Nice and not so nice

We have discovered some nice things and some, well – not so nice.

I had had an idea in my head that the bottom part of the wall in the entrance hall was done in cheap wallpaper.  It isn’t – this is in fact Lincrusta.  It was made from sawdust boiled in linseed oil and was an expensive wall covering made from 1870s onwards.  So in our case it probably went in twenty years or so after the house was built.  It is rock solid, undamaged and even painted a mushroom colour which is the sort of colour that would have been used for it originally.

The staircase is made from mahogany and seems to be original although it has been spoiled at the basement level to make an access door in 1970s.

On the nasty front – the paper in the drawing room is coming off the wall in places.  The one wall at the front is papered in what seems just to be lining paper and it is coming away in a fashion which makes me think that the wall has been damp at some point in the past.  This whole wall needs to be stripped to have a look at the plaster – then possibly replastered, or at the least repapered.  A proper decorator will need to do this because there is no way I can paper that kind of drop.

For now I have stuck the paper back on with wallpaper paste.  This will need to be addressed once the more urgent things are out of the way.  I suspect that the green wallpaper in the dining room is also hiding some bad news – but that is another one for later.