Pride and Prejudice room box

It has been ages since I blogged. Almost half a year. I still have two rooms and the whole basement to show in my tour of Womble Hall, I haven't finished The Borrowers, and I haven't shared the many small things I have been making every now and then. I will do it all in due time.

But right now I have just started on a new project, and as it always happens to me, I become obsessed. I am not even sure where exactly it came from, but I am doing a strictly academic event on Pride and Prejudice in September, and I am doing it together with a friend with whom I also did the Alice in Wonderland event, so as we were planning our workshop, she suddenly asked whether I would be making a room box. I hadn't considered it at all, but the event is for teachers, focused on what they can do with Pride and Prejudice, and of course you can encourage the students to draw, or write a diary, or trace the characters' travels on a map. But why not a room box?

Womble Hall is the right period, but I cannot take Womble Hall to work, and, to be fair, it took me two years to make (and there is still a lot to do), while a schoolteacher may need inspiration for something more manageable. Anyway, here I am, making a Pride and Prejudice room box.

I found a wine box slightly larger than the standard ones. It is not deep enough in relation to breadth and height, but there is not much I can do about it. I have considered and dismissed cardboard boxes. The height is more important because I want it to be a grand-ish room, with a high mantelpiece and a chandelier.

As anyone who has made a room box knows, it needs much more planning than one would imagine. It's not just about putting objects in a box. Environment is crucial. For instance, I need to decide what ceilings and floors I want, how I will decorate walls and so on. And before I can even start, I need to make a chimney breast. I have made several for Womble Hall, but this time I didn't use foam but cardboard. This picture is tremendously boring, but if this is a story of how I made the scene, you need to see it.

 

What you also see is grooves, and they would prove a nuisance.

Here is the next step:

 

I used white lining paper, just pasting it all the way left to right, folding over the cardboard chimney breast. The grooves resulted in creases, and there isn't much I can do about them now except hide them behind rails or wall hangings. I used 1:1 scale embossed wallpaper for ceiling. I also used stripy embossed wallpaper - that I have used for a variety of purposes - to make front mouldings that very neatly hid the uneven edges. I am very happy with this solution.

I made the period fireplace the day before yesterday. It is a House of Miniatures kit, but it so happened that I had a firebox that came with some ebay lot a long time ago and didn't fit any fireplaces. I am glad I remembered it because it is just right here, isn't it?

I guess I could leave the floor as it is, but it doesn't look quite natural, and I want to try yet another floor pattern. (If you haven't seen my magnificent floors, use the tag "floor" on the right). I have a remnant of an old parquet floor that I could recycle, or maybe I will make something entirely new. It isn't a very large area, like in a house, so it can be something really challenging.

I am considering all kinds of panelling, railing and moulding, and I have already spent some time on the web searching for ideas. Meanwhile, I have made a "sketch", borrowing objects from Womble Hall, just to see what it might look like.

Come back soon.

Yet another fireplace

My next fireplace is for the drawing room, which is on the first floor, above the grand reception room. The name drawing room comes from "withdrawing room", the place where ladies withdrew after dinner while the gentlemen enjoyed their port and cigars. Then they "joined teh ladies".

In Womble Hall, the drawing room is on the left from the upper hall and opposite to the dining room, so the ladies will have to cross the hall. The furniture and ornaments will be moved from the left part of the original Victorian drawing room. The fireplace there wasn't done properly, even though it did have a chimney breast where the cabinet had a protruding board. Now I need a proper chimney breast, but I am using the same fireplace front, the one I bought long, long ago when I didn't believe I could make one myself. It is a nice and neutral front that will go well with the purpose of the room.

Again, I will not describe how I made the chimney breast, because I used exactly the same technique, although I must admit that with each project I made different mistakes.

I wanted a different kind of panelling in this room, and I used a piece of embossed 1:1 wallpaper with vertical stripes to echo the pattern on the wallpaper above the rail. I used old and quite worn-out wallpaper from the old house, with ugly marks of blue tack where the pictures and other ornaments sat. Note to myself: NEVER EVER use blue tack to fix things on walls. But, just as in the 1;1 world,. the solution is to cover the mark with a picture.

Unfortunately, I don't have more of this particular wallpaper, and it may not be available anymore, but this is just a test. I will find something similar. I think it will be fine because I want this room, unlike the reception room, to be light. I haven't decided yet what kind of floor I will have. Possibly plank that I have already started making for the master bedroom and that I will show in due time. I don't want too many fancy floors because they will probably be distracting, and of course fancy floors were expensive, and not all rooms in a house would have them.

I now have five out of nine rooms on the main three floors somewhat planned in terms of walls and fireplaces. I will probably have a simple fireplace in the master bedroom. But the next few important decisions with be about the main and upper halls. Come back soon. 

A magnificent fireplace and wall panels

I found this fireplace front on ebay when I was looking for ideas, not intending to buy anything. But it was just too good to miss. It is unique. I like unique things. I got it really cheap.

As you see, it comes with a hearth, but it still needs a chimney breast and a back panel. I will not show pictures of how I made it because it was exactly the same way I made the two other fireplaces. Here it is, temporarily placed in what I think might become a music room, with the Chippendale sofa and wing chair.

