Part 4 Adding Mouldings to the Ceiling; A Wood Carved Ceiling Detail

I’m continuing with the ceiling details and it’s starting to look more impressive. I’m waiting for some more wood carved appliqués to arrive for the section between the picture rail and the cornice; I decided in the end to add more as it looked better. Apart from that I’m nearly at the end of adding the mouldings, next will be completing some paint detail. I’ll update you on whole room pictures when we’re at that stage.

In the meantime another glimpse. The room has gone from plain white like this….

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to this…

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This last section cost less than £50, and was so simple to complete (just like the frieze detail). If you dis-count drying time it took a maximum of two hours!

Paint the wood carved appliqués

As with the details between the picture rail and the cornice, pre-painting the wood carvings mean that you save yourself a lot of mess when you try and paint them in situ.

Mark where the main mouldings will go

With chalk mark where your central wood appliqués will go with crosses. As you do each one start to draw a straight line between each pair, using the spirit level.

To make the placement of the crosses easier I just took the spirit level length, about a meter long, and placed its end flush with the cornice edging. Making sure it was straight I marked the area with a cross. On the corner sections I marked the intersection of a spirit level length from the two walls.

Glue the first appliqué on

I started with one of the middle appliqués first. Place it so it’s over the centre of the cross, then line the ends of the width so they’re touching the horizontal lines. Hold the appliqué in place for about 30-60 seconds.

Glue the wood carved lengths so they start at the furthest length on the horizontal and run along the same line.

When you glue them try and get glue along the length of the length so it sticks properly, but don’t use too much so it squirts out of the sides.

Add a corner moulding

Add a corner appliqué next, but place it on a horizontal angle. As you can see below the two length appliqués have to come out of these at different angles so that they follow the chalk lines.

These is what it had started to look like.

My original intention was to add in half rounds to link the sections along the chalk line. However I started to think that the details were sufficient on their own, and adding the half rounds may have highlighted any inconsistencies in the connections. So I just continued with the details.

Continue round the room like this. Here is a close up of the title photo…

You can see it’s all starting to come together. I’m so pleased with the effectiveness and price of these wood mouldings. If you add wood appliqués in Amazon or ebay you will come up with a grand selection for any project you wish to try.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Our First Light Has Gone Up!

When we rented an old farmhouse in France we found that many of the lights just had wires and a bulb attached. The house owner wasn’t a cheapskate – it’s normal here. Sometimes the bulbs go too! Whenever I remember this I’m struck by the generosity of the people who we bought from as they left not just light shades, but curtains and others things too.

As a result, and because we had planned to stay there a long time originally, I bought many light fixings. One of them was an empire chandelier. It looked a little bedraggled in the shop, but having taken it a part and cleaned it up I think it looks fine now.

You may notice too the ceiling rose which I’ve painted along with the ceiling. It was quite tricky being that it was in situ, and as a result I didn’t take any photos to show you how I got the slight, white edging on the leaves. I’m going to do another soon for the hallway and as it’s in a box at the moment I’ll do a step by step then.

This is a look before…

and after the ceiling rose has been painted….

You can see the cornice and dado rail that I’ve been putting up too, but I’ll tell you about that soon. Sorry about the quality of the photos, the room is a little dark as it’s north facing and a grey day here. If I can I’ll upload better photos later.