Mini jars

A couple of weeks ago someone in one of my miniature groups showed a set of tiny glass jars filled with glitter, from The Works (a hobby chain in the UK). I have been hunting these jars forever, but I won't pay a fortune for them on ebay. I happened to be near The Works last week, and bought a set for £1.

 

I want the jars, not glitter, but the first rule of miniature making is never throw away anything, so I started thinking where I can keep the glitter, and just some days later I happened to be in another hobby shop and bought this very useful mini storage box.

 

At the moment I cannot think of any use for glitter, because I don't do glitter-themed environments, but who knows. If it had been red it would have been useful to make fire.


Anyway, this left me with eight empty jars that I wanted to fill with something interesting for my larder. I have some jars made from plastic bottle caps, filled with salt, couscous, seeds and stuff. But jars invited preserves.

I posted in my miniature group, and the responses puzzled me. Friend after friend said: Candles. Ignorant as I am, I couldn't see any connections between glass jars and candles, but apparently there is something called Yankee candles, and if you make a candle shop, glass jars is exactly what you need.  Always something new to learn from miniature-making.

However, I wasn't making a candle shop, and a Victorian house would probably not have Yankee candles, and what I wanted was preserves or pickles. So this is what I made:

Left to right:

Coriander seed.
White pepper.
Snowdrop fruit (will probably dry up).
Air-drying clay, painted.
Lentils.
Eucalyptus seeds.
Unidentified seeds I had before.
Green lentils.

Apart from clay gherkins and snowdrop seeds that maybe also look like cucumbers or green peppers, I am not sure exactly what the things are supposed to represent. I may add glue to yellow lentils and pretend it's orange marmalade. White pepper may be green tomatoes? I will probably paint eucalyptus seeds dark red for beets. In fact, I had these fake beets before, but I made a big mistake. Of course there must be liquid in preserves if they are to look natural, and one of these days I will get scenic water to add features to my kitchens and bathrooms. But at the moment I haven't got scenic water, so I thought: what could I use instead? Antibacterial gel maybe? Bad idea. It all got murky within a day. So for the time being there is no liquid. There is room for improvement.

By the way, painting cucumbers was harder than you think. I tried and tried and tried and never got the right shade of green.

Here are the jars on their shelves:

Actually, you cannot see them well. I will have to re-arrange the shelves for better display.

Lower entrance door

I have now put back the basement fronts, after all my work inside the basement rooms. An unfinished detail that drew my attention was the basement entrance door, the deliveries door that will eventually be under the grand front stairs. So far there isn't much to see on the outside.

On the inside, it looks weird. The door does have wooden hinges, but they come off easily, and there is no surround so I wonder whether this door is meant to be opened at all.

If you have followed my blog you know that I decorate the inside of the fronts, to create an illusion of additional space. To the right in this picture, you see the extension of the best kitchen. To the left is the fourth wall of the lower entrance hall, but I don't think I will use the wallpaper, it will be too messy. But I needed to do something about the door, to keep it in place and have neat trimmings. I used my favourite full-size wallpaper for the surround and a craft stick for the threshold. The door knob is a paper clip. The horse shoe over the door comes from some junk jewellery. And the hook for the keys is a tip from champagne wire. I really like it. In fact, I like it so much that I may replace all nails in both kitchens with such hooks. I have plenty of champagne wire.

Finishing touches on the basement

I know I have said this before: I cannot understand how it is possible to decorate a dollhouse after you have assembled it. I would have never been able to make the elaborate decoration in my two kitchens unless I had worked on flat surfaces and before the roof was on. The final steps were really painful, and I only had to glue on cornices and some small details.

For any kind of work, you need two hands and you need to be able to see what you are doing. In a space 40 cm broad, 20 cm high and 50 cm deep, there is very little margin for movement and almost no light. I put in a battery spot, but I could not get both my arms inside and look into the room. So for the cornices, I had to get in one arm up to my shoulder and feel around. Mind: it was paper, easily attached: I can't imagine how I would do it with proper wooden moulding. (If you know how it is done, please tell me).

In the best kitchen, I had to take down a shelf on the back wall to glue on the cornice, but when I had to put it back, again I had a choice of either using two hands without sight or one hand, and I want to see you work one-handed with tiny nails inside a half-meter deep room. My arms are simply not long enough.

I felt very much like Alice in Wonderland, crammed in a house far too small.

I am, however, pleased with the result. I also found a ceiling light for the best kitchen; I had it in my old kitchen and had completely forgotten about it. It fits nicely with the rest.

