Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard

Master Bedroom

Here it is "in the raw", painted a delicious shade of blood red.  The paint was also applied to walls that had been only partially stripped of wallpaper, so the whole thing was splotchy and uneven.  The window frames were so out of true, it was impossible to shut the windows.  The pieces of wood nailed above the window were a previous owners elegant way of mounting the curtain rails; give me strength.  I had to demolish the window frames and custom build replacements. 
Here are my new, finished frames, painted, with the moldings and the replacement windows installed.  The skim plastering on the walls is finished, and it has all been primed and painted.  My preference for priming skimed walls is to use a shellac based primer.  This helps to harden the joint compound that is commonly used for skimming as it is softer than traditional plaster.  When the photograph was taken, I was about to start on the baseboards (skirting board) which are now white with gray detailing. 
While we found a lot of the walls to be generally sound, several large sections did need replacing, as you can see on the right.  Then we replaced the ceiling.  Finally, the whole lot was skim plastered by a local plasterer.  Unfortunately, when we came to do the Master Bathroom, which is behind the wall in the photograph, the demolition caused some cracking in the plaster.  Thankfully, it was easily remedied with some joint compound. 
The results of demolishing the frames!  Much easier to throw the old wood out of the window than to carry it all downstairs.  Normally, I try always to keep old wood to re-use, but most of this was in far to poor condition, although I did retain some. 
There are four windows in the bedroom in two pairs on adjacent walls.  Once they were all removed, I made up the new frames, and they fit into the openings quite nicely.  At this time, we were at the house only for weekends, so I was unable to complete the installation in one go.  Some foam insulation board, cut to size, served to protect the interior for the following week or two. 
We decided to use a completely different molding in this room.  The photograph shows the molding we used around the windows and doors, and the inset shows the join between the two windows.  The molding is manufactured from a composite material, rather than wood, as it is supposed to be more stable, and expand and contract less than wood.  While true, it is attached to wood that does expand and contract, so, depending on the season, you do see very small gaps open up at the joins.  I now tend to prefer wood molding in more important rooms.  
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Our c. 1860 House -

Upstairs Renovations