This summer, I stayed with my husband at the old mountain inn where my father worked as a musician in the 1950s. When I wrote a blog post about the place, readers wrote to ask me, "What do you mean the ceilings were made of tin? How could a ceiling be made of tin?"
So on this visit with my parents, I took a photo of the painted tin ceiling in the dining room. The inn was built in 1894 so that ceiling is over 100 years old. I'm guessing it's been painted a few times. Downstairs in the bar, which has a similar ceiling, I stood up on a bar stool and knocked on the ceiling to see if it sounded like tin. It did.
10 comments:
Huh. I was already familiar with tin ceilings; they're common in historic buildings throughout the West. I guess they're not as common as I'd thought!
They're pretty common in New York, too, or at least in Brooklyn. When I lived there, a tin ceiling was one of those cool retro selling points for an apartment, like exposed brick or original hardwood floors.
I love tin ceilings! I recently saw this type of tin (but new) used as a backsplash in a kitchen. It was cool, but I'm not sure I could live with it...
When you knocked on the ceiling, did anyone answer?
;-)
T.
We put that type of ceiling in when we refurbished our house several years ago, ours is copper, really copper plated steel. Someone had ordered it and never took delivery so the supply house let us have it at a good price, otherwise we could never have afforded it. At Christmas our grandson will just lie on the floor and stare at the reflections on the tree.
I so wanted a tin ceiling when we were building, but it was just so far out of our budget. I still think they are beautiful.
Lovely.
So curious to me that someone wouldn't know a tin ceiling. I am sitting under one right now - my office is in an old building, once a factory.
FA: No. But I realize now that I got it wrong. I was supposed to knock three times on the ceiling ....
Yeah, but "twice on the pipe...."
;-)
I love tin ceilings. I love all old historic type things in houses and buildings. I wish I could restore all the buildings downtown. I'm not a modernist when it comes to buildings, for sure. I like gargoyles, and glass/crystal door knobs, and flowery light fixtures, and all that. :) Pretty place.
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