Bedroom Two
Crown cornice

New crown cornice

Removing the later addition built-in wardrobe in the fireplace elcove left an odd piece of cornice. Rather than find matching cornice to complete the elcove after the odd piece is removed, all of the cornice will be replaced.

Removing the cornice was relatively easy and done single-handed without any breakage even though it is quite brittle. The scaffold platform made it alot easier and safer.

The light switch pull cord hanging from the ceiling to the right of the chimney breast is in the way of the new cornice and is annoyingly close to the door so will be moved to just in front of the breast where it will hang just to the right of the fireplace mantlepiece.

The design for the new cornice incorporates a hidden hanging rail.

Although the chimney breast corners are bullnosed and may normally dictate a double 22.5 degree mitre, I prefer the look of the sharp external mitres, and it works visually thanks to the shadow gap all the way around the room created by the concealed hanging rail rebate.

Working with a ceiling that isn't completely flat

Each bedroom had some ceiling undulations, usually centred on one or two joists, which were a problem for the plaster molding due to the proximity close to a wall, meaning the molding would not meet nicely at the corner mitre without a severe and noticable bend. The only solution was to grind off a small area of the ceiling render to run the molding straight and then fill and feather with cornice cement, as shown below. Once sanded and painted it will not be noticed.

The wave in the ceiling is due to a joist that has warped downward very gradually, presumably early on in it's 140 years of age. This caused the crack that can be seen in image 5. From within the roof space I can see that the lath and plaster are still all attached and I have done work up there to reinforce the whole ceiling to catch any weakened areas.