House restoration: grand halls

After successfully restoring the facade, I now return to where I left off on the inside, the upper corridor.

As I mentioned, I could not save the ceiling, but fortunately I had more of the fabulous Adam paper so it was just the matter of measuring and cutting carefully. There is a stairwell, and an opening needs to be cut out neatly. Last time I cut it on the wrong side.

There was no way I could replace the torn wallpaper. I didn't have any more of this paper. I could of course use a different wallpaper, but it would mean working in awkward spaces under the stairs. Last time I did the wallpaper before I inserted the stairs. So I just re-attached the torn paper the best I could. It will be hidden behind the breakfront.

This corridor didn't have any ceiling light before because I couldn't find any I was happy with. But some weeks ago I made a lamp at my miniature club, and I think it goes well into this interior. To attach it, I had to drill a hole in the ceiling, pull the cord through the hole and fix under the floor of the room upstairs. Once again, this is a situation when you are glad your floors are assembled on card that can be removed. Remember: never glue your floor directly on the room base!

In the rear corridor, I have a chest of drawers with all kinds of bric-a-brac on it, as Victorian chests would be. I will add all small items when I am done with repairs. The rear corridor used to have lights, which will be another major thing to deal with. But for the time being, the whole second floor is restored, and some people have moved in.




The mistress of the house keeps the distance of six feet from her daughter, the granny is teaching her granddaughter to wash her hands, the maid is dusting the corridor, and the gentlemen are drinking whisky, which doesn't protect against virus, but is a pleasant pastime. (The tiny bottle contains real whisky from Scotland).

(In case you, my dear reader, are reading this ten years from now and wonder what it is about: right now we are in the middle of a bad coronavirus pandemic and told to take all kinds of precautions).

I now move my attention to the two grand halls. They are hugely important because they are the first thing you see. The upper hall was in relatively good shape.

 

The window had come off, but fortunately wasn't broken so I simply pushed it in. Some of the tiles had also come off, but I just glued them back on.

One newel post at the back was broken.

It is a pleasant surprise there was only one, because the whole staircase is delicate and would be very hard to mend.

Finally, the large ceiling rose (a brooch) had come off.

I used the strongest glue I had because it is quite heavy.

I have now overcome the urge to squeeze every piece of furniture I have into Womble Hall. I used to have several chests and tables along the walls, which realistically made it impossible to pass. Now I think I will just have one on each side.

A lot of objects and ornaments can be added in this room, and as with other rooms, the floor needs sanding and polishing.

Meanwhile, I came to what I had been avoiding all the time: grand entrance hall with broken stairs.

This was the first thing I saw when I unpacked the house three months ago, and it made me quite frustrated. Now, after all restoration work I have done, I am much more sanguine. Not a disaster, just something that needs doing. After all, I did it once, and nothing was really broken.

Some floor boards had come off, but I found them and glued them back.

I also thought that, unlike the other rooms, it made sense to sand the floor at this stage, before I put in the stairs. So I did, a bit.

Then I took a deep breath and glued the stairs.

And that was it.

Nothing to feel anxious about.

There are many details to be added, including mirrors and pictures. The back door on the right opens into a corridor where I have a cabinet with stuff on it. There used to be light there that needs to be mended.

I probably need to explain the lopsided chandelier. It's very delicate antique pewter that I am reluctant to bend back into shape before everything else is in place. But I will one day, and I will either find the missing candles or make new ones.

So, against my fears, the two halls didn't demand too much effort.

Next: the roof. It will probably be more problematic.


To be continued.

Step by step: grand entrance hall

I have realised that I never finished my step-by-step, room-by-room tour of Womble Hall. The last room I showed was the smoking room, and prior to that I also showed the reception room, music room,  drawing room, dining room,  and master bedroom. There are quite a few rooms left, even before I move on to attic and basement.

This is what the entrance hall looks like today. Like everything else, it is not finished. Nothing is ever finished in a dollhouse project. But it is finished enough to be displayed with pride.



This is probably the only room that didn't have any predecessors in earlier projects, simply because there was no space in my other houses for a grand staircase like this.

I did, however, have a staircase even in my very first dollhouse in a shelf. I was very pleased with it, and I still think it was a very bold thing to do, just a couple of months after I first started miniature-making. When we moved to the UK and I resurrected the old house in a cabinet, I kept the stairs that didn't lead anywhere.

When Womble Hall kit arrived, the entrance hall was the only room where I didn't have to make any decisions. It could only be the entrance hall. When I dry-assembled, I attached the stairs with tack.