The next room, which is the lower entrance hall - delivery entrance - was a bit easier because is doesn't go all the way back. Still I had to do it by touch only, as I could not see what I was doing. The ceiling lamp is something bought cheap; it was a real light with a wire, but I use it as fake. Eventually, there will be tea lights on remote control placed strategically here and there.

I moved the delivery boy to this room from the kitchen, and it made a huge difference.There is a lot that can be added in this room.

The larder was worst because it is just 12 cm broad, hardly enough for one hand.  The shelves are fixed permanently so I didn't want to remove them. The fake ceiling light is made from an eyedrop-bottle cap.

The working kitchen was hard again, because it is full depth. There are also various shelves which I, after the problems in the best kitchen, didn't want to remove. Either way, it's complicated. But since it was the fourth room, I have developed the skills. For the ceiling light, I found a lamp I had made long ago but never used anywhere. It is made from a glass candlestick decoration and champagne wire. I cut the ceiling rose from a chocolate box.

 

It is very difficult to take decent pictures of such small rooms, so here is a closeup, to show more detail.

Having done all this, I am immensely grateful for the serendipity of my big mistake. If I had glued on the roof six months ago I wouldn't yet have discovered the magic of full-size wallpaper which makes moulding soooooo much easier to do.

Basement roof

I will not share all details about improvements and repairs in the basement following new lights. I had to sand and scratch upper edges of walls to fit into roof grooves - something I didn't know six montts ago when I worked on the basement, but which I learned from assembling the main house. I removed the fronts to work more comfortably. I repaired the broken door posts and fixed wallpaper that had come off. Againt my principles, I attached jars, plates and other utensils on tables, shelves and dressers with sticky dots because they will keep falling off, and it's a lot of trouble to put them back in the limited space of the basement rooms.

(I believe the design of the basement does not presuppose the level of sophistication I am doing. The furnished basements of this model that I have seen feature, for instance, an empty garage with one car, an empty entrance hall without the back corridor, and a half-empty kitchen).

I also put up two new shelves that I bought in my favourite miniature shop in Stockholm a few weeks ago. They look genuine early 20th century to me, and I hope they are because they were quite pricey. They came with two lovely tin jars that say "Sugar" and "Coffee" in Swedish, but I will pretend that the master of the house bought them from a Swedish merchant.

It wasn't possible to hammer in nails without damaging the shelves, so I drilled holes and glued in nails cut to the depth of the hole.

Here is an interesting observation on perception psychology. Most of the tin and pewter objects in the working kitchen I made myself, covering plastic with metal paint. They look fine enough. But if I place a couple of "genuine" objects in the front, you will perceive all other objects as genuine as well. (It is like using dialects in theatre: an actor only has to speak in a dialect for the first five minutes of the performance; afterwards you will "hear" the dialect even though it's not there. The same with limping or other physical traits). In the second picture, only the coffee pot on the left is genuine pewter, everything else is painted plastic. But because you see the coffee pot first you will be deceived to believe that all other jugs are also genuine. This is great to know when you plan your rooms. One-two genuine objects will do the trick.  

After this I could no longer postpone the critical moment of putting on the roof. I considered turning the structure upside down as it might be easier, but decided against it because of all the hanging objects on the walls that I would have to remove.

To my surprise, the roof fit quite well, with some persuasion and a rubber hammer, but once it was in place, I didn't want to risk taking it off to use glue. So here it is. 

 

You cannot see the details, and there are no display lights yet, but now there is a roof. You can see details in my earlier posts, for instance, here.

The next step is to attach mouldings, and since I am now clever and know how to use full-size wallpaper for moulding this is what I am going to do. I have already put in wooden skirting so it will have to stay.

This is also the right moment to decide whether I want ceiling lights because I will need to drill holes and fix the lights before I put back the main house. They will be fake, and I am not sure I want any at all because the ceiling is low, and ceiling lamps will obscure the view. Perhaps I will just have fake wall sconces.

I have some time now before term starts so I hope to finish - I mean, really finish - the basement soon. Stay tuned.

Light replacement

If you read my yesterday's post you may be interested to know how I am dealing with the issues.

Firstly, of course, I removed the old lights and replaced them with LED strips. (Fortunately, I still had two left). I wasn't happy with the old lights because they were too dim. LED lights are stronger than a "normal" light would be, but I think it works better, especially in rear corridors. A bit of the mystery disappears, but you can see the details better.

