiling should be complete in the next fortnight and i'm hoping to get started with the new shutterboxes around the kitchen window, stairs window and full refurbishment of the front foor, new fanlight and door case, still lots to come!

8 comments:

  1. Squee! A new post!

    Yes, argh about the lost images! Argh!

    I hugely admire your dedication to Doing Things Right. Just inspiring.

    Looking at the lath work, my brain explodes! It's hard to imagine that the ceiling with soon be a sensuous, elegant, sweeping curve of plaster.

    Sad to read about McLyn Joinery. The restoration of the stair is one of your extraordinary achievements and I look forward to the completed work. Was a glory it will be!

    And the front room! It never ceases to amaze me that paint, the easiest task, finally makes a room come alive, and all the HARD work to reach that point recedes.

    Again, congrats! Love everything you are doing.

    From America,

    Ross

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    Replies
    1. Thanks so much Ross, your words of encouragement are much appreciated! You're so right about the amount of work that goes into the prep and then the last 5% of the work brings it all together. I see you went on a reading spree yesterday, glad you enjoyed the posts, sometimes I look back on them myself and squirm thinking about the work involved! Stephen

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  2. Lovely house, I've spent the past few days reading from the beginning and I commend the work you've done. Most people (myself included) wouldn't have it in them! Thank you for chronicling the work, I look forward to reading more.
    -Nicole

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  3. I came here via the garden-clearing video on YouTube and have been slowly digesting the past 4 1/2 years of work. Extraordinary effort, but also such an extraordinary opportunity--so much history all around you, it's really worth it despite the epic undertaking. I lived in Dublin for a while in the early 2000s and am transported via your blog to the beautiful Georgian streets off Merrion Square.

    Greetings all the way from Texas, btw

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  4. Wow thanks so much for reading and the nice comment, there certainly is a lot of history around us and I'm very familiar with Merrion Square, a beautiful part of the city!

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  7. My heart went pitter-patter when I saw the woodwork around the front window - Holy Hathor! The color you chose for the walls is very interesting too - I couldn't decide if it was grey, olive green, brown, or something from outerspace. Just love it, gorgeous color with the white trim. I wish, though, that paint companies would give more descriptive names to their paint colors. I had no idea what "Mouse's Breath" was going to be - invisible? Something like a foggy color? After all, you don't see breath normally unless it's cold outside. I guess I'm just too literal for my own good.

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