Step by step: upper hall

Like the grand entrance hall I described yesterday, upper hall has no predecessors in any earlier projects, and, also like the grand hall, I had no other options than to build it as designed. (I guess I could have closed the stairwell and make a different room, but then the grand staircase would not lead anywhere, and that wouldn't make sense).

This is the most recent view:



Similarly to the grand hall, it took me a long time to plan, and, for instance, I knew that I needed to finish the floors before I could attach the railings.

I knew from the beginning that the hall would be yellow, so when I tentatively painted the back of the house, the back wall of the hall was yellow and has remained so.

 

This is the first picture of the hall - the shell not glued yet, and it stayed the same for a very long time. I put some objects in so that  it didn't feel totally empty - as I did with all other rooms, but at this point I didn't know at all what else might be here. I made a chandelier to hang over the stairwell, but it was too heavy to attach with tack, and it would be some time before I could attach it permanently.

During the Christmas party in 2014, that I have referred to several times, the hall looks just as three months earlier, but my guests didn't notice that there were no floors nor railings. Just tells you how much people pay attention.




I thought I would have long vertical panels on the back wall that I cut from old postcards, but then I found a set of magnets in a museum shop. This was still before I glued the shell.

When I finally did glue the shell, I was busy making floors and hanging wallpaper, and anyway, I didn't quite know yet what I wanted to do with the hall. I would put in some objects and then move them away as they found their place elsewhere. It wasn't until April 2015 that I finally decorated the ceiling as I had planned for a while and attached the chandelier, but only because I was sealing off the rear corridor from the floor of which the chandelier was to hang.

At some point I must have inserted the window, but not registered it. It is a slightly stupid window because as my house stands by the wall, there is no view and not even any light coming in,although I have ideas about what to do with it.

In the pictures from late November 2015, when my son-in-law made lights, you can still see that the upper hall is a mess.





No floors, no railings, and even the doors are not inserted yet. But all other rooms were sort of finished, so it was high time to deal with the hall.

I finished the floor, which was a laborious task, but truly rewarding.

 

I say it in the linked blog post, but I will say it again: I estimate that it took me 50 hours to make this floor. Talk patience!

Then I finally tackled the small back stairs and the railings, and if you have ever made railings you know that they just won't stay. Again, I could have discarded the railings that came with the kit and built my own with individual spindles, but this will be in my next life.

 

Looking back at the process, like this, makes me realise again how much time and effort lies behind every part of this project. I am glad I have documented it in detail, for instance, finally inserting doors,  adding mouldings and making the Adam ceiling.

And that's it, really. All that has changed - or has been constantly changing - is new Chippendale chests and side tables moving in and out.



There is only so much you can have even in a Victorian room, so I am not sure what else may happen here. It is doubtless a very grand room and probably the first you see because it is exactly at eye level. I am pleased that it has turned out so well.

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.

Step by step: dining room

This will be a long story. The reception room, music room and drawing room were relatively easy. But the dining room has some advanced features - one of many that make this house so interesting - that not only demanded careful planning, but also led to a number of major mistakes. Hopefully this will be all the more exciting to follow.

The main idea of the dining room goes back to my Georgian house, which was made to display the Chippendale furniture. So the centerpiece of the room was the Hepplewhite dining table:

 

In the early picture of Womble Hall, you can see the future dining room to the right on the middle floor.

You can also see that the room has a back corridor. According to the instructions, there should be a staircase in this corridor, but no matter how I tried, the staircase wasn't visible if you put in the partition, whether with the door on the right or on the left. I have seen a version of this house with no partition and the staircase against the back wall. But I liked the corridor so much that I sacrificed the stairs in favour of the corridor. By this, I also chose to make my life difficult. But this would be a long time in the future.

If you have read my previous posts you would not be surprised to know that I started the room with a chimney breast. It was the first chimney breast I made from scratch, and I was and still am very pleased with it. I used low-resolution printed wallpaper just to test it, and I also placed some objects in the room to see what it might look like.

In this picture from September 2014, I had inserted the partition, but there is no back wall behind it. The door is a plastic door from another project, just to test. And the floor is paper, the same as in the old Georgian house.

I did some work on other rooms before the basement arrived, and then I spent many weeks on the basement. So it wasn't until late December that I returned to the dining room and then had to start planning carefully. For instance, at this stage I had to decorate the rear corridor. And of course I had to use proper wallpaper, and although the initial trial was only temporary, I actually liked it. So the result was this:

The doors aren't properly inserted yet, but I had to fix the rear door pretty soon since it had to be finished before I put the partition in place. Which wouldn't happen for a while. But just to make it look nice, I white-tacked wallpaper on the right-hand wall and added some objects.

In this picture, you can see that I have a chest in the rear corridor, and there is a light there (battery LED light). The floor is temporarily borrowed from another room. You may ask why I kept moving floors from room to room, but it was to see the effect. Compare this picture with the previous one, with bare floors. You cannot really judge whether the decoration works.

