French cottage style bedroom

I am getting bolder and bolder with my Chippendale kits and want to try different techniques and finishes. I have several kits for chest of drawers, that are mostly similar, and my large house doesn't have room for more chests, so I decided to make a chest that didn't fit into any of my projects. The chest itself wasn't particularly interesting to make, exactly because they are more or less the same. I won't show it step by step, but what I did was paint it with antique white acrylic and then add decoupage decoration. I had never made proper decoupage, and I am not quite sure I made it correctly, but I was very pleased with the result.

The drawers are not glued yes, because I always insert drawer handles before I glue on the fronts. The kits comes with standard handles and plates, but I didn't think they were suitable for this style. I wanted something like I have on my 1:1 chest, metal rings. I have plenty of these from junk jewellery, but they must be attached to the drawer in some manner, and it took me some time to figure it out. As usual, I was just rummaging through my supplies when the solution jumped at me. 

 

These champagne wires are among the best and most versatile materials. Easy to work with too.


 

When I shared this picture in my Facebook groups, one friend commented: "Yes, this is what I always do". And I thought I had invented something remarkable.

Anyway, this piece did not fit with anything, but I wanted to make something to go with it and made a bed. Again, I won't show how I made it step by step, because it is exactly like other Chippendale beds, with stringed bottom. Like the chest, I decoupaged the headboard before assembly. 

 

Making the mattress was again straightforward when you have made it several times, but I have always had issues with bedding because it won't stay. Then I remembered a trick I have seen either in some book or on the web. If you want a piece of fabric to stay, glue it to aluminium foil. In this case, I didn't even have to glue, I simply sewed it inside the blanket.

 

Now I could tuck it in neatly. Mind, I would never ever have this pink in my own bedroom. But this seemed appropriate. And the two pieces went nice together.

 

Now, however, I had a dilemma. I already have a shelf full of single miniatures that do not fit in any existing projects. I put the chest and bed tentatively in a cardboard box, but realised I would have to make the whole environment: floor, ceiling, wallpaper, and the box was too small, and a larger box would be too large... So I made a compromise.

 

This is my first corner vignette, and next time I will do it better. When I asked advice of my miniature friends, they suggested foam board, mdf and other stuff, but I am a recycler, I don't want to buy materials unless absolutely necessary, and also I wanted to make the scene then and there. The wallpaper is a printie from the web, and I made the floor quickly (relatively, maybe two hours) from self-adhesive shelf lining, cutting 4 cm strips and gluing them in a pattern. I used 1:1 embossed wallpaper for mouldings.

The dressing table and the chair are temporarily borrowed from a different project. I have another table kit and may make it in the same style, or perhaps it's not necessary. Maybe sometime I will develop this project in a whole room box or even a small holiday cottage, but at the moment the two pieces are nicely displayed.  

By the way, the tea service comes from a set of earrings an American friend has given me.

Step by step: guest bedroom

As promised in the previous post, I am resuming the grand tour of Womble Hall, including quarters normally omitted from tourist routes, but you, my dear reader, are privileged to see every corner.

I continue with the attic, where almost a year ago I stopped in the servant room. The right-hand door leads to guest bedroom. This is of course profoundly wrong because guests would not have to go through servant room, but this was the only solution other than skip guest bedroom altogether, and that I didn't want.

Unlike most rooms in Womble Hall, the guest bedroom does not go back to my first house in a bookcase. There was no space for two bedrooms, and I would probably not have a guest bedroom if I hadn't made the Chippendale bed. It went into my small Georgian house that I made entirely to display some Chippendale miniatures and that was then given away when I started Womble Hall. But I then had a dilemma, since I had two four-poster beds, one beautiful Chippendale and the old bed which was my very, very old miniature made almost exactly ten years ago. Of course I could not discard it, therefore I have two beds and two bedrooms. (A real house of this proportion would probably have ten bedrooms, but I pretend they are all in the back, behind rear corridors).

