Adam ceiling: corridor and guest bedroom

Today I made two more ceilings. If you haven't seen my Adam ceilings, here is the dining room, the gentlemen's smoking room, the drawing room, the grand hall and the upper hall.

The corridor is a bit complicated since there is a stairwell, therefore I needed to cut out a bit. Apart from that, it's a small ceiling, and there is no ceiling light, but now I will be able to add it, with less trouble than with the other ceilings. I haven't yet decided what light I want here, which is why I hadn't done it before.



The second ceiling was even easier. The attic rooms are small, the ceilings are rectangular without any details, so it was simply cut a suitable piece and glue on. For both ceilings, I had to remove the old cornices and add new after the ceiling was in place.



I have two rooms left, nursery and servants' room. I also have the master bedroom where I have a nice ceiling that I can perhaps just add some cut-outs for.

I don't think I will have Adam ceilings in the basement because it will imply moving the main building.

Adam ceiling: drawing room

It has been a while since I made Adam ceilings. If you haven't seen my Adam ceilings, here is the dining room, the gentlemen's smoking room, the grand hall and the upper hall. It is now time to deal with the ladies' drawing room. There is nothing wrong with the old ceiling, I still think it was a very clever design. But once I have started adding Adam ceilings I have to keep the style.

As with the other ceiling, I had to remove the flooring upstairs, and I wasn't looking forward to that because the skirting upstairs was already fixed. Luckily, I managed to pull out the floor - the advantage of building floors on card rather then directly inside the room - without having to break up the skirting.

I won't show step-by-step pictures because it was similar to the dining room. I had to measure and cut around the chimney breast, then align the central circle with the existing hole, put the chandelier chain through the ceiling rose (the same metal filigree), paper and ceiling, then glue on the paper. Add paper coving, except for the chimney breast where I used a piece of wooden cornice for effect.

Now that I have practiced it didn't take as long as the first ceiling, and I made no mistakes. (I hope).

In the picture, I see that the half-circle over the chimney breast is not symmetrical, but the chimney breast wasn't supposed to be exactly in the middle of the room, and anyway I cannot do anything about it now.

Adam ceiling, dining room

My next Adam ceiling project is the dining room.

If you haven't yet seen my ceilings, here is the grand hall, the upper hall and the smoking room.

To make the dining room ceiling, I had to remove the floor in the room above it, which is the smoking room. (By the way, I did add a filigree ceiling rose to the smoking room ceiling, which was easy). Luckily, for whatever reason, one of the skirting boards in the smoking room had not been properly glued, so it was easy to lift up the floor. Of course I had to remove all the objects first. I also had to remove all objects from the dining room.

The old ceiling in the dining room is one that I was very proud of when I made it, almost a year ago. When the decoration - a plastic placemat -  fell off, I glued it back with very strong glue. Now I had to remove the decoration which still left me with a thick layer of glue. There is only one effective way of removing old glue, with a hair dryer. So that's what I did. It took longer time than I wanted to spend on such a trifle.  

Since there was already a drilled hole in the ceiling, I had to centre the paper around this hole and arrange the pattern accordingly. I glued on the filigree ceiling rose, which, unintentionally, made it much easier to test the paper. There is a chimney breast in this room so that I had to cut the paper around the chimney breast. All this should have been done a year ago, but then a year ago I didn't have the Adam paper. So I felt like a poor architect hired by a mad customer to put in new Adam ceilings in a house. 

Here is the result:

There will be coving of course, to cover the edges. Also, while I was messing about, one string in the crystal chandelier broke so I will have to mend it. Good that it broke before I put it up again.

I think it is a magnificent ceiling, and the whole house is starting to have a completely new look. I feel a bit bad about the old plastic placemat that has been so helpful for many projects, but it's time to move on. Come back soon.

Adam ceiling, upper hall

I left off yesterday having made some preparations for the ceiling in the upper hall that I resumed today. The problem with upper hall ceiling (as with some other ceilings I will yet have to consider) is that it is already decorated, and, firstly, I like the decoration, and secondly, it would be a huge trouble to remove it. Hence, I need to decorate the ceiling with Adam paper around the existing ceiling panel.

