In one corner of my living room, the
decorative tin ceiling (egg-and-dart pattern) is rusting. I have fixed the source of the water and have tried to repair the deteriorated spots using several methods but without success. What do you recommend?

If the sheet steel that is the base of your ‘tin’ ceiling hasn’t rusted completely through, your best bet is to gently remove the rust with fine steel wool or an emery cloth. Once the metal is clean, you should apply a coat of rust-inhibiting primer and paint the entire ceiling with an oil-based paint. If the rust has gone right through the metal, your best option is to replace the damaged sections with salvaged or reproduction panels. Do not fill gaps with metal-patching material because reconstructing the detail is too difficult, but small gaps can be sealed with latex caulk.

Luckily, the egg-and-dart pattern you have was very common and is still manufactured, so you should be able to find a good match. Several companies still sell metal ceiling panels made from the old patterns. Check the online edition of OHJ’s Restoration Directory for a complete list.

I have lost two of my favorite issues of OHJ that contained articles describing how to deal with calcimine paint (April and June 2001). Is there any other place I can read up on this subject?

There’s little other significant reading in print or online about dealing with calcimine. However, the good news is there isn’t that much to say.

Calcimine (or kalsomine), which was popular for a flat, pastel look on ceilings and walls up to the 1930s, is the most indelible of paints, basically chalk and pigment in a glue binder that was mixed with water. Easily washed off, calcimine becomes the bane of old-house owners when it starts to loose its grip after years of being overcoated with layers of oil paint.

If you’re painting a peeling ceiling or wall, your best bet for removing the first layer of calcimine is a simple matter of working with brushes, scrapers, and water mixed with TSP or a little vinegar (to soften the calcimine) and lots of elbow grease.

Is your plaster ceiling sagging or cracking? Learn how to perform your own plaster ceiling repair!

Read more Expert Advice

Have questions about your old house? We’d love to answer them! Please send us your questions!

What is it that makes one kind of paint environmentally friendly? And how do the new standards affect performance?

By now, just about every North American paint manufacturer has moved to low- or no-VOC paints. (For the uninitiated, VOC stands for volatile organic compounds, gases implicated in indoor chemical sensitivities and outdoor smog.) Makers of milk paint point out that their products, made from milk proteins, lime, and pigment, have always been non-toxic.

Benjamin Moore rolled out its zero-VOC line, Natura, last year. In January, Farrow & Ball eliminated all of its oil-based finishes, making 90 percent of its paint low- or zero-VOC. The company claims the eco-friendly formulation delivers the same performance as its oil-based products.

Since the U.S. has no performance standards for paint, however, the jury is still out. What’s just as confusing is that paints touted as eco-friendly can be water-based, oil-based, alkyd-based, or acrylic. Further, not all toxins are VOCs. Some paints still contain ingredients anyone would consider toxic, including heavy metals.

This Portland bungalow just got a fresh coat. When selecting paint, consider its longevity, not just the colors (or price per gallon).

A $20 gallon of paint doesn’t last nearly as long as paint that costs $100, says Lahey, whose oil-based Hollandlac enamel meets both marine and LEED (green building certification) standards. “What we should really be doing is examining the entire life cycle of a can of paint.”

Cheaper paints tend to be extended with fillers like chalk rather than pigment, he says. Paints made mostly of resin and pigment—like the paints of past centuries—are stronger and last longer than most commercial American paints. Such high-performance paints tend to give 30 percent or more wall coverage per gallon and can last three to four times as long. “A manufacturer can do things at $100 per gallon that can’t be accomplished at $30 or $40,” Lahey says.

If the new, eco-friendly paints stand up for four or five years, that may seem like a good environmental bargain, especially for zero-VOC paints that eliminate other toxins (and even odors), like those from Mythic Paint, Bioshield, and AFM Safecoat. On the other hand, it costs a lot more, energy-wise, to make four cans of paint than one.

For exterior paints, those considered low-VOC have about 50 VOC units per gallon, as opposed to less than 10 for interior paints. Not all VOCs are created equal—some are harmful, others are not. “Every time you paint, damage is done to the environment, no matter whose paint you use,” says Lahey. When VOC levels are more or less equal, “it stands to reason that the paint that lasts the longest is the better choice.”

View all Paints & Finishes in the Products & Services Directory.

