How common is trim that was originally painted?

[phil]

myhouse has diamond leaded glass , some was broken and replaced with flat glass but the uppers in the bay window and one of the casements are still that. I want to replicate at least the other side of the casement. the one that's still there is bowed in about an inch. so I intend to flatten it back out and stabilize it. the casement is a three window set. I'm not sure if the middle was diamonds or not. obviously if one end was diamonds then the other end was too when it was original.

I think in the early days it was done that way as big pieces of glass were expensive or non existent. when mine was built in 1924 it was a visual feature probably common to a lot of craftsman houses. the lowers in the bay window are wavy glass, but not diamond. probably original. I'm sure they had the larger glass and at that point it was done only to the uppers for style, not to save cost of larger panes.

I think with my 3 window casement the center may have been one piece with only the two end panes being diamond. that would tie it in with the way they combined the two types in the bay windows.

I need to take the diamone one out of it's frame to flatten int out and replace one pane and the same time cut pieces to replicate the other in the same dimension. ive tried finding replacement diamond panes but the sizes aren't always the same as mine so maybe easier to cut new ones.

I was thinking maybe it will be tough to cut old wavy glass into the diamond shapes. I'll give it a try and expect to break a few in the process. im waiting to find salvageable wavy glass to use for the project.

I spoke to an art glass place and she said I can cut the lead away and then replace just the broken diamond pane and then drop the new one in and solder the came back together rather than trying to recreate the whole pane.

[Manalto]

Phil, I've cut some glass - not a lot - and I don't see any noticeable difference between stained glass, wavy glass or new glass. Jade could give you a better assessment but from my perspective it's all easy to cut. A diamond shape should be no different. Diamond-pane leaded glass is the exact opposite of the planned obsolescence we were talking about in the other thread. It's infinitely repairable.

[StoneHouseGuy]

How common was it to paint just the crown molding in a room and leave the baseboard and window trim stained wood? This is the case in many of my rooms, and I'm wondering if it's the original crown molding or not.

I'm thinking I'd like to have stained crown molding to match the rest of the trim to give it more of a Tudory feel. Should I try to strip the existing stuff, or just install new in the same shape?

Reading old builder tests and design manuals from the nineteenth century, it's pretty clear that crown molding was always painted. it's considered part of the ceiling (transitional wall to ceiling junction) and was painted such that the colors used (varyingly plain, single colors or multi-color striped, depending upon the decade) would assist in that transition.

I think that the style for unpainted stained wood trim and specifically wood crowns was an outcome of the 1970s when a good number of nineteenth century homes were readily and cheaply available (this is when San Francisco's Painted Ladies became a thing, on the heel of psychedelic paintings). The bicentennial gave Americans a feeling of a colonial past that they wanted to be part of. People stripped paint "willy nilly" to see the "original pine" (which was combined with black painted plastic eagles and black "wrought iron" hinges in kitchens across the country). House restorers learned a lot in those early decades of the movement about what is and is not original.

It also is about the time when Colonial Williamsburg released a set of "historically correct" paint colors (remember the pale grey-blues, beiges and pinky peach colors of the mid 1970s?). Unfortunately for Colonial Williamsburg, the researchers didn't have spectrochromographs (they read the chemical make up of the paint so that even badly faded colors can be recreated as if they are new) and instead they relied upon visual analysis and made a ton of mistakes that had to be corrected in the early 2000s (the pale blue grey was really brilliant turquoise blue).

[StoneHouseGuy]

Back to the original question about painted trim ...

My home is 90% unpainted, shellacked wood trim on all three floors. Each floor/room has a different species of wood. The whole third floor is clear finished pine while the second floor's trim is mixed (some clear coated and some painted) and the doors are all grain painted.

Two rooms on the second floor (an original nursery and the original living room) have always had painted woodwork. Scraping and sanding to the raw wood in those rooms showed absolutely no sign of a clear coat finish (varnish or shellac) with paint deep into the pores of the wood.

