A Crown Jewel has been Placed

Oh, hello…. Yes, I was planning to post this weeks ago… And I even wrote it weeks ago…. But here we are, and I am glad you are here, thanks for your patience. Last month I kicked off the restart of our parlor project and revealed a tweak to the paint colors and how they will work in the room, at the end of the post hinted at was next on the list (a few of you got it). So, let’s get to it!… My quest for the perfect crown jewel for our parlor began more than four years ago, and I am beyond excited to share that the medallion is finally installed! You are reading this correctly. It is installed and it is absolutely beautiful! There will be some reveal pics further down, but as per my style, I need to fill in some backstory first.

Way back in March of 2017, about a week after we got the keys to the house, I was alone in the house noticed an odd shadow on the parlor ceiling in the morning light. It was obvious that the center of the ceiling had been patched in at some point, and that it was unquestionably in the shape of an oval. Huzzah! Proof that there was once an oval shaped medallion on our ceiling!

I know that the house had running water when constructed in 1852. I can see clearly on an 1853 map, that our block was supplied by the Fair Mount Water Works. And I also know that gas was introduced to the city in 1836 when the Philadelphia Gas Works lit up 46 natural gas lights along Second St. Shortly thereafter, gas lighting appeared in business and the homes of the wealthy. In fact, Philadelphia was considered the center for elaborate gasolier manufacturing at the time.

But it wasn’t until after the Civil War that gas lines were installed on our block. My best guess is that gas lighting was added to our house in the 1880s during the ownership of Daniel W Farroe. Farroe is responsible for most of the Victorian modernization which occurred during the time he owned it from 1881 to 1897.

The 1880s was also smack dab in the middle of the period when beefy medallions were all the rage. After all… People wanted to bring as much attention to the fact that they had gasoliers and what better way than to have a giant beefy plaster medallion to showcase their ability to afford it.

Thus began my quest for a beefy medallion which I wrote about here and here. In a nutshell, it became quite obvious that 98% of the medallions sold today are completely wrong in size, shape, and scale for the period in which the medallion was added to our house. And the 2% that are the correct size, shape, and scale, are either far too expensive (like $500+) or the seller is unwilling to ship across the country. My mission was to find an appropriate medallion and as I go into great detail on the second blog post, I not only managed to secure a vintage 19th century medallion, it was affordable and located in my favorite antique shop only a half mile away from our house.

When I brought my vintage medallion home and got right to work on it, it was covered in untold layers of paint which was cracking and missing in areas. This led to me spending 25-30 hours with a pick painstakingly picking and chipping away the caked on paint. As I picked away the paint, the original pastel color scheme began to be revealed.

I managed to get it about 80% of the paint off by the summer of 2018, and then put it to the side with the expectation that I would be installing it in the spring of 2019. Well, if you have followed me for a while, you will know that a lot of life happened beginning in 2019 and the parlor project was postponed, and then postponed again, and then back-burnered as I dealt with other major life challenges.

Finally, this spring, newly refocused on getting the parlor done, I dug it out and got back to work on chipping the paint away. After I finished with the front, I had to deal with the back where there was remaining plaster from when it was removed from it’s original home.

I hauled it out to the backyard, and used a grinder as well as a mallet and chisel to get the excess plaster off. It was a very messy job, and it was actually going along just fine. Just as I was finishing with it, while was using the mallet and chisel, I heard a snap, and suddenly a crack appeared. Shit! This was exactly what I didn’t want to happen!

All this work, and just at the end, I go and break the damned thing. I was gutted. But knowing that I had no option but to make it work, I decided to just let it go and live with it. Besides, it was over 40 pounds, and now that it was in two pieces, I realized that may make it easier to install (it did).

Before I move on, I must address my decision about my plans for finishing it. My original plan was to paint it in a single color, the same as the ceiling. But when I was chipping away the layers of white paint and the original pastel colors, along with gold leaf, began to be revealed, I had to pause. Should I try to restore it?

