House restoration: reception room, drawing room, master bedroom

I am now moving to the left-hand side of the house, starting with the reception room (as you see, I am still avoiding the grand stairs).

There was no damage to it at all so I just put back all the furniture.

The only detail that needed attention was the chandelier.

 

To put it up, I needed to remove the floor from the room upstairs. I have done this several times when replacing lights, and I am always glad that I was clever and have all floors mounted on card, easy to remove.

Remaining in this room, mirror over the fireplace, and all the numerous paintings and ornaments. This is the only room in the house where cats are not allowed. (Why, I am suddenly asking myself. But I have never had a cat in this room, while I otherwise have cats everywhere).

Moving up one flight of stairs takes us to the ladies' drawing room, which is actually withdrawing room. I am not making it up, it's true. Ladies would withdraw after dinner, while gentlemen went to the smoking room.

It is in the drawing room I had to remove the floor to hang the chandelier in the reception room.

Like all floors, it will benefit from some sanding, which I will do later. At the moment I had a dilemma. In this room, I have a sofa and armchair that I made fifteen years ago among the very first pieces I made. I have attempted to replace them with "proper" furniture, but I just cannot. Too strong attachment. I won't even show a picture with a proper Chippendale sofa. So the old sofa and armchair stay.



This room has a magnificent antique mirror over the mantel, and there are more pictures, and of course there is tea served on several tables.

Finally, master bedroom. Again, not much to repair, except some mouldings that I didn't bother about at the moment, it's easily done at any point later.

Not much to add, so the dolls will be moving in soon.

The left-hand side of the house is restored with minimal effort.

Again, there is some work on the fronts, not least the double entrance door that is totally smashed. I hope I can repair it because it was quite expensive. But I am making rapid progress (avoiding the difficult parts).


To be continued.

Step by step: drawing room

Unlike the reception room and the music room, the drawing room at Womble Hall inherited many features from the original Victorian house, where the drawing room was combined with the study. When planning Womble Hall I knew I wanted a room where the ladies would enjoy their perpetual tea. In this early picture, one of the first weeks after I started, the general idea of the drawing room is clear. It's left side, middle floor.

There is a tea table, two dolls, and a sofa in the background. I didn't know what wallpaper or floors I wanted in this room. As with the other rooms, I started with the chimney breast. I used the front that I had bought a long time before, when I didn't yet know I could make fireplaces myself, but since it was there it would be silly not to use it. I knew I didn't have enough wallpaper, but at that point I was just testing things.

I made herringbone parquet floor for this room from self-adhesive shelf lining because I hadn't yet realised that all floors in this house would have to be hardwood. Proper floors. But as a test it looked ok.

In this picture, from October 2014, the shell is not glued yet, the wallpaper is temporary and only covers one and a half walls, the doors and windows are not properly inserted. At this stage, I had a very vague idea what this room would be like. Both tables are upside-down wooden candlesticks, from my very, very first forage into a flee market.

After that, I didn't do anything on this room for a very long time. You might think that I would work on one room at a time and finish it before moving on, but that's not how it happened. In this case, I didn't return to this room at all until I had glued the shell and was decorating ceilings before inserting floor dividers. For this room, I made a pink ceiling with white ornaments. I had doubts from start about this ceiling. It looked fine on its own, but somehow it didn't quite fit in with the room. But I let it be for a while. We are now in March 2015, and by then I had put in wallpaper, made wall panels, and it started looking like a room.

The wallpaper is a free printie, and I made the panels from a 1:1 wallpaper sample. The window is probably inserted, but not the door.

This room was, as I realise now, the easiest and most straightforward, and therefore, again, it took some time before I returned to it. Meanwhile the tea party just went on. But in May I decided to move the floor from the grand entrance to this room.

Once you have started having hardwood floors in your house, paper floors are unsatisfactory.

After that, there was another long break with this room. I guess, again, it's because it looked almost finished, and I was busy with rooms that didn't. So the next step, in October, was when I started working on the mouldings: skirting and  coving.  First, I had to add a few centimetres to the floor that came from another room. Then I used my ingenious, if I may say so myself, technique of coving with the same 1:1 wallpaper that I had used for panels. I am not good with coving, and I have avoided it as much as possible. It's soooooo much easier to work with paper, and I think it looks acceptable. Maybe even good.

There are small differences between the pictures, but each time the room looks tidier and more complete. The only major work to do with this room was to insert the door, but to do this I had to finish the adjacent room, and it took some time. Although I did make a curtain rod for this room.

However, the most revolutionary step in the whole project was lighting, which happened in November. I don't have a separate picture of the drawing room illuminated, but here is a picture of the whole house.

