We are expecting several visitors from UK over the next month. First a weekend visit by friends from Ealing, then my mother is coming for two weeks (including her 92nd birthday). She will be accompanied by my brother Simon and his wife Paloma. This means that we have to get the third bedroom, on the lower floor of the house, commissioned. Which will be a big job. My labours in sorting out packing cases paid big dividends (finding Christmas decorations, for example), but it meant that there were a lot of possessions scattered all over the lower floor. The intended kitchen space has been a prime recipient of ornaments, chinaware, glass and all sorts of other bits and pieces. And the cupboard under the stairs had become a picture gallery. So, now the effort has been to find slightly more permanent places for the bits and bobs, and we needed to hang a lot more pictures.
One design feature of the house caused a little confusion for the builders initially. We ordered picture rails through the house – not something which is common in modern houses in USA. We had to carefully explain exactly what we wanted to achieve, but Tom got the point fairly quickly when we showed him pictures of our old Victorian home in Ealing. The painters got the point pretty quickly of painting the section of wall above the picture rail the same colour as the ceiling, not the wall below (even calling it “European style”). So, now we can hang and remove pictures without banging nails into the walls. That is particularly significant as we have many pocket doors which slide into the wall – a nail through the wall and into a door behind the plasterboard could have unhappy consequences.
Given the picture rail in place, we now needed the brass hangers to secure the picture cord onto the rail. And then suitable picture cord. Since the ceilings are quite high, it is inevitable that the picture cord would be visible, so something more decorative than a piece of white nylon string was in order. We had restricted the number of different paint colours around the house both for stylistic and economic reasons (more colours = larger painters bill). The basic colour we used for the walls is a beige/olive/green shade. Somehow, it transforms miraculously into different hues dependent upon the light and picks up any strong colours in the room. So the walls in my library (with lots of wood and a northern outlook) are definitely a brownish olive grey. The south facing spare bedroom has much more of a lighter green hue, and our bedroom appears to have much darker paint.
Lisa got onto the Internet (her favourite shop) and found a specialist firm which sold both fancy picture rail hangers and also a range of picture cords. The final selection was an “antique ivory” picture cord – a three strand twisted cord with a thin wire in the middle of each stand. It is officially rated safe for 100lbs plus – I think it might restrain a charging elephant, let alone a framed print! The cord has a chameleon like property of changing colour to try to match the wall shade.
So, I have been working around the house hanging our selected pictures. Of course, if we don’t like where they are, we can rapidly move or even remove them. The challenge for me is to ensure consistent height – not as easy as you might suspect, when a matching pair or trio of pictures is involved. The human eye can spot such microscopic differences in height it is scary! Now that we most of the pictures up, I count about 30 of them.
In view of the old adage about all work and no play – we went out to dinner with Sandra and Jeff to celebrate his birthday. To the Back Porch on Public Square in the centre of Dahlonega for a very enjoyable evening. And now it is back to the task of making the house fit for visitors.