Browse Forums General Discussion 1 Jun 13, 2010 3:15 pm Hi everyone We currently have our house on the market and are keeping an eye out for a new (established) house to buy. A lot of the houses in the areas that we are looking can be quite a bit older and many have picture rails. After living with a house full of picture rails in our first house for 10yrs, I swore i would never get another house with picture rails. My question is, are they easy to remove?? And if so, are they then easy to plaster the gap and get a smooth finish or is it difficult and often leaves a line/bump where the rail once was?? I guess that will depend on how good the plasterer is, but just wondering in general if it is easy or difficult. Ceebs Re: Removing Picture Rails from older house.... 2Jun 13, 2010 8:34 pm The problem removing them is that even though they are attached with spaced wooden 'pegs', pulling out the 'pegs' will most probably dislodge the lime/plaster surface. the surface tends to crumble away, which leaves youwith a hole bigger than the 'peg' which was removed. To repair the wall surface, you then have to mix the correct ingredients to match the rest of the wall. IT's not cement render but some kind of mixture containing lime. Sorry, don't know much more Also, once the rails are removed you might also end up with paint lines where the paint (years of paint layers) met the rails. Built the Eden Brae Cambridge 34 Family with Boston Corner Facade Re: Removing Picture Rails from older house.... 3Jun 14, 2010 3:06 pm Thanks Southies... and good point about the paint layers too. Yes, my first preference is to avoid the house with picture rails.... but if it came down to it and that was the only thing 'against' the house, then of course we'd consider it but just wondered what we might be in for in trying to remove them..... Thanks again... Ceebs Re: Removing Picture Rails from older house.... 4Jun 14, 2010 5:27 pm Can I ask why you don't like them? I think they are a lovely feature of a period home. One thing I hate though is 'contrast' picture rails - when we moved into our house the walls were butter yellow and the picture rails were white, I thought it looked awful. When we repainted the original part of the house I painted the lower part of the walls including the rail a half-strength colour, and the upper part the quarter-strength. I like the effect, the rail is still a feature without standing out too much. We did remove the picture rail on the wall behind the fireplace which we had wallpapered. Because we were papering, we didn't need a perfect finish, but it did leave big holes where the rail came off (probably due to about 20 layers of paint). The guy who hung the paper did a lot of work filling and sanding where the rail was. Doing a whole house to a standard where you could just paint over it and not notice where the rail was would be quite a big job. Re: Removing Picture Rails from older house.... 5Jun 15, 2010 8:08 pm Thanks MishB - that gives a really good indication as to what we might be in for should we do that. As for why I don't like them? To be honest, I am actually over 'period detail'. Well, depends which period, and which detail . But as I said in my original post, our first house had picture rails throughout and visually they didn't 'do it' for me and also, I found that they dictated how/where/what position we could hang art. I know most people like those kind of features, but they just don't suit my style or furniture at the moment either. Thanks again for the feedback... Ceebs I had an old shower unit that broke on me and when I took it off, there were only 2 water pipes, instead of the normal 2 water pipes and a shower head pipe. S o I… 0 36937 6 11144 The best advice is for you to get a competent building consultant to guide you through your build 7 4675 |