Such a magnificent fireplace demands a magnificent environment. I wanted to have heavy, dark oak panels in this room. I started by gluing lolly sticks and pieces of a cheese box onto a bit of card - an old, discarded folder I picked up by the trash bin at work. Cheese boxes have excellent wood and are easy to cut with scissors. You just need to sand the edges.

However, I wasn't happy with the result. The panel felt far too big and clumsy. Also, the direction of the grain was wrong. So I cut the central piece in two. Then I kept building on the panel until the edge of the card. (Yes, I painted the first two panels before I went on, because I wanted to see whether it worked).

I painted the panel with dark brown acrylic paint - merely because I had it at hand. When I do it properly I may choose a better colour. Likewise, I stained it with the stain I had, then gave it a coat of varnish.

 

As with my other tests, it is just one corner of the room, and the house is not properly assembled yet. I am not sure this is the right wallpaper, and the floor is just paper. Still I think you can see what it may look like when I finish. 

Another fireplace

As I mentioned, I have several fireplace fronts that I will use in Womble Hall, but for all of them I need to make chimney breasts. And making a chumney breast for an existing front is slightly different than making everything from scratch as I did last time. This time I will make a chimney breast for my wooden fireplace. I will make it from foam again: I think it worked well.

The only big difference is that I need to make neat sides. For this, I need a balsa strip. It is easy to work with balsa: you just cut it with scissors. The lolly sticks I also use for this project are hard.

It does not matter that there is a gap between the bits because I will cover it with another strip - a lolly stick. 

While the sides were drying, I made the back. I was clever this time as used black card so I didn't have to paint it. Of course I still had to paint the inside. I didn't bother to glue in "stones" this time - I can alsways do it later. I already have a hearth for this fireplace. It is another piece of a plastic lid, and the fireguard is a buckle.

Then I painted the sides. I may need to use some filler to make them look neat. This fireplace will be in the reception room that I tested some days ago. I have not decided what wallpaper I will have in this room, but I wanted to see the fireplace with wallpaper, so I used a bit of a paper tablecloth I had saved from a party. It is not exactly the same colour as the wall, but it is all temporary anyway. The tablecloth is slightly embossed which gives a nice effect.

Now imagine: wallpaper, wall panels, rails, richly decorated ceiling, a chandelier, wall lights, silk curtains, paintings in heavy gilded frames. This will be a splendid room. I may use this old tablecloth for wallpaper.

Fireplace with chimney breast

In Womble Hall, there will be many fireplaces. They will all be different. When I was a beginner, I bought a fireplace front because I thought I would never be able to make one. I was so ignorant I didn't even know that fireplace fronts are - well, fronts. That they need a proper fireplace and a chimney breast. At that point I just added a black background.

After I had renovated the fireplaces in the Tudor house and especially after I had made a proper inglenook I had a leftover front which I decorated and used first in the art gallery and then in the Georgian house. I made a slight imptovement on a plain wooded fireplace, I have also made a half-scale fireplace. In other words, I have had some training as a fireplace-maker. What is the correct word for fireplace-maker? There must be one.

What I haven't yet made is a proper chimney breast, and now is the time. I will have to make chimney breasts for the existing fronts, but I also wanted to test an idea I got when I was at B&Q pinching wallpaper samples. I found this one and saw immediately that it was fireplace material.

Making a basic fireplace is easy. I used two jenga blocks from my endless supply and an unidentified bit of wood. Then I glued on bits of the wallpaper. I took pictures of every step because it was interesting to follow the improvement.

In the last picture in particular you see clearly the difference between left and right. I wanted to use the curved pattern from the wallpaper, but it was too large. I may use it elsewhere.

Now that the front was ready I needed a chimney breast. I made it from hard foam which the dollhouse parts came in. It's terribly crumbly, but it's easy to cut to shape. I glued the whole thing onto a piece of card, which also provided the back of the fireplace. I had to correct my earlier mistake: the horisontal decorations had to go all the way on the sides of the chimney breast.

As I started painting the inside I noticed that the foam created a very interesting stony effect. Therefore I collected the leftover crumbles and glued them onto the back.

I haven't decided which room this fireplace will go into, but I wanted to test it with wallpaper. This is just some bits I had from a previous project.

Now I needed a hearth. First, I had to add a bit of card as a base. I should have cut it when I made the back, but I hadn't, so there wasn't much I could do about it. But this is a moment when you are glad you have saved all those plastic lids. I cut a lid in half, and it was just the right size. 

Then of course I painted the hearth black, and here we go! The fireguard is from the old Victorian house and made from a metal belt. I guarantee that it is one of a kind! The fireplace set is made from paper clips and clock hands, and the coalbin is from an antique shop. 

I also wanted to test the whole thing in a room. As I said, I am not sure which room it will eventually go into, or whether I am going to use this wallpaper at all, but anyway: 

Mind, this is all white-tacked, and obviously only one wall and half of the floor is done, and I am not sure that the floor and the wallpaper go well together. Or maybe they do. Maybe I will have this wallpaper in this room. Now use you imagination. Richly decorated ceiling and an ornate chandelier. Two wall lights. Heavy matching curtains (there is a clever way to print on fabric). It's going to be a most gorgeous room. Come back soon.