Anyway, when I started planning Womble Hall, I of course considered various options for where the guest bedroom could be, but given all other rooms I wanted there really wasn't another reasonable place, therefore in the earliest test, the guest bedroom is already where it is now. However, it took a long time before I got down to this room. I did test flooring just to have something rather than just bare primed surface, but I didn't do any further work on this room until many months later. If you haven't read my blog before: I decorated as much as possible on flat surfaces, before I assembled the shell. So the walls already had wallpaper - a printie - so all I needed to do was skirting. And as you see, the floor has changed.

About a year after I started, the attic was more or less finished.  Some months later we did the lights, and it made a huge difference. Then I added ceilings. And that's it.




What I haven't done in this room is hardwood floors. It is still paper, rather elaborate, but still paper. Eventually I will need to make proper floors because they look so much better. But this is exactly why a dollhouse project is never really finished.

I like this room, and I think the guests find it warm and cozy. Would you like to come and stay overnight in this room?

Step by step: master bedroom

This room has a long history. If you have seen the reception room, music room, drawing room and dining room you know that I trace the origin of every room in Womble Hall back to my first dollhouse. The four-poster bed was the very first piece of furniture I made when I started my dollhouse hobby, almost nine years ago. I built the bedroom around this bed.

Then we moved to England, and I rebuilt the house in a cabinet. The new bedroom was on the upper floor, alongside bathroom and hall. So this is probably the starting point for the current bedroom:

 

When I started planning Womble Hall I knew that the bedroom would be on the top floor to the left. I have no idea why it had to be so, but once I had decided, I haven't changed any room.

 

You can see that on the whole the bedroom is just like it was in the old house. It is quite a straightforward room, except that it has a door in the far right corner, leading to the rear corridor. But it would take a long time to get that far. However, because the concept of the room was clear from the beginning, I put it off for quite a while. No chimney breasts, no complicated partitions. So it was not until October 2014 that I made floors for the bedroom.



Let me remind you that the shell wasn't glued yet at that points. The floor is mounted on card, and thus easily removable, and the wallpaper is white-tacked. But the bedroom starts taking shape.

I didn't return to this room until I had assembled the shell and started putting in floor dividers, when I also decorated the ceilings. By that time, the wallpaper and wall panels had been added. The rear corridor is done, with battery lights fixed so that the light comes into the bedroom through the open door. The door itself took a long time because it didn't fit and I had to sand the opening for ages. It wasn't easy to do it inside the room, in a corner.

 

Apart from adding new furniture, I haven't done much in this room. I have obviously added mouldings: wooden skirting and paper cornices.  The furniture I made for this room includes a new dressing table, a new wardrobe, and a cradle.



In this picture, I have removed some objects and both dolls to display the new furniture better. This is a problem with crammed Victorian rooms: in the end, you cannot see every detail.

 

This room is as finished as it can be. It has display lights, like all other rooms, hidden behind a front cornice, and the light from the door adds to the atmosphere. I will probably replace the white table and chairs, and I may add more pictures, but there is really not much space left. If you compare this picture with the first one in this post you may think that not much has changed. Look again.

A Chippendale bed

As I reported in the previous post I have been buying more Chippendale kits, but I still have many from previous bargains that I haven't made. There is no system in my cabinet-making: I pick up a kit, look at it, think a bit, often put it aside, either because it feels too complicated or because I don't know exactly where it might go.

I have two bed kits, and I decided that the single bed should be in the nursery, to replace a rather clumsy bed of unknown origin that has been there for a while.

 

This is a straightforward kit that just needs a lot of patience. Since I had made the canopy bed I knew what was coming.

 

But I am much more skilled now than I was three years ago. I am better at aligning, I am better at drilling tiny holes (with a pushpin), at holding the assembly together. What I did wrong here was that I painted the parts before assembly, not thinking that the inside wouldn't have been painted, but there isn't much I can do about it, and nobody will ever see.

