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.