Most of the original finish was there, albeit pitted with chips and small chunks missing, the gilded areas were also not in great shape at all. I gave it some thought, but decided to stick with my original plan, pastels are pretty, but not my thing… at all. After posting here and on Instagram, I also had several well-intentioned folks encourage me to paint it all fancy and Victorian like with multiple colors. I am even less of a fan of a medallion that has been painted in a multitude of colors, I just don’t like how it looks. No judgements to those who like pastels or multiple colored medallions, it’s just not a look I am a fan of for myself and my house.

So, with little fanfare, I pulled out the primer and began to coat it in white. I was concerned that all the pock marks and signs if chipped paint would make it look terrible, but then reminded myself that this thing is about 140 years old and pock marks and chipped paint is to be expected. Once the first coat of Aurora Borealis was painted on, my concerns immediately dissipated. Yes, it is filled with imperfections, but I believe it wouldn’t look authentic if it was perfect. When I did a new reproduction ceiling medallion for our apartment in NYC, I used a slurry of plaster of Paris to give it the look of layers and layers of paint to create the illusion that it was old. With this medallion, I didn’t have to, I only needed to ensure there was a solid base for new paint.

Okay, now that I have a painted medallion, how do I attach it to the ceiling? My original plan was to cut a 3/4″ piece of plywood the same oval shape, cut the ceiling plaster to fit the oval within, screw the medallion into the ceiling joists, pre-drill holes into the medallion, and screw it into the plywood. This has been my plan for the past several years. But then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that cutting into the plaster was potentially risky in that I run a high probability of cracking and knocking more plaster loose than I want, and then would end up with a lot of patching and filling.

I needed to at least determine where the ceiling joists were, so I removed the electrical box which we had installed when we bought the house. I knew that there was a gas pipe up there, but it was only when I pulled the ceiling box that I discovered that there was also some knob and tube wiring which would indicate at some point, there was an electrical box there (see in photo above). However, I wasn’t able to determine if the K&T was actually for a light, or just running through across the room. There was no active electrical there when we bought the house, hence having a new switched line installed.

Still uneasy about cutting into the plaster, it occured that I could just screw plywood directly to the ceiling into the floor joists, and then screw the medallion into that. Duh!?! And that’s exactly what I did, only I used 1/2″ plywood to reduce the thickness of it. I cut the plywood oval about 1/4 inch smaller than the diameter of the medallion to provide an area to fill and smooth it in so it would look seamless.

With the help of my wonderful next-door neighbor, we managed to screw the medallion into the plywood and Shazam! We have a medallion! Even before I got up and started to paint the area around it, I knew this was truly the crown jewel of the room. It looked amazing! It is beefy to be sure, but in our 19th century house, it is totally appropriate. Let’s be honest, it would look absolutely silly in a 20th century house.

That was in April… We had friends visiting from the Midwest at the end of the month and I was under a deadline (my own self imposed) to get the parlor completed before they arrived. I didn’t even come close (as it is still long way off from being done). But as I revealed in my last post, I did manage to paint a second wall with Caldwell Green, and two-thirds of the ceiling in Aurora Borealis to at least capture the feeling of where I am headed with my plans. Then I temporarily rehung some art, and cleaned up, just in time for our guests.

Now, I only needed to fill in the gap. I considered several different materials, but in the end, went with plain old lightweight spackle. You know, the kind you use to plug small holes before you paint. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t use spackle because it isn’t very durable. But since this in on the ceiling and I don’t expect it to be brushed up against, or knocked about, it should be just fine. I used the stuff that is pink when you put it on, and dries white. I love it because of that very thing. It took two days for the pink to finally turn to white, but it sanded up beautifully, and with only minimal patching, it was ready for it’s final coat of paint.

Yes, the line where it broke is still visible, and I did fill in portions of it, but then decided that it looks just fine. Besides, it’s at least 135 years old, so it’s not going to be perfect by any measure.

So….. Here it is!… Our crown jewel of the parlor!

Now I know what you are thinking…. He he going to keep that porcelain socket up there? Well… For the time being yes. I have plans for a chandelier, but it will be the last thing I put up after the room is completed.

Now, before you think I only need to paint and I will be done, there are actually two more projects planned before I can finish painting and putting the room back together. The first one will be revealed next post…. Hint, I had to drive to a lumber mill to get supplies.

Till next time. . .

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