A vertical shot of the rear corridor (roof removed) shows how I attached the strip and fixed the battery holder. It does not matter that the wires hang loose because they won't be visible with the roof on.

The door opens into the front corridor, and the light will thus be reflected from the back wall. I had to cut a groove in the back wall where the wires go. The battery holder is attached to the back in a fabric bag, just as I did with the lights in the main house. I may come up with a better idea, but so far it works fine.

The door to the right opens into the best kitchen, and it will be visible from the front. The corridor and the stairs are also visible from the side window. It is very difficult to take a decent picture through a window, so use your imagination.

 

From the front, the corridor looks like this:

 

Yes, I know the stair rail is crooked, but it's too late to do anything about it. The front corridor is, contrary to what I remembered, not at all finished, but this I can do after the roof is on. What I did add is a old box under the stairs. It was an empty space that just demanded something to fill it. It is casually shoved in.

The light under the stairs, only visible from the working kitchen, was both easier and more difficult to fix. It is a very small and awkward space. Originally, I worked on it before I put in the stairs, but this time I could only access it through the kitchen door. I had already a hole in the back wall which I just needed to make larger for the strip to go through. But because of the drilling, the wall was damaged. And the wire fully visible. There was no way I could hide it because I needed to place the strip behind the door.

As I said, there will only be a lateral view of this space, through the kitchen window. One in a hundred viewers might look through this window, but this viewer will see the mess and think I did a poor job.

The white square on the wall is, by the say, a piece of velcro that will hold the dresser in place. Once I have sealed the roof there will be no way I can access the dresser. So here I have tidied it up. It almost looks as if the light comes from the fake lamp. 

From the side window, you have a view, and that's the only way you can see this space.

 

This done, I must now repair the broken door posts and make all the final fixtures before I glue on the roof.

By the way,  I checked the assembly instructions for the basement. The roof should be glued after the interior doors! So I haven't even made the mistake I thought I had.

Backtracking

I have been away from my dolhouse for a while. I went to two conferences, and in between it has been gardening weather rather than dollhouse weather. I have been to Sweden and left a considerable amount of money in the miniature shop in Stockholm, but this is a separate story which I will be happy to share later. What happened today when I finally returned to my project was that I noticed that one of the basement doors, the one between the kitchen and the larder, was broken. Since the house hasn't been moved or even touched, this was a mystery. Then I realised what had happened.

I knew that I would have to deal with it sooner or later, so why did I pretend I didn't? If you have followed my project, you may or may not remember, and if you haven't, I'll tell you now. Almost half a year ago, when I moved the basement from the dining table and started assembling the main house on top of it, I didn't glue on the basement roof. I remember I was in a hurry because I had guests coming who would sleep in the room (and eat at the dining table). So I simply put the roof on top of the basement, and the house on top of the roof. I didn't notice, and would probably not think of it if I had, was that the main house was one centimetre de-centred against the basement roof. Which means that the weight was unbalanced, and finally, with the roof and the fronts added, the weight of the house crashed a basement door. Luckily, not beyond repair. Yet it reminded me that the basement roof needed to be glued on, for which purpose I had to remove the main house, for which purpose I had to remove all objects that could get broken during the move. Which resulted in this:

It isn't really going back half a year, because all rooms have floors and wallpaper, most of the doors and one staircase are in place, the rear corridors are done; but suddenly what to an inexperienced eye would look like a finished house was little more than an empty shell.

Moreover, when I tried to move it, I realised that it had become significantly heavier since last time, because of the fronts. So I removed them too.

 

My husband helped me to move the main house to a coffee table. It looked familiar.

It is now in the middle of the room, and the basement is behind it. No way I can have any guests in the near future.

So, with the basement I am really half a year back. There is another mistake I made, apart from assembling the main house before glueing on the basement roof. The roof should be glued on before the interior walls. It will be very difficult to do it now. However, I had a reason for doing it the way I did because it is extremely hard to work inside low-ceilinged rooms, and with my intricate rear corridor I wouldn't have been able to make it at all. So it turned our right although it was wrong. It will still be very, very hard to put on the roof.

Yet there are several unexpected advantages. Firstly, I can now replace the lights, which I was happy with then, but not any more, not since I used LED-strips in the rear corridors of the main house. I was going to do it anyway, but it will be much easier without the roof. I will also be able to re-arrange some of the furniture and add some stuff I had obtained since then. Again, it will be much easier while the roof is off. Repairing the broken door will be easy. I have learned some important lessons while working on the main house.

