Decorative Mouldings Best Suited To The French Provincial Style

Ever popular, the French provincial style has been adapted in Australia and used in the design of many modern built homes. Pitched rooflines, symmetry, arched windows, tall top storey windows, porticos with substantial balustrades are some of the features of this style. French provincial homes tend to be rather grand: reflecting country manor elegance. Decorative architectural mouldings are very much a part of this elegant style, both interior and exterior.

Melbourne builders, designers and architects value the high quality, lightweight, decorative mouldings that the Finishing Touch supply to complete their French provincial designed houses. These decorative mouldings last, stay put and don’t crack or warp. The Finishing Touch have a range of exterior decorative mouldings that are particularly suited to the French provincial style. They are:

Parapet Decorative Mouldings:

French provincial parapets, model # P4300, size 300mm x 285mm.

French provincial parapet model # P4240, size 240mm x 227mm.

French provincial parapets, model #P4160, size 160mm x 160mm.

Stringer Mouldings:

French provincial stringers, model # S1R4, size 90mm x 70mm

French provincial stringers, model # P8120, size 120mm x 90mm.

Decorative mouldings for Windows:

French provincial window sills, model # WS5, size 130mm x 70mm,

French provincial window sills, model #WSR15, sized 135mm x 185mm.

French provincial window architraves, model #W1100, size 100mm x 45mm.

French provincial window architraves, model # WDG8XY, size 120mm x 50mm.

Arches:

Can be made to fit any size with a variety of styles available.

Eave mouldings:

French provincial eave moulding model #PE8200, sized 195mm x 155mm.

Columns:

Round, square or tapered.

French provincial pier caps

Available in three styles, French, French Modern and Small French.

 

Please contact the Finishing Touch to order decorative mouldings for your next build.

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Friday 13th Haunted Houses

It’s Friday 13th. To get your spook on we are looking at some famous haunted houses. Studley Park House in Camden, was originally built by grazier William Payne in 1889. Although considered haunted, it is a beautiful building, featuring many admirable decorative mouldings. The death of two children has earned the house its haunted reputation. The residence became a boarding college and in 1909 a 14-year-old student, Ray Blackstone, drowned in a dam near the residence. His body is believed to have been kept at the cellar until it was buried. The building was sold soon after and reverted back to a residence. The son of acclaimed business man Arthur Adolphus Gregory died at the house in 1939 from appendicitis and his body was kept in the theatrette.

Spooky disturbances at the house include a hangman’s noose found dangling from a steeple roof by builders renovating in 2010, unexplained lights, sightings of a lady who stands at the window and a photograph of a ghostly young boy in the basement taken by ghost hunters.

Closer to home in Bundoora, on the outskirts of Melbourne, is the old Larundel Mental Asylum, famous in its day for incarcerating a great number of Melburnians suffering mental illness. Closed in 2001, it has been an abandoned building, off limits to the public but has built a reputation for being haunted. This attractive building was one of Melbourne’s three “magnificent asylums for the insane” built in the 1930s and 40s.

Now covered in graffiti the building, since its closure, has been a hangout for ghost hunters, graffiti artists and squatters. There have been reports of loud banging, children’s laughter, crying, and an eerie music box. Serial killer Peter Dupas was treated here, adding to the mystique of the building. Only a few original buildings of the vast complex remain and are soon to be reconstructed into apartments, completing the residential development already constructed on the grounds, which includes a shopping centre.

 

Decorative Columns Made Easy

Columns have long been used not only structurally, but also decoratively, and are associated with grand buildings. The Parthenon is one of the most famous examples of a colonnade of columns that create a grandiose affect to the onlooker’s eye. When columns were made from stone and then concrete they were only constructed in stately buildings, due to the cost and effort.

The Parthenon

The humble residential home was not often decorated with grand columns at the entrance.

There has been a revolution in the construction industry in more recent times with the introduction of decorative mouldings made from a lightweight material.  These lightweight mouldings are easily transported to the building site and simply attached to the building. A far cry from the original mouldings that were mixed onsite and created by craftsmen in decorative designs. Those designs are still available but are pre-moulded and delivered. The most commonly used designs these days are simpler, but if a more complex design is desired, these can be specifically custom designed by the Finishing Touch, suppliers of lightweight decorative mouldings

The Finishing Touch are renowned suppliers of quality decorative mouldings for columns. During the construction stage a thin metal or wooden post is inserted into the building for the columns; the lightweight column mouldings are delivered in two halves and adhered around the post. Columns are available in round, fluted, square and tapered shapes.  Caps, capitals and bases are also supplied by the Finishing Touch in a variety of patterns.

These days many modern homes boast a stunning entrance featuring columns, creating a stately presence on the streetscape.

It is due to the technology of the lightweight mouldings now broadly used by builders to enhance the façade of the residential homes they construct.