This piece of hardware fell from the top of some pocket doors I was removing. It shows no signs of having ever been attached to anything, and out of the two sets of doors I was refurbishing, I only found this object in one of the doors. The sliding hardware has a stamp on it: Wilcox MFG in Aurora IL, pat. 1881. Can you help me identify it? I would love to know what it does so that I can return it to its proper place when I’m done refurbishing the doors.

Bill Rigby: Early pocket doors were held in place by a bottom track with fixed axle sheaves mortised into the door bottom, and top guides (hardwood tongues installed in the door tops) running in a slot along a wooden overhead track. Upper tracks were never painted, but occasionally they could be waxed for smoother operation.

Richards-Wilcox ads showed how easily even a child could close the doors.

An improvement over this fixed axle design came with Robert Hatfield’s invention of a “frictionless” sheave in 1864. His idea to run the axle in horizontal slots in the sheave casing proved to be a great innovation. The axle would easily roll along the top of the slot, so installations had to be perfectly level to avoid the possibility of doors running away. The Richards-Wilcox company patented a top track assembly that used this same idea to create a smoothly operating top hanger, thus eliminating the floor track that some people found to be an annoyance.

What you’ve found is an early center stop for a set of Richards-Wilcox “Improved Sliding Door Hangers” for double doors, which would have fit into the track pocket to keep the doors from overextending. While your stop may be a crude cast iron form, Richards-Wilcox made rollers that were beautifully manufactured, even though they were never seen after installation. My collection of catalogs from the 19th century shows the rollers, but not any of the stops—I guess they weren’t thought to be a selling point. These Richards-Wilcox hangers needed reliable brakes; according to advertisements, they rolled so easily that even a child could handily manipulate them.

Your type of stop had its advantages. First, it wouldn’t be seen because it was mounted up in the track pocket, and back from the edge of the door. Second, it was easily removed to allow either door to be centered inside the opening. (As you’ve probably already discovered, you need to center the door in order to adjust the roller assemblies, or to take the door out of the pocket.) 

Most pocket door systems need some periodic maintenance, and yours is no exception. Keeping the area around the track clean will help keep your doors running smoothly, as falling debris can become embedded in the track when the wheels roll by, creating a bumpy motion. If squeaks develop, you can apply a small amount of household oil to the top of the slots with a rag.

Later pocket door assemblies need attention from time to time, too, but sometimes the most important thing to learn about them is what not to do. Systems with fiber or hard rubber wheels should only be lubricated on their axle bearings, as oil and grease will degrade these rollers to the point of complete failure. Even the box tracks that house fiber or hard rubber rollers need to be kept clean and free of oil.

Another complaint I sometimes hear about pocket doors is that breezes can blow through the wall pockets into living spaces. Many times, pocket door cavities weren’t sealed off when they abutted exterior walls or the floors above, which can result in drafts. While breezes and dirt filtering into the house through interior pocket doors can be annoying, most people learn to live with them because it’s nearly impossible to effectively seal off the cavities unless you are opening up walls in a major renovation.

Bill Rigby has been a restorer for 40 years, and supplies original stock builders’ hardware through the Wm. J. Rigby Co. He’s currently working on an 1880′s railway car for a museum.

Read more Expert Advice

Have questions about your old house? We’d love to answer them! Please send us your questions!

Charles Mueller of Centerbrook Architects and Planners used some tricks in the master bedroom of this Connecticut house to cut down on building costs.

The walls of the master bedroom are inexpensive—and dimensionally stable—birch plywood ripped into 8″-wide boards. They were spaced with a dime to express the joints.

Exterior wood clapboards were used on the ceiling, and are reminiscent of the hull of a boat, with the keel, or fin board, camouflaging air diffusers.

The owners can watch the sunrise from an intimate deck, just large enough for a couple of chairs.

While removing the old wallcovering and carpeting in my 1925 Foursquare, I discovered the ghost of an inner vestibule off the front porch. I can’t find any photographs of my house with the vestibule in it, and no other house in my neighborhood has one. Can you tell me what it might have looked like?

James C. Massey: This presents a series of questions. First, what is a vestibule, and what was its purpose? Architectural dictionary compiler Cyril Harris defines it as “an anteroom or small foyer leading into a larger space.” In residential buildings, it is specifically a space between the entrance and the main portion of a house, a place of shelter while waiting for entry into the home. It may open onto a stair hall or directly into the living room.