 

You get the idea, but it was one of the rooms that took a long time to plan. There is a rear corridor with a door on the right, and it had to be designed and finished before the final assembly. So it took a couple of months before I got down to this room, thinking it over while I was making chimney breasts and deciding on floors.

I chose to paint the walls rather than hanging wallpaper, and it was the right choice, I think, given the many other details that came later. I painted all walls flat, and I also painted the back partition. I have said repeatedly how much I like this kit because of its hidden spaces. The mysterious door at the back of the hall is exciting.

 

In this picture, from mid-October 2014, the floor is paper, and the wall panels are not finished, and yet you get a sense of what this room is supposed ti be.

The next time I returned to the hall was to make a proper wooden floor. This was still before the shell was glued. Prior to that, I had to decide on the decoration in the rear corridor. Only a tiny part of it would be visible through the door, and yet it had to be done properly. In this picture from the first step of assembly (mid-March 2015) you can see the back wall of the corridor, the half on the right, that will be visible, with proper wallpaper, and the left part, which will be sealed off, with simple printer paper.

I covered the floor of the rear corridor with self-adhesive shelf lining. You have to look very carefully to see that it isn't a proper wooded floor. You can only see a couple of square inches of it anyway.

I now realise that I missed the moment when I put in the partition. Obviously I had to insert the door before I glued in the partition, and since I have light in the corridor I must have added it before as well. The light is a LED strip with a battery attached to the back of the house. My clever son-in-law says there is a better way, but I will leave it to him.

Finally, in May 2015 it was time to deal with the grand stairs, and I came with a solution that I had initially dismissed as going too far. This is a good example of how you put higher and higher demands on yourself and how one detail leads to the next.

For instance, I was not longer happy with the floor because it felt too conspicuous. I tried once again to use shelf lining:

I cut the original sheet into small strips and arranged them into parquet patterns. But you know what? I said this before. Once you have made wooded floors you will never again be satisfied with paper. So I used the same pattern, but made the floor from coffee stirrers. 

I had various things in the rear corridor, but eventually put a Chippendale hutch cabinet there.

It looks like by that time I had glued on the rails. A dedicated dollhouse-maker would have discarded the rails provided with the kit and built new ones with individual turned spindles. Maybe I will do it some time. But for now, I rounded the edges of the spindles with sandpaper, and I also added mouldings on the outside for a more finished look.

In due time, I inserted the double doors and founds interesting door knobs. I invested in some expensive antique objects. And the final touch was of course the magnificent Adam ceiling.

So here we are, a year later: not much changed, but a few items added and perhaps some more can be added, but as I keep repeating: a project like this is never complete.

For contrast, I will show what three professional designers did with this room, whereupon the house was sold for £25,000.

Grand Adam ceiling, cont.

As planned, I finished the Adam ceiling today. I cannot say I am fully content with the result, because, as I keep saying, it is incredibly difficult to work on a ceiling once the house has been assembled. If there are minor faults (yes, there are) there is nothing I can do about them now, and most probably nobody will ever notice, except maybe someone inspecting the house closely when I am gone, and I won't worry about it now. Unless yo look very carefully, it looks good.

 

The magnificent silver chandelier from the antique shop in Stockholm is so far attached provisionally because first I need to attach the stairs. As I was working on the ceiling I noticed that I hadn't finished mouldings on the back wall, so I will need to do that before I attach the stairs. However, with the ceiling I feel there is a major break-through in the hall. I am glad I haven't yet attached the stairs because then the ceiling would have been impossible to fix. This was simply meant to happen this way.

Grand Adam ceiling

Once again, it took a long time before I could move on, but today's project is the new ceiling in the great entrance hall for which I used the magnificent Robert Adam wrapping paper I bought in Soane's Museum a few weeks ago.

The sheet was too large to use as it was, and the ceiling has a curious shape because of the stairwell. This is what I had - although at that point I had already cut out some bits. It's a ceiling pattern from 1756, never executed.

The central square is unfortunately too large for this ceiling, but I may use it elsewhere. The main problem was that I couldn't just cut out a bit since it had to fit the ceiling and be symmetrical, and my first attempt to paste cutout bits direct on the ceiling were a complete failure. It might have worked if I still had flat surfaces, but at that time I didn't have this wonderful paper. Working upside down in a limited space is not an option. So what I had to do is assemble the whole ceiling on a piece of lining paper. Luckily, I had a template, which is the floor above, still unfinished.