Stringing was fun:

 

Then I made the mattress of the same towel fabric as for the canopy bed, and used handkerchiefs for bedding, but I wanted a patchwork quilt for this bed. I have made miniature patchwork, and it's a hard job. It so happened that I went to a craft shop to get some more Really Useful Boxes to organise my supplies, and there I found just what I needed.

Of course as soon as I put the bed into the nursery I had to remove several items that were not in scale. You couldn't tell with the old bed, but now it was obvious. Fortunately, I know exactly what Chippendale pieces I will put there instead. But so far there is complete chaos. As nurseries usually are.

Just tiny details

I have of course known long before I read Patricia King's books that small details make a huge difference, but here is a very good example. I mentioned in my previous post that I might use the fancy earring for a headboard, and what I had in mind was my Tudor great bed. One big mistake that I keep making is forgetting that things can be improved, that once I have made something it doesn't have to stay the same for ever. Actually, when I looked at the bed today it didn't look that great, although at the time I made it I was really proud of it. But it only takes two bits of a plastic fan and an earring to make an improvement.

Half-scale house

For some time I have been thinking about an interesting way of displaying my Avon miniatures and other half-scale stuff. I have tried to divide a standard roombox into four compartments, and I have tried to build something with cardboard, but it didn't really work. So I have these three small rooms, one a wine box, one a cheese box and one just a cardboard box. It looks untidy and unfinished. Today, as I was rummaging in the garage, I found an old bathroom cabinet that we had intended to throw away five years ago when we renovated the bathroom. And suddenly I saw a possibility. I took it inside, cleaned it from cobwebs and tried to put in some furniture, just to see whether the scale was right.

I thought it probably was, and I experimented with some odd bits of wallpaper I had, to see whether it made a difference. It did. 

 

I started thinking about floors and wallpaper, but my printer had chosen this day to strike, which significantly limited my choice. Therefore I merely moved the study from the wine box into the upper floor of the new house. 

I coudn't do much more with the malfunctioning printer so I made a half-scale four-poster bed.

I used the same instructions as with my very first bed, only half the size. It was both easier and not. It was easier because I knew how to do it and knew some shortcuts. But everything in half scale is more difficult because it is snaller. I cheated a bit and used paper rather than fabric for the headboard and the canopy. I glued the lace onto the paper, but you cannot tell it, can you? Even the bedding is paper. 

So here is the beginning of the half-scale house. 

 

There are shallow shelves in the cabinet door, but enough to make some half-flat rooms. On the outside, there is a mirror, but I will make a proper facade, with a front door and windows. This will be an interesting and challenging project. Come back soon.

Funkis bedroom

Long before I put in new wallpaper in what was supposed to be the bedroom in the funkis house, I tested the size of the future bed by placing the bed from my retro house in it. This was a fatal mistake because it was exactly the right style.

Actually, my retro house has many features that would fit in a funkis house, but this bed was too good a match, so reluctantly I decided that it would have to move. Thereafter I decorated the room to match the bed. 

The curtains and the rug had to follow, as did the two bed stands. I made another window with a view over a funkis landscape. The table comes from the IKEA set and is completely wrong scale, but I don't think it matters. The colour is right. The Matisse picture is from the web.

Now of course you wonder what I made to replace the bed in the retro house. I will tell you soon.

First attempts

Let me tell you something: this kit was of very poor quality. Not like the elaborate x-acto, and not like the Swedish Kotte-toys, laser-cut with great precision. Half the bits were not cut through properly and broke, or I had to use a craft knife. How they suppose a six-year-old can do this - I don't know. (Although I have no idea what six-year-olds can and cannot do. Will see next week when the grandchildren are visiting).

Like with all kits, as I have learned, sandpaper until you drop dead. Again, because the quality of wood is poor, the result was still not quite satisfactory. There are no proper instructions, just numbered parts, so it isn't even clear what piece you are assembling. Or maybe I am stupid. Anyway, I just started with the first sheet where some things were missing.

I cannot say that this furniture is particularly elegant. To be frank, it's clumsy. The bits do not fit well. But it was an interesting experience.

And after I painted the pieces and added some details it doesn't look all that bad. For a first sttempt.

