— Really, Malcolm: you don’t surprise us somehow. But how do you intend to “restore them”?
— Aha! With a proper plasterer!
— You’re going back on the Old Peculier, then?
— Never off it, old son. But I mean a real skim-it-on-the-wall professional.
— !!!? … please explain, Malcolm. We can only take so much mental aggro each day.
Well, I thought a quirk was:
A peculiarity of character or behaviour; an idiosyncrasy, an eccentricity; an oddity…
But that’s only definition number 5 in the OED.
Number one (both in the OED and Merriam-Webster) is:
A twist or turn; a sudden or unexpected change.
Your modern plaster turns a corner with the use of a metal corner bead. The result is a sharp right-angled edge.
Now look at your Victorian house, before the modern plasterer nailed up his bead and skimmed up to it. Thus destroying the gentler, more rounded old “broom-handle” corner. You’ll find, where the modern metal bead would be, that the corner is a piece of dowelling, so “broom-handle” moulding. Moreover, each side of the dowel, the plasterer laid a groove. There are your quirks. And my plasterer is going to scrape them out and relay them, properly.