 

It is interesting how bare the ceiling looks now that I have started making Adam ceilings. Half a year ago when I first made it I was perfectly satisfied.

As with the Great hall ceiling, the paper is far too large. I thought I would use the same technique I used when I made the great hall: by cutting the details and pasting on a sheet of lining paper that I would then paste on the ceiling. However, when I cut the pattern and tested, I realised that with the existing panel I would never manage to make it neat. So I decided to paste the cut-outs direct on the ceiling.

First of all, I had to drill a hole for the chandelier. It wasn't possible to remove the floor upstairs, and there is a partition in the middle anyway, so I drilled as close as possible to the partition (and will later hide it behind skirting). Then I assembled chandelier - filigree ceiling rose - circular ceiling pattern.

 

At the very last moment I realised that it made sense to glue the metal rose before hanging up the assembly - one step less to think about. Then I led a metal wire through the drilled hole and fixed with tape. Then I glued the paper circle onto the ceiling.

 

As I said, the original pattern was far too large, but I cut various details and arranged them in a somewhat symmetrical pattern. I like the result.


I may add some more details, but probably it will be too much. I will leave it like this for a while. I guarantee that there is no other ceiling like this in the world, in any scale.

This room is now very eclectic with Adam ceiling and Victorian tiles, but Victorian houses were eclectic so I won't worry about it.

Adam ceiling, smoking room

While the glue is setting on my grand stairs, I decided to continue my project of making new ceilings using Adam paper. It is not without trepidation I approached this task because, unlike the Grand Hall that didn't have any ceiling decoration (and was hard enough), in order to insert new ceilings in existing, assembled rooms I will need to perform the following operations:
1) remove all objects from the room I will be working on
2) remove coving (in this situation, I am glad that I use paper rather than wood)
3) remove existing ceiling paper or decoration
4) remove flooring in the room above (which may involve removing skirting) to access fixture for ceiling light
5) remove ceiling light
6) glue new ceiling paper onto a piece of lining, making sure that the new ceiling rose is aligned with the existing hole for the ceiling light (this may also involve cutting and pasting, to assemble a new pattern, as I had to do with the ceiling in Grand Hall)
7) glue new ceiling assembly onto the ceiling - working upside down in a small room. For this step you should preferably be an octopus
8) fix the ceiling light, feeding the wire through the hole up to the room above
9) replace flooring in the room above, including skirting
10) insert new coving in the room I am working on
11) put all objects back into the room

If you wonder why I bother it's because I am a perfectionist. Now that I have this magnificent paper I am no longer satisfied with my old ceilings.

I started with the smoking room for no particular reason; probably because the old ceiling was slightly damaged when we did the lights. 

I will not show step-by-step pictures because, apart from being tremendously difficult, it was straightforward (except that it was painful to see the room stripped down again). The only unforeseen trouble was that in a corner there was a wire connector that my son-in-law would have been able to remove and re-connect, but I didn't dare, so I had to cut a little square. Unless you look closely you won't notice. Here is the result:

It took me three hours, but luckily I didn't have to tear up the room above because I still have paper floors there which could be carefully lifted.

With objects put back:




Having lights inside the room was a huge advantage, although otherwise it would have made sense to fix the ceiling before the lights. But I didn't have much choice.

Grand Adam ceiling, cont.

As planned, I finished the Adam ceiling today. I cannot say I am fully content with the result, because, as I keep saying, it is incredibly difficult to work on a ceiling once the house has been assembled. If there are minor faults (yes, there are) there is nothing I can do about them now, and most probably nobody will ever notice, except maybe someone inspecting the house closely when I am gone, and I won't worry about it now. Unless yo look very carefully, it looks good.

 

The magnificent silver chandelier from the antique shop in Stockholm is so far attached provisionally because first I need to attach the stairs. As I was working on the ceiling I noticed that I hadn't finished mouldings on the back wall, so I will need to do that before I attach the stairs. However, with the ceiling I feel there is a major break-through in the hall. I am glad I haven't yet attached the stairs because then the ceiling would have been impossible to fix. This was simply meant to happen this way.