But as you see, the doors are still not inserted. Moreover, at approximately the same time I discovered Adam paper which implied a series of ceiling renovations all over the house. In January 2016 I made a ceiling for the drawing room, replacing, without much regret, the old pink ceiling.  This is what it looked like:

After I had finished the ceilings and the mouldings, the main project was officially completed, if there is such a thing. After that, I mostly focused on Chippendale furniture, among other things replacing the old faithful plastic coffee table with a Queen Anne tea table. The room was by then rather crowded, as Victorian rooms are. The serpentine chest by the right wall is also a Chippendale piece.


And this takes me to the present, September 2016, two years after I started.

You can say that not much has changed, and that's true. This room has given me least headache of all, and there is probably not a lot I am going to add. I may replace the table and chairs with Chippendale pieces when I have made them. I might add more paintings and other ornaments. Of course I can replace the sofa, but it has such warm sentimental memories that I think I will leave it as it is.

Adam ceiling: drawing room

It has been a while since I made Adam ceilings. If you haven't seen my Adam ceilings, here is the dining room, the gentlemen's smoking room, the grand hall and the upper hall. It is now time to deal with the ladies' drawing room. There is nothing wrong with the old ceiling, I still think it was a very clever design. But once I have started adding Adam ceilings I have to keep the style.

As with the other ceiling, I had to remove the flooring upstairs, and I wasn't looking forward to that because the skirting upstairs was already fixed. Luckily, I managed to pull out the floor - the advantage of building floors on card rather then directly inside the room - without having to break up the skirting.

I won't show step-by-step pictures because it was similar to the dining room. I had to measure and cut around the chimney breast, then align the central circle with the existing hole, put the chandelier chain through the ceiling rose (the same metal filigree), paper and ceiling, then glue on the paper. Add paper coving, except for the chimney breast where I used a piece of wooden cornice for effect.

Now that I have practiced it didn't take as long as the first ceiling, and I made no mistakes. (I hope).

In the picture, I see that the half-circle over the chimney breast is not symmetrical, but the chimney breast wasn't supposed to be exactly in the middle of the room, and anyway I cannot do anything about it now.

Curtain rod

This is the first time I am making a proper curtain rod. All my curtains so far, in all projects, have been attached with white tack. Every now and then they fall off. And it doesn't look neat, if you look closely.

I have twenty-two windows in my house so it's just about time to learn how to make proper curtains. I will make something more elaborate for the reception rooms, but for the drawing room I took curtains that I used with a fake window many years ago (yes, fixed with white tack). Now I used two tiny loops - don't know where they come from, but will have of get more.

Then I put the rod - grill stick - through the loops.

Cut the rod and trimmed wth beads. I know it may sound elementary, but this is actually the first time I've done it.

Now it looks neat, and the curtains can be drawn!

I recently bought ten silk scarves at a market for £3. It was at the end of the day, and they wanted to get rid of their stuff. I will make curtains out of them, so come back soon to see. 

Drawing room

The last time I showed the ladies' drawing room was when I had just assembled the second floor of the house, more than half a year ago. Since then I have moved the floor from the entrance hall to the drawing room, and I have also shown the antique mirror over the mantelpiece (you need to scroll down the post to see it). 

The trouble with the floor was that it wasn't deep enough for this room, and before I moved on, I now had to add about two inches at the back. Thus: remove all objects and take out the floor.

 

It feels strange to see bare floors again, as if going back to the very, very beginning. 

It had been a while since I made floors, and I had forgotten how boring it was. However, I used the new technique I developed when I made the entrance floor: glueing coffee stirrers onto a piece of paper before cutting them. It went quicker, and because the new bit is in the back it does not matter that the colour doesn't quite match. You cannot see the difference, can you?

Then came skirting, and once again I realised that I couldn't finish skirting before inserting the door, and I cannot insert the door before I finish the floor in the adjacent room, and it will take some time. Therefore I only added skirting on the left and in the back, but it shows how neat it will be when everything is in place.

 

Then I put back all the objects.




Seemingly, it is the same picture as half a year ago, but a lot of improvement has taken place, as you can clearly see if you look carefully. There is still the door to be inserted and the skirting fixed, but apart from this, here is another room finished. More paintings here as well; maybe wall sconces, perhaps a couple of side tables. The flower pot should obviously not be on the tea table. I like the way this room has turned out.

Second floor and drawing room

Now that I had finished the pink ceiling, I could put in the second floor. I will not describe the process because it would mostly consist of dirty words, but this time, unlike the first floor, I did pull it out when it didn't quite fit and sanded more and glued properly.

