Victorian ceiling restoration

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As you will read in my posts the majority of our work is reasonably straight forward. Having said this it’s much more than just painting our goal is to provide a quality customer service from the start and leave a pleasurable end result with all our customers which has been our philosophy from the beginning.

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A recent local project allowed us to use a fuller extent of our skills in restoration. I was invited by a new customer to offer advice, colour scheme and redecorate the lounge in their Victorian home.
Part of my remit was to repair an ornate ceiling. I have always assumed these ceilings to be an early Superglypta type of wallpaper, but after discussing it with a good friend and professional decorator Russ Pike from Nottingham’s prime decoration he suggested the correct term for this particular type was a Camiod ceiling, so it’s true you learn something every day.
I had assumed that most of the ceiling edges that appeared loose would simply stick back but after closer inspection I found the situation was more serious so as this was a special ceiling I devised a rescue mission. The ceiling is actually made up from 20 individual ceiling panels creating the raised ornate border, with a period paper in the centre.
Each pane of Camiod border was inspected, if it wasn’t soundly adhered to the ceiling I carefully cut around it and took it down. Once on the floor each piece had to be cleaned, numbered and a thin stabilising solution brushed on the back to seal and strengthen them.
My attention turned then to the original ceiling and the reason for poor adhesion in the first place was down to distemper or whitening the products very much used at the time the house was new.
So I needed to prepare and stabilise those surfaces also.
Once I was satisfied both surfaces were dry and solid I began the slow process of piecing the ceiling panels back together. Each piece had adhesive applied and was returned to its original position. The large corner panel took two of us to hold in situ and had to be held in place with a few screws as the adhesive set.
The ceiling paper strips that had come down needed double soaked with Solvite flake adhesive before they were pliable enough to rehang.
Once everything was returned it was left overnight to fully dry.
The next day we needed to dress the joints of the Camiod paper with powder filler.
Also we were preparing the walls and woodwork stripping the old wall coverings and abrading the woodwork.
The walls were being lined to paint apart from the chimney which was receiving a feature paper
After all the preparation was completed the colour scheme we advised was a classic simple one of Dulux pure brilliant white on the coving, Gardenia on the repaired ceiling and newly lined walls, Rosepetal on the frieze with Dulux Trade Brilliant White QD undercoat and gloss on the woodwork.

Finished of with feature wallpaper on the chimney I helped chose to complement the period of the property and give the final wow effect. Which I hope you will agree in this video was worth the effort.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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