How To Paint 60 Metres Of Original Victorian Woodwork

Work continues apace on our daughter's bedroom. The walls have been plastered and painted, the woodwork has been sanded, primed and painted, and the new flooring is down.

Sounds easy, right? It wasn't. 20m of skirting boards, 20m of picture rail, and 20m of cornicing. Thanks for that, Victorians. And they had been painted orange, delightfully, meaning multiple layers of white paint were required. And because they're 130 years old, masking tape doesn't work due to the wood's ancient unevenness, so we had to paint all edges manually. And by 'we' I actually mean me. Andre splashes the paint on, I tidy it up. Did I mention the ceilings are 12 feet high? They're 12 feet high. Fortunately the cellar is (naturally) home to a variety of rickety ladders that have proven very useful.

As a reminder, here's how the room looked when we first moved in:

And here's how it looks now:

Here's another angle:

We used Dulux Winter Teal 5 on three of the walls, and Dulux Summer Surprise 3 on the pink wall. It's sooooooo pink. If you're going to go pink, go big or go home is what I say.

In addition to replacing the hideous cheapo tongue and groove, we also replaced some of the more badly damaged planks elsewhere in the room:

The new wood is much lighter than the original because it's been planed, but by the time it's been coated in delicious Osmo Polyx Oil I reckon the difference will be less obvious. In the first photo above, you can see some of my Osmo experimentations - we've chosen Amber on the left. We really liked Terra on the right, but thought it might be a bit overwhelming on the entire floor, and we have dark wood furniture in other rooms that would probably blend too much into a Terra floor (we plan to use the same oil throughout the entire house).

In addition to all this painting, replastering and carpentry, I've also re-upholstered the chair in the picture at the top of this post, sewed a couple of huge bean bags, stained and painted an Ikea Latt table, purchased a fabulous antique wardrobe from eBay, sewed 10m of fully-lined curtains with invisible seams, and am currently about two thirds of the way through painting an overly ambitious mural on the pink wall. Photos to follow, once I've had a bit of a lie down.