But glueing on the roof will be very, very hard.

Basement lights

Today is the great break-through in my lighting attempts. I have given up on conventional lights, even though the effect was good; I just don't have the patience (and my sight is getting poor). So battery lights is a solution. After trial and error and trial and error I have finally plucked my courage and drilled holes in the roof.

As a side comment: I now understand why it is advised to use a mask when you sand or drill in MDF. After the first two holes I realised that I didn't want to inhale the dust. I don't have a mask, but when I was in Madagascar last year we were taken to a marquetry workshop where they used airplane eyepatches instead of mask. Think how clever people can be! And it works just great.

Anyway, I drilled all these holes. When I earlier had tested drilling in MDF with a large drill, the surface was damaged. So I first drilled very small holes with a small drill and then enlarged them with a power tool. Before drilling, I tested the position of the lights on a piece of cardboard. Then I traced the holes from the cardboard onto the roof.

 

I need larger holes than for converntional wires because I will push bulbs through them, like this:

I will later protect wires with heavy-duty tape and possibly make grooves because the main house will be on top of this.  The battery holder will be on the back. But there are still some things I need to finish before I glue on the roof.

It is almost impossible to take pictures from the sides, through the windows, but at least ir provides some idea. One set of lights is under the staircase in the rear corridor where I have a chest of drawers. It is visible through the working kitchen window.

From the other side, you can see the staircase and the wall with some pictures.

Again, it is taken through a window. Finally, from the front entrance, you can see the staircase through a door.

I haven't bothered to make lampshades because the lights are quite dull as they are. When I have proper lights in the front rooms the corridor lights will be almost invisible, but they will still contribute to the effect. My filmmaker son tells me that in light technicians' jargon they are called "practical". 

I am working on the proper lighting now and will hopefully be able to share the results soon.

Fixing shelves

Finishing the basement, I have serendipitously found a solution to a long-time problem. As any dollhouse maker knows, it is next to impossible to attach shelves onto walls. If you use tack or even superglue, sooner or later the shelves will fall down. I have tried to glue thumbnails to the back of shelves:

Yes, they work. Sometimes for years. But one day they fall down, and if you have something breakable on the shelf it breaks. Or maybe your shelf is in a hardly accessible corner of your room, and you will stretch all your arm muscles trying to fix it.

As usual, I was searching for something else when I had my eureka.

I have used these hooks for all kinds of purposes, but suddenly I realised that if I just bend the hook into another loop it will be just what I need.

Now I have solid hooks that I can use to attach the shelf to the wall. Of course I could have made these double loops from a piece of wire (which I will do in the future) but I had to see the hook to come up with this very simple solution that I happily offer to all dollhouse friends.

 

If you wonder about the shelf itself, I made it many years ago for my very first house, using a bit of wooden strip and two pieces of a photo frame. The utensils come from a game, the name of which I don't know in English, but it involves picking up these tiny things from a pile one by one, without any other moving. I have saved this game since I was a child, through all moves and losses. It is made of some precious wood and still smells wonderful after fifty years.

The impersistence of memory

In preparation for the final assembly of the house, I decided to check that everything in the basement was finished and I could glue on the roof. I knew I had to fix lights in the rear corridor, since I am now definitely giving up on conventional lights. But that should only take a couple of hours.

How unreliable is memory! How great wishful thinking. I was genuinely convinced that the basement was finished before I moved it, but thinking back logically, of course I moved it because we were expecting guests - oh dear, two months ago! - and I had to clear the dining room table no matter what. Then I put the main house on top of the basement and have been working on it ever since, while the basement, as I see now, still needs a lot of work. Just look at it: things fixed with white tack, no mouldings, shelves still to put up on walls. How could I forget?

So today is the back-to-basement day. And since the basement is now on the floor and there is no way I am taking it back to the dining room table, the working position is not the most comfortable. I still prefer working on flat surfaces, so I unhinged the front walls and inserted nails to hang things on. In the unlikely case you don't know how to hammer tiny nails without crushing your fingers, here are two tricks.

Then it turned out that the skirting boards I have are ten centimeters shorter than the front. I haven't found a solution to it yet. Two pieces of skirting will look untidy. I have tried to make my own from card, but I am not happy with them either. I think I will need to buy 1:1 skirting.

In my desperation, I turned to skirting inside the rooms, for which I inescapably need to go down on my knees, and I can only do it for a short while. But what a difference it makes with moulding!

