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Hacía mucho tiempo que las telarañas decoraban el techo.

Hacía mucho tiempo que las telarañas decoraban el techo.
The cobwebs had been decorating the ceiling for a long time.
From Lesson 242:Past duration (hacía... que)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Hacía mucho tiempo que las telarañas decoraban el techo.

Why does the Spanish sentence use the imperfect decoraban when the English translation says 'had been decorating'?
When an action started in the past and was still ongoing at another point in the past, Spanish uses the formula Hacía + [amount of time] + que + [imperfect verb]. While English uses the past perfect continuous tense for this, Spanish simply uses the imperfect tense (decoraban) because the decorating was still an ongoing background event.
Can I change the order of the sentence and put the time expression at the end?
Yes, you can say Las telarañas decoraban el techo hacía mucho tiempo. Notice that when the hacía time phrase moves to the end of the sentence, the connecting word que is dropped.
Why do we need las before telarañas? In English we can just say 'cobwebs' without an article.
In Spanish, when a noun is the subject of the sentence, it almost always needs a definite article (el, la, los, or las). Since the cobwebs are the subject doing the decorating in this sentence, you must include las.
Does techo translate to 'ceiling' or 'roof'?
It often means both! Techo refers generally to the upper covering of a space. Since cobwebs usually gather on the inside, 'ceiling' makes the most sense here. If you ever need to specifically talk about the exterior roof of a building, you can use the word tejado.

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