Wooden lintel moulding..reinstate or leave

[Mickey]

Hi All,

Things are progressing at last in the old school, we are now (dare I say it) or should that be at the moment watertight. New kitchen in etc. We've just started on the finalish furlong lifting back up some 1980's plasterboard ceilings to reveal the original ceiling joists, these were originally visible but boxed into the ceiling void by very unsympathetic low false plasterboard ceilings, joists all there painted white with hooks presumably for globe glass type lights and original studwork for the original ceilings intact complete with marks from ripped off laths :evil: . Anyway during all this we uncovered the original wooden window lintel, nicely vandalised (sadly like so much of this building) and looking like it had some sort of moulding on the front of it which was ripped off in order to hammer in 2x2 battens. I'm now facing the dilemma of what to do whether to leave it rough and ready or to replace the moulding but with what? Date for that side of the building is 1900ish. I had thought of contacting the Brooking Collection but then it occurred to me how would I have such a moulding made up, not being a master joiner myself. What would others do in this situation?

Thoughts/suggestions much appreciated.

Many thanks
Mickey

 

[Flyfisher]

I can't really help with a suitable design for your particular house, but there are quite a few options to reproduce wooden mouldings, though their practicality depends on how much you need.

If you can throw money at the requirement then there are plenty of joinery companies who will do the job, by having a custom cutter made and using a spindle moulder. That's likely to be at least £200 for the cutter (I may be out of date on that) and then the time needed to cut whatever you need in whatever wood you want.

If you only need short lengths then it becomes more practical to DIY. I've replicated a short length of staircase moulding using a small handheld router and standard cutters. They were not an exact match so I used two of them to cut separate pieces then glued them together to create the final moulding. Since it was a painted piece, the join is completely invisible after some suitable sanding.

Even simpler, (well sort of) was short length of moulding to replace a missing piece on a front door. For this piece, I filed the required shape into a cheap old kitchen knife (anything similar would do) and used it to 'draw' across a suitable piece of oak until it had created the required length of moulding. This was a very satisfying job and it's a fairly traditional technique, but I wouldn't fancy doing it for any heavy mouldings - this particular piece was only about 10 inches long and less than 10mm square in cross section before shaping!

But if you don't have to match any existing moulding then I'd expect you could buy something reasonably close off the shelf. (Oops - Feltwell beat me to it!)

 

[Feltwell]

Mickey,

Well done on getting so far!

If you've no idea what was there originally and you fancy putting something back then I'd be tempted to go for something off the shelf rather than going to the expense of getting something machined especially. Dresser have a good range of mouldings. If your local timber merchants are like the ones round here then they won't have much beyond Ovolo, Taurus, Half round & chamfered and maybe lamb's tongue if you're lucky.

http://www.dressermouldings.com/products/mouldings.html

Or, you can make something up from a variety of off-the-shelf mouldings. The small Richard Burbidge mouldings that most of the DIY chains sell are a good mix.

Can you pick up on the design of any original skirtings, architraves or dados and try to compliment them?

 

[Mickey]

Thanks both for replies. Don't think I can stretch to have one made up, so off the shelf it will be. Sadly when it was converted they ripped out pretty much anything original, so no architrave, no skirting, no doors, no floorboards etc etc either that or covered it up with plasterboard or bodged it, I'm sure if the joists weren't holding up the roof they would have gone as well! :x

thanks again
Mickey