A questioner said:
I was at a friend’s house and we spent a good hour trying to figure out why this ornate frame is in the ceiling of his dining room. It’s not to an attic because there’s a bedroom directly above it. That means it can’t be an old skylight either. I’d love to hear any of your thoughts.
- Remnants of an attic access door perhaps? – I thought so too. Needs to be opened now.
- – already said there’s a bedroom above it.
- – Which is why they said “remnants,” as in, “perhaps it used to be the attic door but then the house was remodeled and a bedroom added above this room.”
- – Typical of old buildings to have things like that. My grandparents house had windows in the interior walls of some bedrooms because they would close in outdoor porches to make additional rooms. It explains a lot of the “mystery” construction in the Winchester Mystery House.-
- -You might be bummed to read newer research into the house and Mrs Winchester make it out to be a lot less paranormally interesting than thought. Still an amazing house with a lot of stories, but not the crackpot stuff so much.The family that bought it from her estate when she died made up a lot of the stories.
- 100% believe that. I’ve toured it a few times and while I love the lore it definitely felt… emphasized…
- Or possibly an old laundry or garbage chute perhaps if the bedroom was there already? Leaning towards your explanation as most likely still though
- It’s definitely got the look of a blocked off attic door. They probably just filled it in and painted over all of it. Kind of a lazy fix, but it would be quicker and less work for whoever it was.
- I thought the attic door myself, but it’s a three story row home with a flat roof. Most row homes in Philly don’t have attics due to the flat roofs. Sorry, I overlooked some of these details.
- Looks like it could have held recessed fluorescent lights. Think the kind you might see in an office building. They were commonly used in residential construction in the 70s and contractors trying to make them look nice often just stuck crown molding around them. My guess is that at some point somebody replaced the fluorescent lights with that single can light and just stuck a piece of drywall or something up there to cover whatever scars were left behind.
- May have been something like this in the past:
- Our 1987-built house had recessed fluorescent lights behind a frame, actually a much bigger frame to hide four fluorescent tube fixtures, which I replaced with LED equivalent fixtures for brighter, non-flickering and quiet light. The fluorescent tubes were 48 inches long, the LED fixtures have a superficial resemblance to them and are likewise 48 inches long.
So if that panel is a bit longer than 48 inches, recessed fluorescent lighting is a very good possibility.
- U went ahead and replaced the entire fixture? With the conversion kits available, I usually just rewire the current fixture with the new end clips, bypass the entire ballast, and then put it all back. I would not do this in my own home, but for most customers, they just want light. It’s easier to keep their fixtures and just retrofit the LED kit.
- The wooden framework holds up plastic sheets that act as a diffuser between those fixtures and the room (the kitchen), so one isn’t seeing individual tubes and there aren’t harsh shadows.
So, when I saw the decorative framework on the ceiling and the possibility that it covers what was formerly recessed fluorescent lighting, I decided to add my experience as a confirmation that the frame was possibly for recessed fluorescent lighting based on my personal experience in my very own kitchen. 🙂
- My parents had a frame like that for a custom stained glass panel. It was in a darker part of the house, so it provided a soft light but not white light. This could have been something like that.
- Maybe not the replace the whole ceiling, but it would be a big job to tear down that trim, cut a piece of drywall to fill that hole, secure it, plaster it, smooth the whole thing over, and then you’d probably end up needing to paint the entire ceiling.
It’s much much simpler just to cut one piece of drywall, punch a hole for the can light, and stick it up there where the cover on the fluorescent light used to be.
- This if it wasnt the panel sometimes in older houses people would have China hutches of cabinets they wanted lit so they would put up a bank up fluorescence or several cans and trim them in to look “nice:
- Ahhh, that’s a really good guess right there. I would think the light would be more centered on the room, or at least have more than one aims the house, right? I like your thinking though.
- My old house had this, somebody had accessed the plumbing in the ceiling for the second floor and didn’t want to redo the ceiling tile.
- I feel like, in the absence of other info, is the most likely answer.
- Same, I have one of these in my garage ceiling as it was easier (i.e., cheaper) for my handyman to install after repairing a bathroom leak and removing the damaged drywall. Even if there’s no pipe directly above this, it could have been the location where water pooled and then leaked through.
- This is what I came to say. Figure out what is directly above it. It could have been added to access some random plumbing leak, but it’s more likely to access plumbing that the previous owners thought they’d need to access more than once
- This. I have it in my garage right below the laundry room plumbing
- My current house has this. It’s plumbing access.
- This is my guess, my first house has this and there was a hose bibb above it
- This was my guess. Plumbing leak damage and didn’t want to pay $$$ to fix it right
- Well, the bedroom above is right next to the bathroom. We measured the distance and the frame still falls below the floor in the bedroom. Although, he now noticed there is a change in wood used on the floor. Maybe a renovation? This is getting so close!!! Thanks y’all.
- Just a thought, are you sure it’s because they didn’t want to redo the tile? My parents have one of these in their kitchen. It sits just below the plumbing for the bathroom. They had repeat issues for a while, plumber was coming in almost every other year. Eventually they did this to just make the plumbing easier to access in even of another issue. Saves a lot of time and cleanup.
If there’s any sort of corresponding structure, or anything in the floor above, it may have been framing in an old register in the floor/ceiling. These were often employed in older houses, to allow warm air to go to upper rooms, and were sometimes surrounded by frames.
Does the bedroom above this have no attic above it? Like, is the the bedroom ceiling directly against the roof? Because if there was a full, unfinished attic on this floor it assuredly got converted to living space at some point with this old house. Seems extremely lazy to leave the trimmed out old attic access door there but I’ve never worked with plaster and maybe it can’t easily be smoothed over and filled in like drywall. So that’s my theory: Old attic access door.
Could it just be a patch panel? A valve or switch or something that needs to remain accessible? Get a ladder and see if it’ll open.
Ceiling looks damp and crinkled. Maybe the AC leaked( or the roof) and they didn’t want to pay for a drywall guy to make it look normal.
Had a similar patch motif in most of the plumbing access areas in my first house. If it broke once, you’ll probably be back in there again soon…then 10 years goes by.
Former chimney penetration? Location makes sense if it is in the kitchen and then a bedroom..
It is probably some kind of patch for something that was in the ceiling. Chimney, return air duct for a furnace, etc. they patched it and don’t know how to do drywall so just framed the seams and painted over it.
I work in property management (UK) and this sort of thing comes up a few times a year, in my experience the hatch is there because…
- Its an access hatch for an attic – I gather from your description there is a bedroom above: was this either a later addition or an attic conversion because if so, its an access hatch that is no longer used. Access for attics was generally in corridors or spare rooms, NOT in dining or living rooms which also tends to rule against this.
- Its a ‘lazy repair’ – at some point, that section of ceiling has required repair or replacement and rather than ‘do’ the entire ceiling, the issue has been dealt with by cutting away the damaged area and inserting a hatch to cover the hole.
The woodwork is interesting: thats not what I’d think of as a hatch surround, looks more like re-purposed furniture or picture framing. Whats the age and location, please? I usually find these in London, and about 50% of the time linked to WW2 incidental damage.