Note that the shell is not assembled yet. It means that the wallpaper is not glued in the corners, and generally everything is shaky.

In the picture of the half-assembled shell, in March 2015, you can see how I had hung wallpaper with flaps that would later go on the back partition. And you can see the wallpapered back wall of which only a little bit will be visible through the door in the partition.

Next I had to insert the floor partitions, so I wanted to decorate ceilings on flat surfaces. This was the ceiling for the dining room. Two months later, it fell down.



This picture, from May 2015, shows the partition without the chimney breast. I would soon attach it permanently to the partition. The rear corridor is sealed off and can only be reached through the door, which turned out to be a problem. I believe this was the most difficult room in the whole house, where I also made the most mistakes. But the happy ending was this:

The partition in place, the rear door in place, wallpaper in place, ceiling successfully repaired. Time to make the floor!



It all sounds very easy, but remember, there are hours and hours of work between the pictures. This floor took a very long time to make.

But after that, I didn't do much on this room, apart from adding some more furniture, until we did the lights, and I have a nice picture taken through the side window:

 Then I made a new ceiling, as I did with all other rooms:

I added skirting boards (proper) and coving, made from 1:1 wallpaper.

We are now in December 2015. New Year dinner is served. You can also see new curtains on the window.



Since then I have mostly added new Chippendale furniture. For instance, I replaced all chairs and the side table, made a cellarette, a dumb waiter, a serving table, and another serving table. I had to put the side table elsewhere, and it still looks crowded.

I will probably add some pictures on the walls, possibly sconces on both sides of the mirror, but there is not much else I can squeeze in this room. I will make more food. I also need to repair the male Dutch doll to keep his female friend company.

Step by step: drawing room

Unlike the reception room and the music room, the drawing room at Womble Hall inherited many features from the original Victorian house, where the drawing room was combined with the study. When planning Womble Hall I knew I wanted a room where the ladies would enjoy their perpetual tea. In this early picture, one of the first weeks after I started, the general idea of the drawing room is clear. It's left side, middle floor.

There is a tea table, two dolls, and a sofa in the background. I didn't know what wallpaper or floors I wanted in this room. As with the other rooms, I started with the chimney breast. I used the front that I had bought a long time before, when I didn't yet know I could make fireplaces myself, but since it was there it would be silly not to use it. I knew I didn't have enough wallpaper, but at that point I was just testing things.

I made herringbone parquet floor for this room from self-adhesive shelf lining because I hadn't yet realised that all floors in this house would have to be hardwood. Proper floors. But as a test it looked ok.

In this picture, from October 2014, the shell is not glued yet, the wallpaper is temporary and only covers one and a half walls, the doors and windows are not properly inserted. At this stage, I had a very vague idea what this room would be like. Both tables are upside-down wooden candlesticks, from my very, very first forage into a flee market.

After that, I didn't do anything on this room for a very long time. You might think that I would work on one room at a time and finish it before moving on, but that's not how it happened. In this case, I didn't return to this room at all until I had glued the shell and was decorating ceilings before inserting floor dividers. For this room, I made a pink ceiling with white ornaments. I had doubts from start about this ceiling. It looked fine on its own, but somehow it didn't quite fit in with the room. But I let it be for a while. We are now in March 2015, and by then I had put in wallpaper, made wall panels, and it started looking like a room.

The wallpaper is a free printie, and I made the panels from a 1:1 wallpaper sample. The window is probably inserted, but not the door.

This room was, as I realise now, the easiest and most straightforward, and therefore, again, it took some time before I returned to it. Meanwhile the tea party just went on. But in May I decided to move the floor from the grand entrance to this room.

Once you have started having hardwood floors in your house, paper floors are unsatisfactory.

After that, there was another long break with this room. I guess, again, it's because it looked almost finished, and I was busy with rooms that didn't. So the next step, in October, was when I started working on the mouldings: skirting and  coving.  First, I had to add a few centimetres to the floor that came from another room. Then I used my ingenious, if I may say so myself, technique of coving with the same 1:1 wallpaper that I had used for panels. I am not good with coving, and I have avoided it as much as possible. It's soooooo much easier to work with paper, and I think it looks acceptable. Maybe even good.

There are small differences between the pictures, but each time the room looks tidier and more complete. The only major work to do with this room was to insert the door, but to do this I had to finish the adjacent room, and it took some time. Although I did make a curtain rod for this room.

However, the most revolutionary step in the whole project was lighting, which happened in November. I don't have a separate picture of the drawing room illuminated, but here is a picture of the whole house.

But as you see, the doors are still not inserted. Moreover, at approximately the same time I discovered Adam paper which implied a series of ceiling renovations all over the house. In January 2016 I made a ceiling for the drawing room, replacing, without much regret, the old pink ceiling.  This is what it looked like:

After I had finished the ceilings and the mouldings, the main project was officially completed, if there is such a thing. After that, I mostly focused on Chippendale furniture, among other things replacing the old faithful plastic coffee table with a Queen Anne tea table. The room was by then rather crowded, as Victorian rooms are. The serpentine chest by the right wall is also a Chippendale piece.