Vestibules were in common use from the 1880s Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival era until about 1930, in Colonial Revival and Old English houses. They were occasionally found as far back as the 18th century and as recently as the post-World War II era. They are still a valuable feature in any house fortunate enough to have one, providing shelter from wind and rain, controlling heat gain and loss, and giving the homeowner a good view of who’s at the door.

There are a number of vestibule variations. You may have encountered one that was actually installed after your house was constructed, given its small size and the fact that no similar ones exist in nearby homes. Most commonly a vestibule will have a glazed exterior door that’s welcoming yet allows you to see outside, plus a more solid inner door to the house for security and privacy. Although some exterior doors were kept locked, especially at night, most were unlocked to permit limited entrance. Sometimes, in the Victorian era, both doors might be glazed, or the inner one half-glazed. Generally the sidewalls would be solid.

There are several other approaches to vestibules, including small, solidly built projections of the house itself, perhaps even with small side windows. Rarely used were “knock-down” sectional vestibules erected for winter use in cold climes—an enhancement of the traditional storm door.

Today’s owners of historic houses with deep halls will sometimes carve out an open inner vestibule from part of the front hall, perhaps removing the original outside door and moving it inward to become the inner door of the new vestibule. The original opening might remain doorless or be given a full sash door.

Of whatever type or period, the vestibule’s basic function is to moderate between exterior and interior. A front porch, even a covered stoop, may provide shelter, but both fall short of full protection and privacy. With today’s awareness of energy conservation and cost, the “green” concept embodied in a vestibule makes renewed practical sense.

James C. Massey, contributing editor and preservation consultant, has led HABS and the National Trust’s Historic Properties.

Read more Expert Advice

Note how the many colors in ‘Fairyland’ (Trustworth Studios) blend to become an analogous and near-neutral background for warm oak tones and the brilliant green of the lantern. “White” woodwork, actually a coffee-and-cream color, is a brightening frame.

Taking our cue from a reader question about how to choose trim color that “goes with” the wallpaper, we spoke to wallpaper experts, colorists, and designers. I’ve been surprised at how much interest there is in the topic, and how much effusive advice was offered.

It’s not a new dilemma. William Morris (who liked to give advice on this and many other topics) was a strong advocate for woodwork that does not match the wallpaper. (He often suggested that trim be painted “a quiet green.”) He felt contrast was critical: “Rooms with wood-work and walls of equal tone are sometimes very tame, and even dull.” More recently, artist and muralist C.J. Hurley echoed Morris’s sentiments, explaining that the best interiors do not have wallpapers and woodwork too “safely” coordinated. Think of your room as a musical composition, C.J. suggests—one that has a careful combination of notes arranged harmonically, but with enough dissonance to make it compelling.

Here’s an example. If you have a tripartite wall with wallpaper in the frieze (top), don’t necessarily use paint in similar colors for the fill (center) and dado (bottom). Be adventuresome! If the frieze is predominantly green, how about the wall fill in an earthy yellow and the dado below in a richer yellow-brown that leans toward red? Create interest and a sense of movement, not flatness. A simpler bipartite Arts & Crafts scheme might have a frieze in naturalistic blue tones, with a russet orange-brown or silver-tone gray below, varied in tone (light or dark) between frieze and wall for visual relief and balance.

Color and pattern in the Victorian era were layered together for a textured palette that nonetheless was balanced to the eye, says 19th-century wallpaper guru John Burrows. Tastemakers didn’t shy away from strong and contrasting color schemes, “scientifically” basing their choices on the color wheel. Analogous colors (say, amethyst purple and sapphire blue) or contrasting ones (hunter green and madder red) could be “pleasingly combined.”

C.J. Hurley created a contrasting scheme with a Swedish blue-green paper accented with pink irises and yellow cartouches against a handpainted frieze. The ivory trim creates harmony. Note the subtle coordination of the window shade.

Tertiary colors produced softer, more subtle tones and were popular, such as an olive-green paper accented with burgundy and gold; perhaps a dash of peacock blue would highlight the terra cotta on woodwork and trim.

For a more sophisticated approach, Burrows advises using a paper’s neutral ground—such as “drab” (a warm gray), tan, or putty—as the base of the painted walls or woodwork, then adding one or two tertiary accents as narrow bands or stripes.

