Period Details
Reading Galway fabric so new furniture and finishes sit calmly inside stone cottages and Georgian apartments.
Sash windows and curtain stacks
Many Latin Quarter flats still run timber sashes with shallow reveals. We size curtain poles to clear the meeting rail and keep stacks narrow so daylight reaches deep into single-aspect rooms.
Where later PVC replacements sit in older openings, we hide the frame with a slim fascia rather than heavy pelmets that fake a century the building never had.
Chimney breasts as fixed anchors
Working fireplaces are rare, yet the breast remains the strongest vertical mass in Galway period rooms. Seating, shelving, or a single upright lamp is drawn against that mass first so the rest of the plan can float.
Blocking the breast with a television wall usually fails in rooms under four metres wide; we prefer a movable media cabinet that leaves the plaster readable.
Skirting, architraves, and paint junctions
Original skirtings along Shop Street upper floors vary in height from room to room. Colour breaks follow the timber line, not an arbitrary dado, so patched plaster does not shout against intact mouldings.
When boards are missing, we match profile thickness before colour so replacements do not read as a modern strip glued to the wall.
Stone cottage thresholds
Claddagh and outer-city stone cottages often step down into living rooms. Rugs and low furniture need edge binding that will not trip at those changes of level, and sofa depths stay modest so doors can swing past.
We record every threshold on the measured plan before choosing dining tables that must travel from front door to hearth niche.
Georgian ceiling heights
Rooms near Eyre Square can rise well above modern flats. Tall bookcases and pendant drops are welcome here, but only when the floor plan still allows a clear path for two people with shopping bags.
In split-level conversions we shorten storage on the upper half-landing so the Georgian volume does not become a warehouse of unused shelves.
Hardware that belongs to the coast
Salt air around Salthill corrodes cheap plated knobs within a season. We specify solid brass or powder-coated steel for cupboard pulls and curtain rings facing the bay, and keep polished chrome for sheltered inner rooms only.
Clients receive a short hardware schedule with finish notes so replacements years later stay consistent with the apartment's first scheme.