Early issues of Old-House Journal were full of glossaries. It was necessary to define architecture-related words not in common use during the reign of Modernism. We can’t talk about something without a vocabulary—nor will we care enough to save it. This page excerpts a four-pager published in OHJ’s April 1982 issue. Illustrations are by Leo Blackman, who was then a preservation-studies student at Columbia.
An urgent question from an OHJ staffer: “How hard would it be to get rid of my hideous popcorn ceiling?” (If you don’t remember, this is a heavily textured, spray-on finish, sometimes with glitter, popular from the postwar years through the 1970s.) I looked through our archive and found little encouragement. Then I trolled the internet and YouTube. Still not encouraging but certainly entertaining. Here’s my take on the options.
