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.

Dealing with treasures, cont.

If you are curious about what I did with all the treasures I showed in my previous post, here are some reports.

I was right about the unusual chest of drawers: it looks great in the yarn shop. The old table was, like in so many projects, a temporary solution that just hanged on, until the right piece turns up. I have put some stuff in drawers.  The cash machine is probably slightly too big, but I don't think it matters. It looks much better than the old, modern one made from a printie.

Removing the glass and putting it back was easy, so my glazing solution works well. (You can see the before-image of the shop in the linked post).

Replacing the chandelier in the reception room was surprisingly painless. I didn't even have to remove the whole floor above, just lift it a bit. I think I did the same when I put up the current one. This is possible because I always assemble floors on card so they are relatively easy to remove or lift.

Since the new chandelier has a hanging hook rather than a ring, I thought about a new way of attaching it. Rather than using thin wine wire as before, I made a loop from champagne wire, put the ends through the hole and bent the ends. It is a stronger fixture; it looks both neater and more natural. The whole operation took me about five minutes. In case you wonder, the ceiling rose is made from a cheese box lid.

Obviously, I had to remove all objects from the drawing room above, and when I was putting them back I thought that the new clock would look nice on the chest. And more period-correct.

This is what happens: adding and replacing all the time. We do this in our 1:1 life as well, don't we?

I planned to move the chandelier from the reception room to the upper hall, but it proved next to impossible. The floor above is firmly attached, with a staircase glued on to it, so that would demand serious reconstruction I am not prepared for.

 

After trying the chandelier here and there, I have decided to replace the one in the music room. I am doing it reluctantly and with a strong sense of guilt because this chandelier was among the very, very first objects I made, more than ten years ago. I still like it and will use it in another project. But at the moment this feels the right thing to do.

Again, I didn't have to remove the whole floor, and I used my newly acquired technique, although this chandelier has a ring rather than hook. So this time I did the opposite: made a hook out of wire, ran it through the whole and bent, then hung the chandelier on it. This way, next time I want to change the light, I won't have to remove floors. Why haven't I thought about it before? Seems elementary now.

So the music room now looks like this (I see I need to adjust the candles - they keep falling off). 

Wait a minute, you are probably saying now, what about the master bedroom that was supposed to get one of those grand chandeliers to match the mirror? Ah, do you remember the two-arm chandelier I was planning to put into the working kitchen? It is now going into the master bedroom. The room above is nursery which doesn't even have a hardwood floor (reminder to improve this!) so it was as easy as it can be. And here we are. Yes, the ceiling rose is a yogurt lid. 

Full view of the room:

I am sooooo pleased with all these changes, not least because they turned out to be significantly less arduous than anticipated. And as I am looking at the rooms, it feels they have always been like this. A good sign.

I now have two nice lights to use somewhere else. I am sure I will think of the right place for them.

The outcome of this exercise is that I have discovered carefully suppressed flaws that need attention (not just the nursery floor), and I am looking forward to returning to Womble Hall after a long pause while I was occupied with other projects.

Come back soon.

Step by step: basement entrance hall

For obvious reasons there was no basement entrance in my first house, and actually no entrance at all since I didn't have any front walls. In the cabinet house, I made a door and fixed it, improbably, on the inside of the front, because I didn't want to give away the mystery.

In planning the basement in Womble Hall, my first instinct was to remove the central divider altogether and have a large entrance, but then I decided I wanted a larder after all. At the early stages of the basement, I just put some baskets and crates in the hall. My idea was that it was the delivery entrance from which things would be carried over to the kitchens. It was also a suitable space to display some interesting objects from the original house, like the barrels (made from corkscrews).

I started making a diamond-patterned floor for this hall (scroll down to the end of the blog post to see it), but at that time I wasn't yet very good at making patterned floors, and it ended up completely crooked. I discarded it and replaced it which a piece of chequered  fabric (my husband's old shirt) glued onto a piece of old card. It has remained so, but I will replace it eventually, maybe returning to the first diamond pattern because it was pretty and period-authentic. I will have to remove skirting to do this.

I didn't move on a lot, but kept adding Chippendale furniture to it, like the double chest and the dower chest. They take a lot of space, but there is no other place in the house to put them. They also obscure the view of the back part of the room, so I will need to think of a better way. There is a dresser at the back that does not belong in scale or style or anything. It's an antique piece that I like very much, but it will have to go. I will most likely make another open-top dresser. The sconces at the front are fake, made from felt-tip pen caps. The ceiling light is from an online shop - one of those things I bought early, before I knew I could make them.

 

There is a lot more I can do in this room. The walls are bare, but what would there be in a delivery entrance? Shelves maybe?

Through the door at the back you can see the rear corridor that I have already mentioned in several posts. Perhaps in the next post, I will reveal all the secret spaces of this house. Come back soon!

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.

Adam ceiling, upper hall

I left off yesterday having made some preparations for the ceiling in the upper hall that I resumed today. The problem with upper hall ceiling (as with some other ceilings I will yet have to consider) is that it is already decorated, and, firstly, I like the decoration, and secondly, it would be a huge trouble to remove it. Hence, I need to decorate the ceiling with Adam paper around the existing ceiling panel.

 

It is interesting how bare the ceiling looks now that I have started making Adam ceilings. Half a year ago when I first made it I was perfectly satisfied.

As with the Great hall ceiling, the paper is far too large. I thought I would use the same technique I used when I made the great hall: by cutting the details and pasting on a sheet of lining paper that I would then paste on the ceiling. However, when I cut the pattern and tested, I realised that with the existing panel I would never manage to make it neat. So I decided to paste the cut-outs direct on the ceiling.

