In the second bedroom (our erstwhile “office”), previous residents had slapped paint everywhere over the decades. Some of J’s work this week has been uncovering the hardware (original bits on the original doors, which we also stripped and repainted).
The latch for the attic hatch/over stairs closet is stamped “Pruce’s Patent” above “A. B. & Co. Bm” with “THE BOSS” on the springy bit held by the brass thumbscrew. Under layers of paint and oxidation she also found the loverly brass handle:
Last week, I had already done the fittings for the main door (similar to earlier ones, except the Bakelite doorknobs still need cleanup):
Busy at work. No running save for a Saturday 5K diagnostic jog to try out the sore IT band (good, but not good enough to start ramping back up). Painted the bedroom (that we plastered last week). Trump did not get convicted in the Senate but may soon do so in Atlanta. Pubs are still closed. I’m getting squirrelly enough that even I notice it.
We’ve been beset with niggling details of other room projects but we need to be done upstairs before the first week of March when we will focus on fireplaces. The 2nd Bedroom (which serves as our home office since no one visits even without the excuse of a global pandemic) was the first ceiling plaster job I did to cover the Artex abomination. It was my “learning to plaster” room and as such I have always intended to go back and put the whole thing right.
For instance, look at the corrugation in the plaster around the wiring rose. That’s all my lousy trowelling and failure to smooth things before the mud set permanently. The entire ceiling was like that.
First, though, I moved the light fixture to the perceived centre of the room. If you draw diagonals from the corners, the actual centre is almost directly above the desk chair due to the chimney breast jutting out. This was unsatisfying so we tried the a point behind that one and midway between the chimney breast and opposite wall; this seemed to far back so we compromised on halfway between these extremes.
As luck would have it, the hole I drilled went directly through the centre of one of the rafters making this location suitable for heavier fixtures when we decide what we really want in there.
Anyway, in addition to the old through-hole (inexplicably right next to the west facing window, if you look in the above photo) we also had to fill in holes for shade mounts and the old radiator mounts plus extend the wall plaster to the height of our slightly smaller skirting boards.
This will need to cure a week or so then we can carry on painting the hovel.
Endless British Pub Crawl (Part 3) 