Friday, April 23, 2010

The Heartbreak of Picture Rail

A few months back I found these guys. They have picture rail that almost perfectly matches our existing picture rail. I took down the picture rail in the dining room as part of the paint stripping project. It wasn't in good shape. It was broken in two places, dinged up and warped. So after agonizing about it for months, we opted to replace the picture rail with new. Actually, I'm the one that agonized over it. I'm not sure Ms. Huis lost any sleep over it.

Because our kitchen and entry never had picture rail and the previous owner took the picture rail down in our office, we also decided we might as well get picture rail for those rooms too. I measured up the rooms and called Ashland. They quoted us a price for several different styles of picture rail, and even sent out a few samples. Monday I called them back to officially order what we chose. They got back to me on Wednesday. There was a problem.

Getting the picture rail to us was going to be problematic. It ships in 14 foot lengths, which is great for reducing splicing when installing it. It also makes shipping it here difficult. Sending it to us was going to cost $450. Ironically, this is about the cost for our local milling company to create a custom knife to match our existing picture rail profile. Looks like we might be installing the original back in place.

I guess I'll just have to keep digging.

2 comments:

Pusher said...

This may be a stupid question, but the company isn't all that far from you. Could you rent a trailer for your vehicle and burn a day to go pick it up yourself?

Mr. Kluges said...

No, not a stupid question. It may come to that. It's a four hour drive to them (approximately), and I reckon with gas and trailer rental, it would still come out much cheaper than having them ship it to me.

Or I can pay the four hundred dollars to get a knife ground locally that matches EXACTLY what we have.

Another option is that we're meeting with our historical carpenter in the next month or so to discuss repair to the front entry roof, soffit and gutters. He might have a source.

Like most things with this place, it's just going to take some more thought.