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picture rails and other carpentry

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  • 29-05-2007 10:28am
    #1
    NextSteps
    Registered Users Posts: 984 ✭✭✭


    I'm renovating a 1920s house with 9 or 10 foot ceilings. Before we started there were picture rails in every room bar the bathroom and kitchen, and the hall where there was a dado rail.

    When it's finished the living area will be much bigger and brighter than before (one big living area including the kitchen, with patio doors), but we still want to keep or match some of the old elements that made the house nice - the same architraving, skirting, doors, stairs, fireplaces and floorboards, basically. At the same time we want to use lots of bright colours and not have a fussy house.

    The only thing I'm wondering about is the picture rail. These don't seem to feature in any newer houses. Why? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Apart from making it easier to paint, of course! Is it just a change in fashions? And might an old house look lost without it?


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    #2
    muffler
    Registered Users Posts: 46,143 ✭✭✭✭muffler


    Probably better off in DIY


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    #3
    Wertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 11,909 ✭✭✭✭Wertz


    Picture rails don't feature in newer places for a few reasons...for one, high ceilings are a lot less commonplace than way back when, and a picture rail in a "normal" height room would look out of place. For another, these days you just bang a picture hook into the wall and hang your pic...back then you'd bang a nail into the rail (rather than risk damaging the gypsum/lime plaster or the paint/wallpaper) and swing your pic from that by a long string.

    People don't tend to hang as many pics nowadayas as what they would have back at the turn of the century either (going by photos I've seen).

    They're also a dust catcher.


    Easier to paint?? How so? They're a f*ckin' torture, usually need to be finished in oil, requiring multiple coats, you're up and down stepladders more times than you'd be putting twenty coats on the ceiling.
    It really does need to come in the same colour as the rest of the woodwork...cheating by just doing it in the emulsion you're using on the walls/ceiling just doesn't do it justice.

    As for the house lookin lost without it? Yeah probably...my firm did one of those georgian places in merrion sq last winter and all the rails had been removed over the years...they were replaced and they definitely added balance to the room....the ceiling seemed too high without them, but bringing the ceiling colour back down the wall to meet the rail added brightness to the room and definitely gave it more a of a period feel.


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