Restoring archway into kitchen

[kenconut]

Hello,

Wondering if I could get advice on restoring this archway safely, as I want it to contrast the wall and be a natural colour. I presume it’s wood, and it’s covered in what appears to be many layers of paint from the previous owner.

 

[Stevers]

More likely to be plaster, and there's clearly some sort of lining around the arch - likely hardboard, but could just be many layers of paper. It would be interesting to see what's underneath that. I would have expected a moulded plaster bead to run round each side/corner of that arch - usually referred to as a staff bead. I pick those out in the woodwork colour to make a feature of them, but even in the wall colour I find the resulting shadow gaps pleasing.

As an aside that is a pretty funky way to install the panelling pattern wallpaper on that chimney breast!

 

[kenconut]

More likely to be plaster, and there's clearly some sort of lining around the arch - likely hardboard, but could just be many layers of paper. It would be interesting to see what's underneath that. I would have expected a moulded plaster bead to run round each side/corner of that arch - usually referred to as a staff bead. I pick those out in the woodwork colour to make a feature of them, but even in the wall colour I find the resulting shadow gaps pleasing.

As an aside that is a pretty funky way to install the panelling pattern wallpaper on that chimney breast!

As in, the arch pattern etc, is likely to be plaster? I wonder then if that's the case it may be easier to just bash it out and put our own one in .

I was going to ask in a separate thread how to handle the lining, as it seems the walls throughout the house have been prepped that way. Is this something that's easy to remove so we can repaint over the base layers of plaster?

And yep, that's an interesting looking Chimney pattern for sure, it's a weird material as well that we may go ahead removing once it's time to give the kitchen some TLC.

 

[Stevers]

Removing the many layers of assorted paint (no doubt with contributions from all previous owners) from the plaster mouldings is possible, but likely to be time consuming and something of a labour of love.

Looks like Vinyl Slyk on the coving and ceiling, so to get the ceiling wallpaper off you'll probably need to break the surface with an 'orbital wallpaper scorer' and then use a steam wallpaper stripper. Normally that sort of arch is in a hallway and I think that may be the shadow of a removed wall in the coving for what was probably a fairly narrow passage - a typical Victorian floor plan.

You won't know how hard it is to remove whatever is lining the walls until you try - and then you'll be committed! Not a lot of point speculating about what's underneath the lining - it could be good or bad, but Polyfilla (or similar) will be a great healer. Smoothing it over with a chalk based filler will be a safer bet in an older building than the modern way of giving it a full gypsum plaster skim.