I then trimmed the wallpaper in the ladies's drawing room, and, once again, I am glad that I decorated as much as possible on flat surfaces because working inside a small and deep room wasn't good for my back and shoulder. But I am pleased with the result, although mouldings are still to be fixed, as well as the door:

I am not quite sure about the floor, but since it is mounted on a piece of card I can replace it even after I have added skirting. Also this room will be crammed with furniture so perhaps the floor won't even be visible too much. To check, I put in some things and dolls:



This makes a huge difference, and I think I will leave the floor as it is. If you wonder about how I made some of the things in this room, have a look at the chimney breast, or why not my very first sofa, more than eight years ago. The octagonal table in the foreground is new, I got it from ebay recently, together with the chairs. The ceiling lamp is made from a fish hook, and the mirror on the chimney breast is very, very antique and cost a fortune. The samovar on the table is also old; my daughter's mother-in-law gave it to me. There will be more objects in this room, but since I will have to remove them to fix the mouldings I haven't put everything in yet.

All in all, this is what it looks like at the moment.

I very deliberately left the tools and materials in the rooms to convey a sense of the process. I put in the bed in the bedroom and the table in the dining room to see where the ceiling lights should be.

The next step is the top floor, and again I need to finish the ceilings before I can put it in so this will keep me busy for the rest of the weekend.

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. 

Plastic sofa makeover

Among the many things I bought at the other, cheap flea market was this plastic sofa. I hate pink, and a combination of pink and plastic makes me sick. But I have already made something pretty from a pink plastic house so I bought the sofa to make something nice.

My first idea was to cover it with fabric. But it has all these complicated curves, and although I tried with an old piece of cloth I soon realised that I would never make it as neat as I want it. So I decided to paint it. I could always make another attempt with the fabric. You cannot see it well in the picture, but the paint brought out a subtle pattern on the surface, and see! - instead of the ugly pink plastic I have expensive-looking cream leather. And I painted the base a darker shade.

I have now put it in my retro house, instead of another sofa that I wasn't happy with and was going to replace anyway. I hadn't at all planned to use this sofa, but I think it looks great. I made two cushions to go with it. I have really enjoyed doing this, so I am looking forward to more plastic makeovers.

More furniture improvements

Now that I have figured out how to make the kit furniture nicer it's just a matter of patience. I made a table for the drawing room

A bookshelf

with book rows cut from a magazine

An armchair

 

After which I gained so much confidence that I decided I could make something that was missing from the kit. I took the side pieces from another armchair and used the empty template to make the seat and the back. I used a cheesebox, and because I don't have any elaborate tools I simply cut it with scissors.

 I don't think my sofa is significantly inferior to the one mising from the kit.

 Of course it still looks more like a park bench than a sofa, but wait...

Here is the whole set. I stained and varnished the furniture, and unfortunately the stain didn't stick where there was some glue left on the sofa: there is an ugly patch that I will do something about. The ceiling lamp is a toy from a Christmas cracker, and the table lamp is a chess piece with a plastic tube cap. The carpet is paper, cut from a catalogue and fringed all round
 

Modern drawing room details

I bought this piano in a shop on Portobello Road in London. It might fit into a certain kind of dollhouse, but it would stand out too much in mine so I decided to repaint it.

 

I painted it black and glued gold paper inside, scratched to imitate strings. I also added candle holders, made from ear rings, and for once, I printed sheet music from the web.

 

Full view of the drawing room. Under the stairs, there is some sports equipment, all key rings.

I haven't done much on the outer wall. It was broken when I bought the house, so I had to fix it with a bit of wood.

 

 View through the kitchen door.

Modern drawing room

The remaining room in my modern house is the ground-floor drawing room. The front door of the house opens into it, which is not uncommon in English houses, and there is not much I can do about it. I didn't want the door to open into the kitchen.

 

This is a very early stage, as you can see the empty kitchen through the opening. I painted the walls yellow, but the floor is still covered with paper. The heater is made from a candy box. I made the sofa from cardboard, covered with fabric. The coffee table is the lid of a souvenir box made from California readwood - the souvenir shop swore that no tree was injured. 

The standard lamp is made from bits of an old fridge shelf, with eyedrop containers for lampshades. The base comes from some old toy. The Penguin books come from a party game; a friend gave me the leftovers after Christmas. The self-adhessive covers are wrapped over a piece of cardboard. I only chose titles that I liked. The picture on the wall is cut from a magazine, and the frame is made of grill sticks.



Although I don't like fitted carpets in my own home I got a bit of furniture fabric from a friend, which made a nice carpet for this room. I put in a mirror because mirrors always create an interesting effect in a dollhouse. The tiffany lamp in front of the mirror came with a lot from ebay, and I don't even remember where the table and chair come from. Some further features of this room include a coffee table, which is another upside-down carndlestick, and a television set, made from a plastic jewellery box, in the same manner I made the computer screen. The remote is cut from a catalogue.