Making a grand impression

After finishing the closet my next task was to work on the vestibule entry area. I want to take just a moment to thank the readers, whoever you are for supporting me in this project.  I want to thank Ross who is a TRUE professional in his restoration.  Please check out his blog here at Restoring Ross .  His journey in restoring the Cross house is amazing to say the very least.  I also want to thank Sherrill P for her donation as well as John DL for his generous donation to the project.  These projects are a direct link that you have helped create.  These projects could not exist without you my friends.  You are all a piece of this house too and for that I thank you and perhaps more importantly, Keller Row thanks you.

This area was literally non existent when I bought the house.  Presumably during the conversion of the house to a duplex, this space was eliminated to change and close off the grand staircase.  The lower set of stairs had been moved 90 degrees and the vestibule wall was removed to have the stairs to the 2nd floor came where that wall was.  The inner doors of the vestibule became the entrance for the 1st floor and the outer doors were the common entry doors.  Here is how it essentially looked:

So when I began opening the stairway several years ago, I reconstructed the vestibule space by placing the stairs in their original configuration and placing the missing wall back in.  I found the double interior doors as salvage and essentially the basic space was created for the vestibule.

I also installed a period gas fixture and this was how the space was for some time.  One day at the local salvage yard I found some beautiful wainscoting from an old church and built it into the space.  You can read more about that process here:  Installing Raised Panel Wainscoting

This was again the extent of the work for some time.  I had an idea what I wanted to do in the space, but I now needed to find some really chunky crown molding for the space.  Since the ceiling is nearly 13 feet, I needed something that would really stand out.  After literally a year of looking for some crown I found it.  It was painted, but it was 8" thick, which was the perfect size.  So despite my hatred for stripping paint and swearing that I would never do it again after stripping the original hutch (which took me on and off 5 years) .  But I swallowed my pride and began the stripping process.

Stripped pine? trim.  That took several strippings and many, many layers of paint later.  Time to install!  Did I mention I've never installed crown before?

Installing the crown and the picture rail was not really fun.  The picture rail went in fairly easily and I coped all the joints so that they would fit tight.  Coping a joint on thin picture rail is easy, coping 8" crown was a bit of a nightmare!  All it all I think it turned out pretty well.  Not perfect, but pretty darn good.  I stained and shellaced the wood before I hung it up, but did put another 2 coats of shellac on the crown to match the crown to the doors and make it really rich looking.

After the crown most normal people would just paint the ceiling white.  Well not me, I wanted to try something period inspired that I have seen in other homes and something special.  That special technique was gold leaf.  Ok don't get me wrong, I'm not using 24 K gold leaf on my ceilings.  I wish I had that kind of funds.  If that were the case this home would have been done 9 1/2 years ago.  I bought some imitation fold leaf sheets to use.  The process to prepare the ceiling was easy.  Paint the ceiling with 2 coats of paint to give smooth surface.  Any imperfections can show up in the leafing process.  After painting a special adhesive was applied to the ceiling and allowed to reach full tack in about 2 hours.  Then the process of placing the gold leaf up. I am sure anyone who is an expert on gold leafing ceilings would abhor my work.  The goal is to truly line these up edge to edge while putting them up.  Even using the professional brushes it was tough to line everything up.  I ended up using more leaf than expected and I did waste a fair amount.  The gold leaf was not really expensive, but it was of course so delicate.  You touch a piece of it with your finger and it tears.  So a very delicate and a bit of a time consuming process.

\

Gold flecks falling from heaven!

After brushing the loose bits off the ceiling this is how it looks even with my awful application skills

After leafing I clear gloss coated it and it was time to hang the wallpaper.  I choose a pattern called Nocturnal Owl in an olive green tone from Aesthetic Interiors

A hint what the top paper will be.

And lastly the top paper.  This was a large space and I couldn't find any border paper that would fit.  I wanted something simple and also tie together the colors and metallic gold of the ceiling.  After several samples I chose Bradbury and Bradbury. Only 2 rolls needed to I figured I could splurge a bit.

Selfie when nearly finished and exhausted.

The most expensive scraps only old house folks understand the pain.

So you might think I'm done with this space that measures barely 7 feet x 4 feet.  I have to finish the 2nd set of interior doors.  I refinished them and then I etched the glass windows.  You might remember I did the front exterior doors in etched glass too.  Here is that project in case you forgot Etched Glass Piece .  It's a fairly easy process and I think cost effective for the look I was going after. I think it works well.

Pattern on from Modello Designs

 Etching cream on

The interior still had the old dark finish on it, so I really didn't want to touch it.

The refinished side.  As you can see the floor still needs to be refinished too, but that will have to wait some time.

So with that the missing vestibule is complete!  A nice welcome to a home still with much more elbow grease to go.  Thank you again readers and donors.  You made this happen!

If you like what you read and want to see this blog and projects keep going PLEASE feel free to donate something, even if it's only a little bit.  Every little bit helps on this restoration project. Thanks again!