 

My drill ran out of juice as I was making holes for more nails and hooks. It is charging now. Perhaps I should call it a day.

Lessons from the basement

Looking back, I am very glad that the basement arrived when it did and that I decided to make the basement before I continued with the main house. It turned out to be a smaller, more manageable project, helpful for the future, almost like a pilot project where you can make some mistakes on a smaller scale.

I learned how important it is to try and try and try again before you fix anything. How important it is to calculate the order in which certain steps are taken. I learned that it is worth while taking the time it takes. Sometimes not even worth while, but imperative. For instance, it took me three days to glue the walls together, and there were just three walls. I should allow a week or more for the main house. Glue, dry, glue, dry. I know that the walls won't fit perfectly, and that it is ok, sooner or later, after a lot more work, they will.

I will now be more confident in making the stairs in the main house. I will definitely make more secret corridors. I know that it takes ages to sand the windows so that they fit the openings. And I know how to put in the glazing. I know how long it takes to paint the doors and to put them in, with surrounds. And I know that it is worth while spending time and effort to age and distress doors and walls to make them look natural.

I know that I need to think about skirting and other tiny details. I know that it will take me much longer than I had expected to put in lights, and I am still not sure whether I will wire or use batteries. 

It took me six weeks to finish the basement (or at least work on it to this point), but it doesn't say much. Some days I worked more than others, many days I didn't work at all. But if I say that it took me 106 hours to get this far I think it puts things into perspective.

Moving the basement

Due to circumstances beyound my control I have moved the basement from its legitimate place on the dining table. I had expected it to be more difficult than it turned out to be. I was of course obliged to remove all objects that weren't fixed, but after that I lifted the whole basement easily onto a tea trolley and rolled it through the house to my study. I am glad we live in a bungalow, and I didn't have to carry it up the stairs. But once I came to the door I had to tip the basement a bit because it didn't go through. Which made me think that once I have assembled the whole house there is no way I can move it from the study to the place where I eventually want it to be. But I cannot move it now, because... and so on. So I won't worry about it now.

The next step was to put the main house on top of the basement. I cannot leave the basement in the middle of the room because the room will be used by guests next week. I removed all objects from the main house and stared at it for a while. It stared back with its empty windows, uncooperatively. I taped it all over with masking tape (it isn't glued together yet). I didn't want to ask my husband because it would be more risk than help. He has a bad back, and I wouldn't like him to drop the house. I thought I might arrange a tea party for some students and ask them for help. But then I had to wait for the occasion, and I had all the hundreds upon hundreds of miniature objects all over the room. I had nowhere to store them. It's amazing how things always take up more space when they are out of their natural order. It's true about 1:1 things as well.

I stared at the house for a while and then I lifted one side of it and put it on top of the basement. Then I lifted the other side. Just like that. I sat on the floor contemplating my deed.

Then I put the fronts in place, and even the roof which I hadn't even touched yet. But suddenly you could the house slightly more finished.

 

Then I removed the fronts and the roof and put back all the million objects. You may have noticed that I keep doing this, removing and putting back, and you may wonder why I don't just put them away for a while. But I need to know how the various objects fit into the space. I have already made many alterations to my original plans because the objects changed my perspective.

What has happened now is that the main house is 20 cm higher up so it is much easier to see the ground floor. But the basement is almost impossible to see or to work on. I had to lie down on my belly to put in the stuff. Eventually the house will be on a display stand, which I have tried to buy, but since it is produced by the same manufacturer as the house, it is - surprise! - currently unavailable. I guess I can buy some inexpensive coffee table at Oxfam as another temporary solution.

As it is, I won't be able to work on the basement in the near future. There is not much left to be done, but it needs to be done while the basement roof is off, and it should preferably be a reasonable working height. So not until mid-January. Which is fine. There is a lot I can do in the meantime. 

The fourth wall

Like a theatre, a dollhouse takes away the fourth wall. We must be able to peep into the miniature world. Different dollhouse designs offer different solutions. My retro house, for instance, can be opened from both sides, the roof can be taken off, and the upper floor can be removed. My Playmobil house had no back wall. But most dollhouses have an open front, with or without protecting doors.

I have come to the stage in my work on the basement when I have hinged the fronts. Fronts allow some additional space for display; you can even make a separate fake room. For the basement, I have chosen to have natural fourth walls. But this is the last and only time when these can be viewed as walls, from this angle:

Working kitchen

Best kitchen

When I have put on the roof, the only way to see the fourth wall will be when the front is open:


The wall allows to display the array of kitchen utensils I made eight years ago for my very first kitchen (so far, white-tacked). I am still very proud of them. This way, you can see them much better than inside a crammed room.