Maryellen Mantyla of California Paints reminds us that neutrals carry undertones of yellow, blue, green, or red, something to consider when deciding on complementary or harmonious colors.

Christopher Dresser’s 1859 botany textbook was titled Unity in Variety, which suggests a design concept as applicable to interiors today. Wayne Mason of Mason & Wolf Wallpapers (specialists in artistic period papers of the late 19th century and Arts & Crafts era) likes to keep Dresser’s philosophy in mind when combining wallpaper and paints, interpreting their unity in terms of music. That is, if the same red is repeated throughout the room, it’s like hitting the same key on the piano over and over.

Farrow & Ball’s ‘Rectory Red’ is echoed in the firm’s ‘St. Antoine Damask’ wallpaper.

Variation produced by combining brick red with burgundy and soft rose creates the equivalent of a musical chord. Mason often uses stenciling and painted bands of color to unify and define busy paper patterns on both walls and ceilings. For example, the transition between a ceiling painted a light sky blue and the wallpaper border surrounding it may be highlighted with a band of gold stenciling, carrying the pattern onto the painted portion of the ceiling as well as softening the hard edges of the wallpaper border.

Architectural elements are unified with paint and pattern as well.  Mason painted the plaster corbel of an archway in his own bedroom with soft yellow, red, green, and pink, the palette drawn from the Morris ‘Fruit’ paper applied to the walls of the room. Darker shades of these colors were then repeated on the picture molding to better define the woodwork and make it appear more substantial. Finally, a band of salmon paint was used to separate the ceiling paper from the wallpaper and provide a visual break between the busy patterns.

Trick of the Trade

John Burrows suggests using lining paper on walls, then painting trim before hanging the wallpaper. Allow the paint to overlap slightly onto the liner so that minor gaps in the wallpaper will not be evident. Hang wallpaper last. This sequence also avoids paint splatters on the paper.

As for painting plaster ceiling medallions, Heather Cole of Bradbury & Bradbury Wallpapers says to avoid the “paint-by-number look” by using only one color, perhaps with tonal variation or gilded highlights. She suggests glazing to add softness and glow.

The ‘Silvergate’ damask paper from Farrow & Ball repeats swirls of classical decoration in the mantel; the look is serene rather than busy because of the neutral colors and similar tones.

“I believe in plenty of optimism and white paint,” said famed decorator Elsie de Wolfe as the Colonial Revival took hold.

Despite her famously successful use of white paint, it takes skill to use white, warns David Berman of Trustworth Studios. Berman specializes in design (including wallpapers) based on the work of English Arts & Crafts designer CFA Voysey, who favored light-toned, airy interiors with woodwork either left natural or painted white.

But “white” is relative. Berman favors Benjamin Moore’s ‘White Coffee’ as a trim color, which is closer to a beige and has the tonality to complement tertiary colors. He claims that a common mistake is trying to “brighten” a room with white paint, which flattens the room and overwhelms its other elements.

Berman advises that color be chosen, too, according to the light in the room, and particularly whether the room is to be used primarily in daylight or under artificial illumination. The light source dramatically alters how paint and wallpaper colors are perceived.

Woodwork in a room acts as the frame for its walls, says nationally recognized designer Barry Dixon. He used Morris’s ‘Apple’ wallpaper from Sanderson in a custom colorway for his own kitchen and adjoining breakfast nook, creating an autumn palette.

Benjamin Moore’s ‘Startling Orange’ joins three colors by Farrow & Ball:  ‘Cream,’ the warm-brown ‘Wainscot,’ and ‘India Yellow’ (a color that in the 18th century was made from the bright-yellow urine of cows fed mango leaves). Inspired by Lutyens’s Castle Drogo in England, Dixon limed and waxed the quarter-sawn oak banquette to create a quiet frame for the richly colored Morris wallpaper.

Striping pulls colors together and offers relief in this installation of Bradbury wall and ceiling papers.

Finally, it’s important to consider how different rooms relate, says designer Leta Austin Foster, who works with her daughter, Sallie Giordano. Known for their comfortable interiors for historic homes, they like to create an enfilade of rooms, with enticement room to room, and often combining wallpaper with painted woodwork in complementary tones.

Farrow & Ball’s pale, sky-blue ‘Borrowed Light’ works well with period papers in creams, whites, and chocolates. Another suggestion from the pair: paint baseboards black or marbleize them (an English approach) to hide scuff marks and dirt.