Canopy bed, finished

You may wonder what happened to the canopy bed I made some days ago. I have been working on it all this time. Here is what I made. First, a matress. I took the foam provided in the kit and made a cover from a bit of an old kitchen towel. I have no idea how I know how to make a matress, but I think it looks very authentic.

It took me a long time to decide what fabric to use for the bedding. It has to be correct for the period. Finally I found a bit that I had bought in a hobby shop in Norway two years ago. It was just waiting for the right moment. I also had a couple of cheap handkerchiefs from a charity shop - I think the kind they have in schools for embroidery. I didn't want to cut them so I measured the main fabric to match. As I was sewing, I couldn't help thinking, once again, how they would do it in the 18th century in the American South. Would they use slaves? Would the mistress hit her slaves if sewing was not good enough? If the stitches weren't small enough or straight? I need to learn more about hand sewing throughout history. In classical English novels, you read about "plain sewing" and "fine sewing". I guess bed linen was plain sewing.

 I made the canopy first so this is what it looked like.

 
Finally I made the coverlet and a pillow. I will also make curtains. Canopy beds were not decorative. The point was to draw the curtains around them to keep warm.

You may have noticed that there is matching wallpaper in the room. It is not fixed yet because I need to paint the ceiling first, but I wanted to see what it would look like with a matching wallpaper, since that's what they had in those days. Before I cut up the fabric I photocopied it making four or five paper sheets. I am sure somebody has done this before, but I came up with it all by myself. Just because I have my new printer.

Canopy bed, continued

Read the beginning of this story here.

When the glue had set, 24 hours later, I could turn the bed right and give it a coat of varnish.

When that had dried, I could start on the most delicate part of it: stringing. They had no bed springs in the 18th century, so beds were strung with rope. It looks deceptively easy, but actually took quite a lot of time. If nothing else, you understand why furniture, not least beds, was so expensive - it took a long time and much energy to make. And if it took me so long to string a model bed that I could turn upside down as much as I needed, how long and tiresome would it be to do it in real scale! I am in awe.

I hope you are too.

After all this beauty, they suggest that I put in a foam mattress! And while I probably will not chase geese in the park to collect down feathers, I will certainly make more appropriate bedding. Come back soon.

Canopy bed

The next piece I started on was a canopy bed. I think it's interesting that it is called a canopy bed as opposed to a four-poster bed which I called it when I made my very first piece of furniture as well as my Great Tudor bed. Now that I have embarked on a more sophisticated bed-making I still feel quite proud of my earlier endeavours.

 

As with the cabinet-making, the instructions were perfect. I was a bit intimidated to begin with, but after all I did make the cabinet, and I have time, patience and passion. So I started with staining the bits that would be visible, and in the meantime assembled the frame. The alignment pattern was very helpful. I used an old cork placemat under the sheet. Then the next step was to drill holes in the frame for the strings. I can't see why they couldn't have pre-drilled the holes, like they did for the posts. I think it's like when you are making cake from powder, the recipe tells you to add butter just so that you feel that you have made at least something yourself. I was very careful with drilling because I was afraid that the frame would break. It's so delicate. I am used to working with solid old venetian blinds. If one bit breaks you just take another one.

To glue on sideboards, there was another pattern. It was fun to make because I couldn't help thinking that this was the way real furniture makers once used to work, in pre-IKEA times. Perhaps some still do it. I am very deliberately showing every step, just to emphasise how well and cleverly everything was designed and planned, and you just had to let it take the time it needed. After every step the glue must set. By the way, I used toothpicks to spread the glue.

 

I was uneasy about gluing on the posts because I had several times failed with my previous projects. But it was very well explained as well.



Masking tape is a blessing.

While it was setting, I made the canopy frame, using yet another alignment pattern

And, very smart, you turned the frame upside down and glued on to the canopy while it was still in the alignment. This is where I am at the moment, waiting for the whole thing to set. I hope it does not tumble down when I take off the masking tape.

Come back soon to see more.