Attic finished (almost)

I promised not to show every step in my finishing touches, but now I have added mouldings to all the three rooms in the attic and put most of the objects back. The three attic rooms are nursery, servant room and guest bedroom. I know that a guest room would most likely not be on the same floor as a nursery or still less a servant room, but it just couldn't be done otherwise.

Last time I showed the nursery was six months ago here. (Scroll down the post to see pictures). Here is the fninshed room:

 

You may think there isn't much difference, but there is. Firstly, the door is now properly fixed, which took hours (as doors do; they never fit the opening). The skirting and coving have been added. The former is proper wooden skirting boards, but the coving is made from my ubiquitous 1:1 wallpaper. It still took a lot of work. There is not much left to be done in this room. Fix the curtain, which at the moment is white-tacked. Possibly add some pictures, then just make and collect more toys. I also have twin boys who will live in this room when I have made clothes for them. Perhaps I will have a nanny.

The last time I showed the servant room was four months ago when I built the upper stairs. It involved inserting a door (grrrr!), but now all mouldings are in place.

 

This room is more or less finished, but I can of course add pictures, rugs, objects, maybe another servant asleep in bed (I removed the doll to take the picture because she obscured the details in the background).

The last time I showed the guest bedroom was six months ago, when I was still wallpapering the attic rooms. This is what it looks like now.

 

I made a new floor for this room. Well, not exactly new: I finished the floor that I tried and discarded for the grand entrance hall. Since the floors in the two other attic rooms are made from adhesive shelf-lining, a hardwood floor in the guest room looked too conspicuous, while the two other shelf-lining floors I had were too bright. This floor looks good in this room, and it is sufficiently far away from the entrance hall hardwood floor inspired by it. Only a very keen eye will spot the similarity.

There is some work remaining to be done in this room. For instance, the mantelpiece doesn't look right with the skirting, so I will need either to build a chimey breast or remove skirting and make it in two pieces on both sides of the mantelpiece. I also need to think about curtains.

The work remaining for the whole attic is paint skirting edges, likely grey to match the sloping edges. I am also considering adding dark roof beams - fake, again, made of full-size wallpaper - but they may be too distracting.

I have not decided whether I will have display lights in the attic or just add tea lights here and there when I come to that.

At the moment I am really pleased that the attic is as complete as a dollhouse project can be.

Attaching dormers

Yesterday I decided to glue on dormers. I am far from finished with my previous tasks, but I like some variation, and with the dormers attached there will be a bit more finished look to the house.

It turned out to be consideraboy less straightforward than I had anticipated and than the instuction says, which is "glue and fut dormers". I left dormer assembly at the stage when sides were glued to fronts. When I started glueing roofs I realised that I had painted them grey on both sides, but of course the part of the roof on the inside had to be white.

 

This wasn't a big deal, but still took some time. I considered putting in some wallpaper to match each room. But then of course the roof itself is white on the inside (so far - I may add roof beams) so it didn't work. I am now glad it didn't because it would have made the whole project a disaster. Sometimes it's good not to be too ambitious.

Then I had to decide whether to take off the roof from its hinges and work on a table or try to do it balancing on kitchen steps. After a brief attempt with the latter I decided on the former. It has been a while since I occupied the dining-room table.

Let me remind you that I made the roof slates myself. What I hadn't thought about then was that I would have to glue on the dormers, and they would have to be glued on the roof itself rather than on card slates. Therefore I had to cut about 0.5 cm around the openings, and that wasn't easy because I had used very good glue!

For glueing on the dormers I should have been an octopus because it was hopeless to get them straight. Lots of patience and masking tape. Then it turned out that there was a triangular opening at the bottom of the dormer, where logically a window sill should be. Luckily, I can make window sills, but this is clearly a manufacturing fault.

 

There were also gaps at seams, but there always are. That's when I was glad I hadn't tried wallpaper because it would have been ruined anyway. I covered the seams with filler and sanded it smooth.

Then I made the window sills. Once again, I think they should have been included in the kit.

I made a mistake with the first one: I glued it to the edge of the opening, but of course it had to be 90 degree to the wall. Lesson learned (long ago): with repeated actions, try one first.

Then finally, I could put then roof back onto its hinges. I was a bit nervous, but it went well.

So this whole process, described in the instruction as "glue and fut dormers" took me about twelve hours. I just cannot imagine how I would have done all this if I had assembled the house before decorating.

On the window sills, I can put flower pots or ornaments, not too heavy and unbreakable, because even if I use super-superglue I wouldn't trust it to hold. Something like this, for the nursery:

 

And in the evening, it will look like this:

 

I was right: it does look more finished. But far, far from finished yet.

Further half-scale development

As I mentioned in the previous post, there are three shelves on he inside of the cabinet door, and although they are shallow, they provide some additional space. I have made an attic and a bathroom.

I only made the attic because I have these Avon miniatures, and they are sweet. I have borrowed the maps from another house, but I am not sure they fit. There must be something on the wall. I will also add more objects that belong in the attic.

The bathroom appliances, possibly Mattel, came with another lot, and I have saved them until now. I will add more things here as well: towels, toiletries, maybe a shelf.

It is beginning to look really nice. Next, I will do the dining room and the kitchen.