House restoration: front stairs

I was reluctant to deal with front stairs because I remembered the pain of assembling it the first time. I had completely forgotten that I had repaired it once before, after an attack by wild beasts. It gave me courage, and I took out the broken parts for inspection.

I also remembered that the stairs had been broken once again before the removal so I cannot blame the movers for this particular damage. The pieces had been packed in a moving box.

A couple of steps were missing.

I found one, and I believe I saw another one somewhere so I will probably find it among my supplies three years from now, but it is easy to make a new one.

Doing it a third time made me more confident.

What I did this time was enforce the seams with filler, just to make the whole structure more stable. As I have mentioned before, there is a major flaw in this design because the front stairs must be removed every time the fronts are opened. I have considered getting rid of the stairs altogether, but they do add a nice feature. So it's a matter of making them solid.

If you wonder why I haven't removed the LED light and battery - it is the only light still working. Probably because it traveled packed in a box.

I had to cheat slightly with the upper rail, but I did it the first and the second time as well. Filler is useful.

But at this point I once again decided that the back arch was unnecessary. The structure seems stable.

So all I did was add the horse heads. One was lost, but fortunately I had a spare.

I think the horse heads add an interesting feature to the facade.

Now I need to figure out a smart cat-proof way of attaching the stairs for easy removing. Maybe velcro?

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.

Repairing and rethinking

We have two new, young cats who have no respect for dollhouses. None of our old cats showed any interest so I could never share any of those hilarious "cat invades dollhouse" pictures. This time I put away anything that young, curious cats could tear down, and I glazed all my room boxes. It was a right thing to do, because one of the cats immediately chose the room-box shelf as his favourite place.

 

The space happened to be empty because I was working on that room box, but now I cannot deprive the cat of his preferred sleeping spot. He hasn't so far done any damage.

But you cannot think of everything. I was amused when I finally took a cat-and-dollhouse picture:

He had also been inside, although I didn't manage to capture it, and he was very careful, as cats actually are. Still the inevitable happened.

 

There is a fault in this kit design, as I pointed out to the manufacturer when I bought it. The front stairs are not attached to anything, and you cannot open the main or basement fronts without removing the stairs. In other models, front stairs are usually attached to one of the fronts. Well, not much I can do about it. And it's too late to think of what I may have done, as some people in my Facebook groups have suggested: don't allow the cats into your hobby room, and so on. I don't have a dedicated hobby room; I have all my dollhouses in my home office, and that's where I work on my miniatures. I also work on everything else there, and I like cats being by my side. So I will just need to accept inevitable damage every now and then.

Right now it's a matter of repairing. I have postponed it for a while, but sooner or later it has to be done, so let's make it sooner.

I had issues when I built those front stairs two years ago. Returning to it now, I cannot see what the problem was. Fortunately, I have kept the back panel, "just in case", and here is the case. It fit nicely, just as it should have in the first place. Was it jinxed then? Was I stupid? Was I impatient?

All right, I won't deny that it took several attempts, and patience was the key. Every glued piece must dry properly before the next step. If the cats decided to cuddle on the table right then I would have... well, I would have had to do it all over again. 

So I wish I could say that it was now absolutely fine and painless, but that's not true. I mention it because it is a very complicated project, and I don't want to create an impression that it was an easy task. But in the end it was much neater and more stable.

Then of course I had to re-attach banisters and mouldings. No way everything would fit neatly so it was once again cheating a bit with filler and air-drying clay.

While I was at it, I added a detail that I had been considering for a while. Chess can be used for so many things!

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.

Front stairs, part 2

Last weekend I very deliberately avoided moving any further with front stairs because I couldn't stand more frustration. I wish somebody shares their experience of building front stairs because I just cannot imagine how this can be done. I stopped two weeks ago in high mood because I had managed to sand the banisters and glue them on, but when, the day after, I tried to glue the steps to the front arch they came off, and I realised there was no way they would stay glued because there was not enough surface to support them. This was the source of great distress, and that's why I kept myself busy with something else. However, I know that I need to finish it some day, and I just cannot admit that some pieces of MDF can totally defeat me as an intelligent human being. Therefore I gave up on instructions (insufficient anyway) and started thinking in my own way, based on the parts I had in front of me.