First of all, I had to drill a hole for the chandelier. It wasn't possible to remove the floor upstairs, and there is a partition in the middle anyway, so I drilled as close as possible to the partition (and will later hide it behind skirting). Then I assembled chandelier - filigree ceiling rose - circular ceiling pattern.

 

At the very last moment I realised that it made sense to glue the metal rose before hanging up the assembly - one step less to think about. Then I led a metal wire through the drilled hole and fixed with tape. Then I glued the paper circle onto the ceiling.

 

As I said, the original pattern was far too large, but I cut various details and arranged them in a somewhat symmetrical pattern. I like the result.


I may add some more details, but probably it will be too much. I will leave it like this for a while. I guarantee that there is no other ceiling like this in the world, in any scale.

This room is now very eclectic with Adam ceiling and Victorian tiles, but Victorian houses were eclectic so I won't worry about it.

Upper hall

I am meticulously showing the slow progress of decorating because it needs to be emphasised that behind each detail there may be hours of work. After the previous stage in the upper hall, when I glued the railing, I had to do the following.  First, I put in the two side doors, which in the previous pictures I tried to avoid showing. These are the absolutely last doors in this house, and they took just as much effort as all other doors. I don't know whether it is just me or whether doors are evil by nature, but they don't fit the openings. The simple explanation is that the openings have swollen from paint, and no, I didn't paint the inside edges because some merciful person warned me not to. Still, the doors don't fit, and a lot of scratching and sanding is required. There may be an easier way of doing this if you have the right tools, but I am just saying that the uninitiated who think that putting in doors is child's play - like Lego or Playmobil - don't know anything about dollhouses. Anyway, after some hours of huffing and puffing and swearing the doors were in and the surrounds glued. Did it make a difference! It's amazing how you forget what a difference it makes. It has been a very long time since the previous painful door-inserting, but now it feels really finished... almost.

For next, I had to do the skirting which I probably should have done before the railing - but whatever you do, there will always be something you should have done before. The skirting was straightforward, but still laborious, and after gluing, the skirting boards had to be held in place with masking tape. Oh masking tape, dollhouse builder's best friend!

Now, to an uninitiated eye, this picture may seem perfect:

True, it is a huge improvement. Especially compared to what it looked like fifteen months ago. But it isn't quite finished yet. The ceiling will be decorated with Adam paper, which I will have to cut and assemble to match the existing panel. There will be another chandelier in the front of the room.  To hang it, I will have to drill a hole in the ceiling, for which I will have to remove the floor upstairs. I could perhaps attach the chandelier without drilling a hole, but I will need to figure out how to do it neatly. I will add the cornices, for which I probably will need to remove the Victorian tiles because they sit too high. When I attached them I had forgotten about the cornices. I will also add door pediments, and I think I know how I will make them, but I am not sure whether it will work.

Not least, I will need to trim all small faults here and there, round thresholds, in corners. It will most probably take me 10-15 hours to complete this room - but then, a room is never completed, is it?

Last floor

I have been postponing this floor as long as I could, but the time has come: I need to build the stairs and railing, and generally it's time to finish major work now that I have lights and all. The reason I have been postponing this project is that it is a lot of work, but it is good when you need a calm day with yourself. It is precision work that needs concentration.

When I started planning Womble Hall I knew that the floor in the upper hall would be the floor from my former art gallery. Most objects from the art gallery are now in Womble Hall, not just pictures and statues, but also fireplace. So the floor would be moved to upper hall. Obviously, it wouldn't be enough because in the art gallery it was a small surface. At that time, I wasn't sure I had the patience to make a whole floor like this. Now I am sure. For the hall, I needed to add quite a few squares.

This picture was taken a year ago - this is how long it took me to finish this floor. It soon became clear that I didn't have enough cheese boxes, but on the other hand, I had plenty of coffee stirrers that are much easier to work with, and reluctantly, I discarded the old floor and started anew.

Some time ago when I shared the project on Facebook someone asked me about the size of the squares. So here is for size. These squares are smaller than in the art gallery because I use coffee stirrers. 

I will not show step-by-step pictures because technically there is nothing special about it: just measure, cut, assemble the pattern, glue, repeat... again and again. It didn't literally take me a year, because I made many other things at the same time, but I estimate that it took me about 50 hours. I would make a row every now and then. But today I finished it!



Please agree that it was worth the trouble. There are still some small tasks I need to do before I glue together the railing, but I have assembled it temporarily, just to see what it looks like. I like what I see.

I will now be able to insert the side doors (if you have followed my blog you now how much I hate it), finish the walls and ceiling decoration, attach the chandelier, and so on. The lights make it much easier to work inside the rooms than with a lamp. And easier to take pictures.

I have almost run out of coffee stirrers - I bought a pack of thousand when I started with new floors in the house. This sets everything in perspective.

Entrance hall floor

I wasn't satisfied with the shelf-lining floor in the great entrance hall because it looked like shelf lining, but I liked the pattern, so I decided to make a real floor in this pattern.

Since it would be in the same colour, I could cheat a bit and not lay the parquet bit by bit, as I have done with other floors. I glued four coffee stirrers onto a piece of paper and cut squares:

This picture shows three stages of the process: coffee stirrers glued onto paper, unstained squares and stained squares. With stain, the wood effect was highlighted.

I sanded both before and after stain, and then varnished. It took several evenings.

 

The border has to be finished yet, and it takes longer than the main pattern. But I like the result.