Painting a Curved a.k.a. Coved Ceiling

Typical of Cape Cod-style houses, both of our upstairs bedrooms have what I think of as curved ceilings.  Meaning the corners don’t come to a point, but the ceiling curves onto one of the walls.

Its a charming architectural element.  That is, until you realize you don’t want to live in a room where all walls and ceiling are painted the same color.  In our case: the beigey flat-finish paint that covers the other 80% of our house too.  (Why on earth did someone use flat paint, we’ll never know)

So I asked The Great Google about “Painting a Curved Ceiling.” There was one similar situation on apartment therapy, but most interesting was when Google asked me  if I meant “Painting a Coved Ceiling”?

Turns out yes, I did mean that.   Thanks Goog!  You’re the best.

A coved ceiling is when the intersection of a ceiling and a wall form a smooth concave curve instead of a 90 degree angle.  It seems to be a decorative addition, though I’m really curious if there is also a functional benefit as well, considering how often I have seen this in relatively small homes.

I found a lot of info at archwaysandceilings.com, especially this photo of how a coved ceiling is built , which really helps me to understand better what’s going on underneath all that plaster in my bedroom.

Photo from archwaysandceilings.com

Here’s what we are dealing with…..

You can see here that we’ve got multiple painting surfaces because in addition to the dormer (with its own little baby ceiling) we have double curves on our ceiling/walls (double coves?).  There’s one cove above the door, and another at the halfway point.

The other side gets even crazier because of the random 3 foot triangle wall….

But, first things first.  While muddling over the cove situation, we painted the trim semi-gloss white and removed the old, thin blue carpet.

Any0ne else have coved ceilings in their house?  Got any great solutions to share??

Goodbye Green Shag Road

The very first project we tackled (like 36 hours after we closed) was removing the old, worn, mainly-green-but-in-some-spots-brown carpet that covered 75% of the first floor and up the stairway.  Of course, the first time we stepped foot in here with our realtor, we peeled back a small corner of carpet to check for hardwood floor.  Everyone does that right?  Just a corner, no harm done.

Sadly, we found only plywood.  While this would have been a super lucky bonus, it wasn’t a deal breaker for buying the house.  In fact, it wasn’t even close to a deal breaker considering hardwood floor installation is the area Colin has the most experience with. So no biggie…but boy, it would have been nice….

So the green shag  had to go.  Being so old, it came up rather easily.

And as we turned the corner to de-shag the stairway, we found a sweet surprise!

Oh. Yes!  Looks like hardwood to me too!  And a nice color!  And the condition seems okay so far!

We quickly became giddy over our discovery and imaged these beautiful planks ran all the way up and onto the entire 2nd floor of our house!

Not. So. Much.

Seconds later there was this creepiness:

After 10 minutes of investigating we decided it was some really old water damage from an as-yet-unknown origin.

And the only other wood we found was on the second stairway landing.

Who does this?

Apparently in 1946 it was posh to use hardwood floor on the two landings of your otherwise plywood staircase and floors.  Odd.

And so sad…..

So our next project was/is to get new carpet for the stairway and upstairs (professionally installed) and hardwood downstairs (that we install).  Currently only one of those two are actually done.

Can you guess which one?

Let’s Begin.

In only 3 short months our new house has gone from this….

to this drama….

and now this…

There is a new roof under all that snow I promise.

and inside are even more doings and (mostly) undoings…..

Here’s to a new year of making this house into a home, one room at a time!