Help me think this through.

[Manks]

We have a Georgian cottage that has been messed about with over the years and its pretty non original. It has been extended several times and we are aout to extend it again, at which point it will become a 5-bed house and fairly large at that.

The majority of the downstairs of the property (except one room) is beamed, but we cannot decide how to do the new extension.

Do we put in beams? Expensive and a bit fake.

Do we put in one central beam?

Do we forget beams altogether and put up cornicework?

Do we put up cornicework, picture rails and dado rails?

Other?

Leaving the room with no beams or cornicework is not an option; we have some upstairs rooms like that and they seem quite boxy.

What do we think?

Manks

 

[jess marley]

Personally, and its only my opinion, I prefer new additions to old buildings to be honest about their age.(eg, the glass pyramid at the centre of the Louvre). If anything to cutting edge might scare the horses, then plain, plain, plain, using as much in the way of sympathetic material as poss. Surely anything else would look like a pastiche?

 

[Manks]

Jess

Yes, I agree. But I still have options. Beams I think are out, but that leaves me with the cornicework option and none of the rest of the house has cornices.

Trust me when I say that having neither cornice nor beams makes for the whole "living in a shoebox" look.

Manks

 

[jess marley]

What stage are you at? Still drawing up plans or about to start building?

 

[jess marley]

Just had an idea, depending on the intended usage of the room, built in bookcases or the kind of excellent built in cupboards common in Victorian houses can lend detail, form and structure to a room whilst being genuinely useful.

 

[Me!]

Cornicework, picture rails and dado rails need high ceiling heights to work properly, and you say you have a Georgian cottage with exposed beams so I am assuming you have fairly low ceilings compared with the average Georgian rectory for example? I would probably go for building in the same style as the existing, but without trying to fake the age. So, some nice hefty new green oak beams and new, but high quality wooden doors and windows made to match the original style.

 

[Lime]

Cornicework, picture rails and dado rails need high ceiling heights to work properly, and you say you have a Georgian cottage with exposed beams so I am assuming you have fairly low ceilings compared with the average Georgian rectory for example? I would probably go for building in the same style as the existing, but without trying to fake the age. So, some nice hefty new green oak beams and new, but high quality wooden doors and windows made to match the original style.

Very nice but expensive.

I think cornice, picture and dado rails can work with low ceilings.
The height of both the picture and dado rails can make a lot of difference to the room's perceived size and height.
A high dado rail tends to make you feel as though you have shrunk!
A picture rail close to the ceiling seems to give the room more height.
At least that is my experience.

As I don't know what the extension will be used for I'm not sure this thought has any relevance but how about a fireplace?
After all, the key difference between new and old housing is the focus of older rooms on the fire and not the tv.

 

[Manks]

All

The room is to be used as a lounge.

The ceiling height will not be particularly low, and we have not yet started building. Probably eight to nine feet. The ceilings in the older part of the house are low, but in other places they are more "normal" though we are not talking about airy rectory-esque ceilings.

Manks

 

[Andrew Bodenham]

It's all an emotive subject of course, but I think that a picture rail adds a feeling of age to any room, without being too period-specific. It's also a statement that "this is not a 21st century box". By bringing the ceiling colour down to the picture rail the room is lightened and appears taller, which allows the use of stronger colours below.
We've been putting the picture rails back into our house and they make such a difference to the feel of the rooms.

Agree entirely with the poster who advocated built in features such as bokcases or cupboards. Again these add great visual texture - a well stocked bookcase creates an immediate feeling of solidity and wellbeing. Works for me, anyhow.