 

And then came the fun of designing a new ceiling, using Adam's patterns, like a jigsaw puzzle. 

I started with a large bit that was quite straightforward. 

 

Looks simple, doesn't it? Next, I added an octagon. I had to cut a curve, to follow the pattern below. 

Then I added a side frieze. The arrows show obvious faults that I had to deal with, and the picture on the right shows how.

 

Then it was just doing the same on the other side, fill some gaps, add trimmings. As you see in the picture, it grew dark meanwhile, and I had to switch on the light. Believe it or not, it took me most of the day.

The side flaps will go down the walls, instead of coving. This is why they are upside down against the main frieze.

I tested it with white tack, but I think I need daylight and a bit more energy to glue it on. Report to follow. 

Chandelier in the great hall

When you work on a huge project like this, it is tremendously important to plan all details. Just as I was about to glue the partitions for the rear corridor I realised that the hole to hang the chandelier on the floor below was in the corridor that I was about to seal off. Normally a hole would be in the middle of a ceiling, but in this case, because the chandelier will hang over the stairs it is closer to the back wall.

I made the chandelier some time ago but now I had an unexpected challenge. If you have never tried to balance a chandelier with six chains, let me tell you that it takes a lot of time and swearing. But finally it was done. So what I had to do now it thread the wire through the ceiling rose and the ceiling, fix it and glue the ceiling rose to the celing. I could have used another pair of hands.

 

The ceiling decoration is a picture frame that I found on the "take if you want it" table at work. The ceiling rose is a brooch. I had to paint the central bit because it was too bright red.


Here is a close-up. I see that I need to fix the candles better.

Finding the right place

As promised, I am going to show how the riches from the flea market either find their place in the existing environments or, perhaps, inspire new projects.

To place the pewter things was easy: they merge nicely into the Tudor great hall. They are slightly too big, but I don't think it matters. The rich master of the house wants to impress his guests.

In the solar, which is the upper floor of a Tudor house, I have put the lady, the baby in the cradle and the chest.

This is the first doll I have in the Tudor house. I was planning to have one, but it didn't happen until now, and I see how the presence of a doll makes a huge difference. I guess it means that there will be more.

Tudor final touches

The only things to finish the (ongoing) story of the Tudor house is to show the present state of the three rooms. The kitchen has not changed much, but I keep adding details, utensils, decorations, and I will make more food. I also plan to add a small baking oven.

 The Great Hall has another table that I found at a flea market in Stockholm. The numerous teapots and the bowls on the manterpiece are all made from old coins. The pretty pewter things are real pewter, bought on ebay. The battle axe and helmet are from Lego. There are two stools in the front. The one on the left is made from kit, the one on the right I made myself, using chopsticks for legs. There is not much I can add to this room, except for more crests and tapestries. The crests, by the way, are of Cambridge colleges.

Some new details in the solar are the cradle, the spinning wheel (which is a pencil sharpener) with a little bench, and, hidden behind, in the left corner, "the secret chair" covered with velvet.

It is difficult to show the whole house, but this is the best I can do. I never showed the attic before, but there isn't much there yet. 

I have some plans for exterior addtions, such as chimneys and a porch, and there is a lot I can do in the rooms. The book about Tudor dollhouses has masses of interesting ideas. I will come back with new developments, but for now, this is the end of the story of my Tudor house.

Timber framing

Tudor houses are timber-framed (or half timber-framed). My house was timber-framed on the outside, and it had ceiling beams, but it had no frames on the inside.

 

This is the upper floor, also known as solar. Note that there is no fireplace in this room. Tudor houses were cold. I knew already how to make naturally looking timber frames after I had done my antique shop. I used wooden strips that I cut uneven with a craft knife and hammered with a rubber hammer.

 

Then I did the same on the middle floor, which is the Great Hall.

I cut the unicorn tapestry from a catalogue, and two buttons with crests fit in nicely. But you have surely noticed a very authentic Tudor bench. In the meantime I had finally been to a very dangerous place, Maple Street dollhouse shop. It is just half an hour by car from where I live, and they have everything. Of course they have everything online, but I am less tempted shopping online than when I am there ans want to buy everything. But on that occasion I just bought a couple of Tudor pieces to add to authenticity. I would very soon learn how to make almost as nice things myself.

I bought a table, a chair (which was a rarity in Tudor houses; only the master would have a chair), a bench and a stool. They were all kits, and I assembled and stained them. I borrowed some utensils from the Victorian house, things that looked like pewter, which they would have in a Tudor household.