Finishing touches on the secret corridor

I spent the whole day today on the secret corridor. I had made slow progress on the staircase in the evenings, and yesterday I finally glued it on. Of course as soon as I did that I saw clearly that it wasn't as perfect as I had thought, but it's too late now.

 

I made the lamp shade from a bottle cap. This is as much or as little that will be visible through the door. However, both ends of the corridor can be seen through the side windows. It's almost impossible to take a good picture, or any picture, but I promise, it looks just as mysterious as I want it.

 

There are two pictures on the wall, and of course there is a cat at the bottom of the stairs. I have tried rugs, but space is so tight that a rug killed it. But I did put in a bit of skirting, even if it's just barely visible, and there is a proper newel post.

From the opposite side, there is this wonderful under-stairs space, far too small to make much of. But enough to put in a chest of drawers. I first tried a simple white one, from my supply of Poundland furniture. But it felt too plain. I painted it green, same colour as the walls, and then distressed it with a coat of lighter green which I wiped off with a cloth. I used bead fittings for handles.

 

Now it looks sufficiently worn-out (maybe slightly too worn out, but it will only be visible from the side).


The light is temporary, "borrowed" from the kitchen, just to test the effect.

Now you may ask, why do I put so much energy into something that won't be visible except if you know where to look? It's a bit like writers putting in family jokes into their books. Or painters putting the same tiny detail in every painting. Nobody will notice, unless... But I know that there will be at least some keen eyes who will discover the secret corridor, and for them, everything should be done properly.

Side effects

This weekend I was hoping to finish the basement, at least finish the secret room and put lights in it. I am working against time. In two weeks I have my annual pre-Christmas party, and no matter what I will have to move the basement from the dinner table. And from the dining room. The only place I can move it to is my study, which doubles as a guest room, and a prolonged guest season is imminent, which means I cannot put the basement in the middle of the room. It has to go under the main house which takes too much space as it is. At least I have glued the basement so I can move it in one piece, but I hoped it would be finished, or almost finished, because I much prefer working at the dinner table than lying on the floor on my stomach. Once I have moved it and put the main house on top, will I want to dismantle it again?

However, I am afraid that I will not meet my deadline. Firstly, after I had for two weeks been absolutely sure that I would have a chest of drawers and a mirror in the secret corridor I am now back to the idea of a staircase. And making a straircase is more complicated than putting in a mirror. Making a staircase is one of the greatest challenges of dollhouse construction, even if you make it from kit, and I am not doing it. Through the rear door, only a small bit of the stairs will be visible, but from the side window it will be in full view so I need to make it properly. I have made several straircases, and I remember some tricks, but it isn't something you can do in a hurry. I have done some preparations, but it will have to be next weekend. Meanshile I have tested lights.

I may have said already, probably repeatedly, that I am not good at lighting. I had quite a sophisticated light system in the Victorian house which I hope to replicate in the new project, but lights is one thing about dollhouses that I don't enjoy doing. I like the results, when it works, and I am proud of myself when I have solved a problem, but it's simply too much trouble. Therefore, when the first battery dollhouse lights came some years ago I was delighted that my problems would now be solved for ever. Alas! I bought a set of lights and was truly disappointed because they were too dim and didn't look natural, even the "amber" variety. I learned how to soften LED lights when I finished my van Hoogstraaten room box, But I have tried this and that with battery lights in various projects, and I cannot make them work. At least not the way I want.

The other day I bought a set of battery Chrismas lights in a thrift shop. For a pound, I thought, I could experiment. It would be such a relief to have the basement lights without all the drilling and wiring and the tiny plugs and bulbs.

I tested the lights, and I didn't like what I saw:

Even though the picture shows the lights more blue than they are, they still don't look natural, and even though I have five lamps in this one room it looks far too dark. When I have invested so much in this project, I don't want to compromise. I am simply not happy with this solution.

I gave it another chance though. I painted each little lamp yellow, which made the light softer and less artificial. Yet it still looked like Christmas lights (which they are). Victorians wouldn't have such lights anyway. They would have chandeliers, sconces, table lamps. In a modern house perhaps...

And then I realied that I have a modern house, and I have a modern house where standard lighting is impossible, but a set of battery lights might work.

I have so far just fixed it with tape, but I have by serendipity found a solution to a problem that has haunted me for years.