Lowering our ceiling

[Telsun]

As you will see in our other thread http://www.periodproperty.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=14773 we have recently started restoration work on our house. We have exposed the beams in our living room (this room used to be my mother in laws bedroom until she was 27) which has a number of clues that indicate that the ceiling was lower than it currently sits. It was very likely raised in the 80's when the owner undertook some major renovations. However in our bid to restore some character back into our house we would like to lower the ceiling back down but we can't decide where to!

This is how it currently looks:

We reckon that the faint white line that you can see along the bottom edge of the beam was where the ceiling ran (my wife knows that her Uncle Fred used to paint the beams white). The holes in the beam we are guessing are where the old floor joists were supported?

We're thinking about lowering the ceiling back down to this height which is about 4.5" lower than it currently sits:

Although we did consider going 3.5" to leave a little more of the beam exposed, this will also leave some of the beams surrounding the room slightly exposed too. Although I think we're erm'ing towards lowering 4.5" and only having the centre beam and the beam over the window exposed:

This picture also gives an indication that there was once a decorative moulding running along the edge of the ceiling, at least along the wall above the windows anyway. Perhaps instead of leaving the beam exposed we should reinstate a moulding????

We would really appreciate the input from the forum members as to what would look the most authentic.

 

[88v8]

I would drop down to cover those ceiling joist cutouts, back to Uncle Fred's day. Useful to have his historic paint line. Strange that anyone would have thought it worthwhile to raise just a few inches, exposing those cutouts and presumably removing the original joists.

A very handsome moulding embedded in the wall.
Was it 'original', or a subsequent addition to cover the joint between the plaster and the lintel beam. Ummm.
It appears that the upper part of the moulding collided with the spine beam, which may have looked a little awkward. However, you aren't committed to reinstating that exact profile, so you could use something a little shallower.

Are there any wooden mouldings elsewhere in the house, architraves perhaps, from which you might draw inspiration? If this is the only elaborate moulding, that reinforces the case for it being a retrofit.

Ivor

 

[JanieB]

Depending on when it was done not so strange. I lived in a georgian farm cottage back in the 60's/70's and applied for an improvement grant. We were accepted under the condition that we raised the ground floor ceilings. The cost of doing that was so prohibitative that we didn't go ahead with the improvements. Nowadays that cottage would have been a listed building and protected from such ridiculous criteria.