I needed something to hold the stairs and the front arch together, and ideally it would be small metal angle-bars, but I didn't have any and I didn't feel like going to ironmongers' just for that. I tried to make my own from sturdy tin foil, but it didn't work. So I decided to use square dowel.

 

I know it looks tremendously unprofessional, but nobody will ever see it, and it works!

The seams weren't neat, but I was going to cover them with skirting anyway. 

 

And then I faced the problem of the back arch. There was no way I could attach the back arch using the same technique - there was not enough space to work in. It wouldn't have stayed on if glued. It wouldn't fit precisely and would have to be cut and sanded in all eternity. Then suddenly it occurred to me that, with my new design, I could discard the back arch altogether. It seemed completely unnecessary; moreover, it obscured the lower entrance door (another miss from the manufacturer).

I hadn't noticed this before, probably because I was preoccupied with other issues. None of the available pictures show this detail. I now firmly believe that all pictures of assembled houses are photoshopped.

So off with the back arch!

I covered the seams with skirting, but I how had a problem with upper banister, and this is why I hadn't cut the skirting, which looks a bit weird. It had to be mitred, but I could not figure out the angle.

 

The upper banister needs to be flush with side banisters so that the rail can go over the upper edges of the side banisters. But the upper banister was half a centimeter higher than the side banister. Don't ask me why. Maybe another miss from manufacturer, maybe something I did wrong, but that was a fact.  Feeling rather terrified by my own boldness, I cut off 0.5 cm at the bottom of the upper banister. I did it bit by tiny bit with mitre shears because I knew I would never be able to saw it evenly.

The rest was so much cheating I am not even sure I want to share it. I had to trim the landing to fit between the stairs.

 

Then I had to mitre the skirting and the rail at irregular angles, covering my failures with filler. Again, it looks so straightforward when you look at finished pictures.

And yet, looking at the final result, I am quite pleased. There are small faults that are only visible on close inspection, and who will ever do that? I think back to my Christmas party over a year ago when everything was just held together with tack and masking tape, and people didn't notice. But I also think of someone who might one day look closely at every seam and say: "What kind of a sloppy person built this house!"

Front stairs

As promised in the previous post, I have now moved on to front stairs. I tested them about six months ago, stated that it didn't work and switched my attention to something else. When I tried last weekend, it didn't work either, but this time I was determined to manage it, so I did what I always do when I am desperate: asked my Facebook group. I posted this picture and asked: why doesn't it fit?

 

Guess what? I am glad I asked. The answer was: you have put it upside down! Grrr.... That was easy.

The reason it could happen was that I had tried to be clever. Six months ago I painted the stairs the same colour as the basement, but of course it was tremendously boring.

 

This would never do for a front staircase in a fine mansion, would it? So I had to improve it in the same manner I had improved the interior stairs, by adding separate steps cut from craft sticks.

 

However, I wanted stone effect on the steps, so I went back to the idea of shelf lining. Here you see the process step by step - literally.

And you can see the difference. 

This is how far I got six months ago. And I put the steps on the wrong side - that's why the stairs didn't fit the arch. Luckily, the steps weren't glued yet.

I had to repaint the stairs in a lighter shade of gray, to match the steps. 

Then came the boring part. More railing to sand. You may ask, if I want profiled spindles why don't I build my own railing, with individual spindles? The answer is, I am not ready yet. I remember my struggle with the stairs in the rear corridor - I can never get it straight. Maybe some time later. 

But I still want my spindles smooth and rounded, and it takes a lot of time. Sand, paint, sand a bit more, paint, paint. As you see, I am using baking paper for painting.  

 Rails and newel posts - although I won't need them yet for a while.

Finally, one part of  the railing finished to my satisfaction - almost - and can be glued onto the stairs.

 

I use wood glue which is very good, but you need patience before it dries.

I am showing all this because when you eventually see the whole assembly it will look easy. But this far, it has taken me two days. Held together by tack and masking tape, it gives you a general idea.

To be continued (next weekend).