And this takes me to the present, September 2016, two years after I started.

You can say that not much has changed, and that's true. This room has given me least headache of all, and there is probably not a lot I am going to add. I may replace the table and chairs with Chippendale pieces when I have made them. I might add more paintings and other ornaments. Of course I can replace the sofa, but it has such warm sentimental memories that I think I will leave it as it is.

Step by step: reception room

As I have been making and sharing Chippendale furniture recently I have realised that I have no good pictures of Womble Hall room by room. When I post something saying that this particular piece will go into this or that room I have no pictures to link to.

I have also been planning to write blog posts following the progress of one and the same room over two years. Yes, it has been two years, and I am not finished (depends of course on how you define "finished").

It will take me some time to write these posts, but I think it will be interesting for myself, and for you, dear reader. Occasionally, when I look at some old picture I can't believe what it once looked like.

I will start with the reception room, and I will both insert pictures and links to earlier relevant posts.

So: the main kit arrived just about two years ago, and I started priming and painting, but I made a dry assembly at an early stage, to see what the various rooms might be. In this post, for instance you can already see that I put in a fireplace, a mirror and Chippendale chairs, and they have remained in the same place.

I had not remembered, when I started writing this post, that I actually began with the reception room, testing the walls and the paneling. So here is the very first picture of the reception room:

 

The wallpaper is not the same as in the final decoration, the upper rail is cut from a 1:1 wallpaper, the floor is from the old Victorian house and now in a different room. But the white panel with golden squares is still there.

The next thing I made in this room was a chimney breast. I didn't have chimney breasts in the old house, but here I wanted to do everything properly. This is what it looked like when I was finished:

Note that I had some objects in the room all the time, even though the walls were bare. I thought it was important to have the details for overall effect.

In the next step, I removed the back and painted and wallpapered it while it was flat, which I still, after many mistakes and failures, recommend rather than decorating a fully assembled house. In this picture you can see the back wall of the reception room, now with the final wallpaper and beginning of paneling.

It took almost three months before I moved on with this room because I was working on the basement. But when I went back to reception room it was time to decorate the side walls. And I made a daring attempt.

Here is what I ended up with. It was grand, but eventually I had to tear it down. The seams didn't look neat, and I couldn't think of a good way to fix them. Pity, because it does look fabulous. But I know I would have gone crazy after a while.

By Christmas 2014 I had made significant progress, but had still not glued the shell together. At my Christmas party, people admired the house, but they didn't see that it wasn't glued together, that the wallpaper was white-tacked, that the stairs were not attached at all, or that the windows and doors weren't properly inserted.

By the end of January, I made the ceiling decoration:

I haven't got a detailed description of how I made this one, but a similar.

Mid-February, I was prepared to start gluing, but that's when I noticed a lot of small mistakes, including the reception room walls. This is what it looked like when I made the correction. Note that I had given up on the previous upper rail and instead used edges of a paper placemat.

Mid-March I finally glued the shell together, and the reception room, or what would become the reception room, can be seen in the left bottom corner:

 Of course you can see it as a step back, but at some point the shell had to be glued. As soon as I had managed, with huge effort, to force in all floor dividers, I put back as many objects as I could. So at the end of March the reception room looked like this:

And on the whole it still looks like this. The Greek statues are souvenirs from Greece. The chandelier is a Christmas ornament. The white pedestals are wedding cake decorations. The vases are from charity shops. But of course it didn't end here. For instance, I added fire to the fireplace. Not huge progress, but anyway. The old floor has been moved elsewhere so it's just bare primed surface.

 

In June 2015, I made a new floor for the reception room. It was a long project that took weeks. By that time, I had finally got mitre shears, and cutting crafts sticks became easier. After that, the room looked like this:

I believe by this time I had glued in the windows, but I had to wait with the doors until both this floor and the floor in the adjacent room were finished.

At the end of November 2015, my son-in-law helped me install lights. The reception room looked grand for Christmas.

Here, the door is properly set in, a Chippendale daybed has joined the chairs, and there are pictures on the walls. All small details, but make a huge difference.

In December, I made curtains for most of the rooms, including the reception room. And I also made new ceilings for all rooms, using the Adam gift wrapping paper. And added expensive Georgian cornices. After which the room looked like this (the cornice on the left looks a bit untidy, but that's because there is a wire clip in that corner):



You would think that was it. Well, maybe some more pictures, some more ornaments, but no major alterations. But a dollhouse project is never finished. I found a new chandelier. After that, the room looked like this:



Not a big deal, you say? Come and visit me and let's hear what you say then.

So this is how long I have come, two years after I started. 




As you see, there is now a doll, and I think she fits perfectly in this environment. Of the details, there is a Chippendale corner chair, window seat and fire screen. But don't ask me whether it is finished. It will never be.