I've been slowing picking at the paint stripping on the third floor for the past 6 months, specifically in the big bedroom that will at some point be Toren's. The walls have been plastered for almost 2 years now, and the ongoing radiator drama was resolved this fall (which warrants a post of it's own). I was trying to be reasonable and planned on just repainting the trim, but the paint in the room was in such poor condition due to all the water and lack of heating that there was no way it could be painted over. And just a PSA, if one more person tells me either that private spaces and/or pine was painted in Victorians I'm going to cram my dental picks up their ass. Every house is different. My entire house had either shellacked or grained trim. The second and third floors were entirely shellacked pine. Please don't use these supposed rules to justify painting trim. This room's trim is far less detailed than the rest of the house, so heat gunning was almost a pleasure. Of course, the devil's in the details, so it's still slow going....
Once the trim is sanded I'll move on to painting the walls, ceiling and floor (restoring the sashes will wait till warm weather). The last paint scheme that was completed was mint walls with peach doors and trim, perhaps some time in the 50's. It would have been charming were it not for the room collapsing around it. And this is where it gets complicated. Like the rest of the house, all the rooms up here were fully papered (wall and ceilings) multiple times. And the papers up here were pretty cool, and almost modern in their
designs. This room was papered with what appears to be a dogwood pattern on the walls, and a chrysanthemum pattern on the ceiling originally.
For all this time I had thought they were metallic inks on neutral grounds, but pulling down the peeling paper and crumbling plaster in the closet revealed another story altogether. The dogwood paper appears to have originally been a mottled green/yellow with deep purple and rust metallic inks. These have faded to beige and silver. Urg. As best I can tell, in the dark closet the sun didn't have a chance to bleach the inks. The moral of the story is that I'm at an impasse in deciphering colors. If I had a firm grip on the colors I would gladly reproduce them. The beauty of these patterns is that I should be able to have them turned into a stencil, but again, it's a shame to put in all the hours stenciling the pattern while getting the colors wrong.
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| The best I could capture the actual colors... |
Another wrench in the plan is that this will be a boy's room. And perhaps it's a bit unfair to smother him in flowers. Which is why I'm considering using the second ceiling paper instead...
I know, it's very mod. But trust me, it's a very early paper. Those Victorians were just ahead of their time, and my Victorian's Victorians had exceptionally good taste! This layer was never added to the closet, so I have no way of gauging the actual colors. Normally I'd just assume it was some variation of cream and silver, but I now know that's not necessarily the case. At this point the plan is to keep the walls a fairly neutral greenish taupe, the floor a deep teal, with a light tan stenciled ceiling - all chosen so as to not compete with the restored Queen Anne windows. But as always, I'm open to suggestions.
