30-Sep-2016

Our most difficult room, the "Little Saloon"

Our most difficult room is the "Little Saloon" or games room. The patricians, their wives and guests went there to play parlour games. TV and radio didn´t exist yet in their times!

The reason for its difficulty is its being situated in an annex from ~1720 therefore having much thinner walls than all the other rooms (the window reveals are only 12 cm thick)

In the spring 2004 after the very hot summer 2003 I found one day the western wall overgrown with mould within one week a surface of 8 squaremeter. Therefore we had to remove the wallpaper totally on this wall.
Mould-fell on the wallpaper
The Fideikommiß (a Fideikommiß is a special legacy contract) decided in 1920 to brick up the south window looking into the inner yard because its stone window sill was irreparably broken.
Besides the wood of the frame all components of the window stem out of the castle´s fundus. Window panes, locks and fittings have been kept by my ancestors for later use.
Looking into the room before the general restoration
And this is the outcome!

This wallpaper stemmed from 1927 and was quite nice, but not more. It showed mould in many places and its colours weren´t waterproof. Therefore the colours got destroyed wenn fighting against the mould with pure alcohol.
Therefore we removed the wallpaper from all walls and kept only a small amount in our collecting of removed castle tapestry.

On this picture as well you can recognise mould marks under the wallpaper
After nearly one hundred years we got the chance to reopen the bricked up window and to build in a new window made by our fine cabinett makers.
The stucco has been properly restored, cracks have been closed and the original colouring remade.
After having finished the total restoration of this room there came my part, to unpack everything I packed beforehand and to restore everything to its original place.
I only changed the position of two commodes because they fitted better this way.