We are nearing the end of a major kitchen redo (that's a gigantic, different story) and in removing and scraping/sanding the trim, we discovered that it is all fir that was always painted (originally, it was that lovely, buttermilk white color of early 20th century kitchens and bathrooms). Thankfully the trim only had been painted three times (originally, during a 1947 remodel (yuk) when it was a mix of bright yellow and forest green, and again in the late 1990s when it was coated in horrible glaring white latex with no primer (stretchy paint)). The biggest surprise was that the floor was never coated with any kind of finish. Also fir, it had a patchwork of mitred boarders of linoleum glued directly to the raw wood (that made for some sweaty, horribly curse-filled afternoons stripping black crud off the floor—after tearing off two entire tile floors).

So, not only was trim variably painted or clear finished, floors were variably finished or not ...

[Gothichome]

Stone house, just spent some time on your blog, your new old chandeliers are a wonderful addition. How lucky to find a matching set. I see two options for locating them. If you have a long hallway like we have, one on each end. The other option might be one in the dinning room and the other the front parlour. That would give a sense continuity, sort of connecting the two most important rooms in the home.
Ron

[StoneHouseGuy]

Thanks GC. I have a dining room and parlor that are separated by pocket doors and used as a single large room most of the time. That's the spot - as you said - where these will go. I don't know if I am lucky or not to not have any long hallways here - ha ha - but they will look great wherever they are.

[1918ColonialRevival]

... it was that lovely, buttermilk white color of early 20th century kitchens and bathrooms....

Much like the "original" Colonial Williamsburg colors of the Bicentennial era, this phenomena is a result of a combination of fading and impurities. Most early 20th Century whites were brighter than they appear today. One of the biggest contaminants that yellowed white finishes in that era was tobacco smoke and in the case of a kitchen, grease.

[KenN]

Linseed oil paint will also turn a bit yellow if it doesn’t get enough sunlight.

[phil]

The biggest surprise was that the floor was never coated with any kind of finish. Also fir, it had a patchwork of mitred boarders of linoleum glued directly to the raw wood (that made for some sweaty, horribly curse-filled afternoons stripping black crud off the floor—after tearing off two entire tile floors).

So, not only was trim variably painted or clear finished, floors were variably finished or not ...

I found similar in my 1924 house. two layers of tile, some repairs using plywood and different widths of flooring.

I did find some bits of lino in a green color with burlap backing. battleship linoleum under the baseboards.

my floor was never sanded or finished. Im pretty sure that originally they put down the lyno in the kitchen. I think it was customary as it's more hygienic than wood boards with cracks.

I remember my dad saying that wood floors weren't allowed in kitchens. I think he was referring to CMHC standards, Canadian mortgage and housing standards. houses had to meet certain standards to qualify for mortgages. in the US there was probably an equivalent.
once poly came more mainstream they might have dropped that spec but a lot of the 50's houses had parquet flooring or strip flooring and lino in kitchens.

so like yours my floor was never sanded , never finished but because the water crept under the flooring it blackened the nails. I sanded the floor and treated the whole floor with wood bleach, that removed the black spots, and then had to darken it a little to get the color to match the other floors.
today they use plywood and chipboard and stuff like that but back in the day they didnt' have plywood so fir flooring was the standard even if it was being covered.

all my flooring is edge grain fir no knots but a couple of planks across the middle of the kitchen were ugly flat grained and lighter. I think they didn't care as long as it supported the flooring. to make best use of materials they used the ugly pieces in the kitchen where it would be covered up with green lyno. I believe that's original.

I had black tar too, oh wow it was a lot of work to get it off. I put water on the floor then a clothes iron and when warm scraped it off and it took forever to get it all off so I could begin the sanding process. I found nothing that dissolved the stuff and it had this weird smell I'll never quite forget.
in my attic they had laid those square asbestos tiles. they used a white mastic for that which I found I could dissolve with stripper or lacquer thinners.

I spent weeks scraping every bit off then rejuvenated the attic floor with danish oil and it looked nice. It had a few drops of ink from a fountain pen but it thought well it's just history. at the time I was married and she didn't even want to climb the stairs to have a look look or care about my efforts. After I got it all nice she came upstairs and said what are these spots? sand the floors! I did sand them but I really regretted spending all that time picking at every bit to make it nice before coating it with the oil. we had some obvious differences of appreciation for old things. I wanted to restore, she wanted a team of contractors who didn't give a hoot about the historical importance to come in and "save us" like in the home reno drama shows. Eventually those differences became too important to both of us to ignore.