Grand Adam ceiling

Once again, it took a long time before I could move on, but today's project is the new ceiling in the great entrance hall for which I used the magnificent Robert Adam wrapping paper I bought in Soane's Museum a few weeks ago.

The sheet was too large to use as it was, and the ceiling has a curious shape because of the stairwell. This is what I had - although at that point I had already cut out some bits. It's a ceiling pattern from 1756, never executed.

The central square is unfortunately too large for this ceiling, but I may use it elsewhere. The main problem was that I couldn't just cut out a bit since it had to fit the ceiling and be symmetrical, and my first attempt to paste cutout bits direct on the ceiling were a complete failure. It might have worked if I still had flat surfaces, but at that time I didn't have this wonderful paper. Working upside down in a limited space is not an option. So what I had to do is assemble the whole ceiling on a piece of lining paper. Luckily, I had a template, which is the floor above, still unfinished.

 

And then came the fun of designing a new ceiling, using Adam's patterns, like a jigsaw puzzle. 

I started with a large bit that was quite straightforward. 

 

Looks simple, doesn't it? Next, I added an octagon. I had to cut a curve, to follow the pattern below. 

Then I added a side frieze. The arrows show obvious faults that I had to deal with, and the picture on the right shows how.

 

Then it was just doing the same on the other side, fill some gaps, add trimmings. As you see in the picture, it grew dark meanwhile, and I had to switch on the light. Believe it or not, it took me most of the day.

The side flaps will go down the walls, instead of coving. This is why they are upside down against the main frieze.

I tested it with white tack, but I think I need daylight and a bit more energy to glue it on. Report to follow. 

Adam paper

For a whole number of reasons I haven't done much on my project recently. I have done some work, but nothing worth sharing.

Earlier this week I went to London with a friend and took her to a museum I like, Soane's House. I am always looking for small things in museum shops, and this time I didn't find any small things but instead a book of Robert Adam wrapping paper.

I don't know why anyone would want to use beautiful paper for wrapping that will be torn up and thrown away within seconds. Miniature-makers save wrapping paper because it can be recycled for many purposes. I have never bought wrapping paper because I like recycling, but this time I couldn't resist. I saw at once what I could do with it. My friend knows I am crazy so she wasn't surprised.

Here are Adam designs, most of which never executed.

The booklet has only been published this year, so I hadn't missed it last time I was there. But I wish I had discovered it before I had finished my ceilings because now I will of course have to tear them down and make new ones with these papers.

If you have followed my blog you know that I made all ceilings on flat surfaces, before I assembled the house (use the tag "ceiling" to see how I made them). Now I will have to work inside rooms and upside down. But I cannot even say it's bad planning because I couldn't know that a new option would appear.

And it isn't as straightforward as you may think. Firstly, I will need to remove all coving that I have so patiently added in the past few months. I will have to tear up floors to remove ceiling lights before I can re-decorate ceilings. The papers are not necessarily scaled to my rooms. I will have to center them to fit with my ceilings. They also need to match the wallpaper - no way I am re-doing all wallpaper (although it would be gorgeous, but too late). I will probably have to sacrifice some ceilings that I am quite proud of. Anyway, this will be a lot of work that I haven't anticipated but will be very happy to perform.

I started with something seemingly easy, although it turned out to be tricky enough.

 

The bathroom had a plain white ceiling and no ceiling light. Still, I had to remove the coving, cut the paper to measure - fortunately, two squares fit precisely across - with a border to fold over the wall. Glueing it on upside down was a h-ll of a job. Some additional trimming was necessary, but I hope it doesn't show too much. For this ceiling, I could afford making mistakes because I had more than enough paper, but for other ceilings I will have to be very, very careful. Arguably, the ceiling doesn't quite match the tiles, but let's say that the house owner has an eclectic taste - just like Sir John Soane.