Pride and Prejudice room box, part 3

Read part 1 and part 2 of this story.

It has taken me some time to finish this room box. First I was away on holiday, then I had to do all the urgent tasks that had accumulated while I was away, and also this is gardening season rather than miniature season. But if I am to display it at our workshop, I'd rather hurry.

The next step was to make the floor, and I wanted to make something interesting that I had never made before. I spent considerable time on the web, and let me tell you, Regency floors were really boring! In the choice between period-correct but boring and not-quite-period-correct but interesting I chose the latter.

 

Since the room box is shallow, I only needed a relatively small surface. Still, it is a lot of work. I haven't kept track, but it took me several evenings, maybe ten-twelve hours of work. Mitre shears is my best friend. I stained the coffee stirrers with three different stains, also trying to emphasise the natural grain.

If you have seen my other floors, for instance, this or this or this or this, you know that I make them because I enjoy doing it. I remember a comments some time ago: "If you do this or that, it will be much quicker". But I don't want it quicker. Slow pace is the main attraction of miniature-making.

Anyway, it took the time it took.




If you look closely, I haven't done it properly since it is crooked, but most people won't notice because they will be in awe, and you won't tell, will you? The tiny corners was the most challenging part. Sanding the floor smooth took a long time. I used real teak oil rather than hobby varnish, and I like the result.

I considered wooden skirting, but decided against it: too much complicated mitring. So I used the ubiquitous wallpaper, and whatever faults there are, they will be hidden behind the furniture.

The final task was to hang the chandelier, and I am by now quite good at it. I used a scrapbooking frame once again for ceiling rose.

So, here it is. Do you think the workshop participants will be impressed?

Pride andPrejudice room box, Part 2

Read the first part of this story.

Once upon a time, Facebook allowed you to choose which picture to show when you shared your blog post. Not any more. So I put the final picture first, to be shown with the link. Close your eyes if you prefer to be surprised.

It took  some time to get there.

First, I tried various wallpaper. Jennifer's printables is a superb site where you can find period wallpaper to suit any taste. I printed a sheet of several patterns and put them in, one at a time and together. I wanted something distinct, and also something I haven't already used in Womble Hall. I have used a Regency paper on the inside fronts of Womble Hall, and I almost decided to used it again when I saw another one, similar, but not quite. I think it is delicate and just right.

For the first time, I used real wallpaper paste, just because I happened to have some. Let me tell you: it made a huge difference. I wish I had done all wallpapering in Womble Hall with paste. Too late now. I didn't bother matching sheets exactly for the pattern (as I did with some wallpaper in Womble Hall) because I don't think it matters with this design.

With the wallpaper, the room looked much more natural. (Compare with the picture in the previous post). But I also wanted panels and rails, so I used more embossed 1:1 wallpaper, for the lower and upper panels and my favourite stripy one for dado rail, picture rail and coving. There were some tricky parts in the corners, but after trial and error, it looked passable. I was glad I had decided against real wooden coving - I would have never managed the mitring. Mitring is not my strong side.

I will add skirting when I have made the floor. I have just ordered a new pack of coffee stirrers, and I will need to find some interesting and period-correct floor pattern that I haven't done before.

More than this, I haven't moved yet, but as always, I put back all the objects, including the fabulous Chippendale mirror that I had made specifically for this room.

  

From the picture - and only from the picture - I see that I need to glue the coving better, to avoid gaps between the walls and the ceiling: it doesn't look neat. 

So the floor next. I most likely won't be able to finish it before I go away on holiday mid-July, but I may add some details, such as a fireguard and perhaps some more pictures and decorations. All the objects are borrowed from Womble Hall so I will have to make new eventually. 

Come back soon.

PS I have re-read Pride and Prejudice looking for descriptions of interiors. There aren't any! Mr Bennet's library is mentioned on many occasions, but it is never described. When Elizabeth visits Pemberley, there are descriptions of views from windows, but not of rooms. Mr Collins' furniture is referred to, but what kind of furniture? So my guesses are as good as anyone else's.

This and that

I have been working hard all day, but have very little to show. That's because I have been doing small trimmings that an untrained eye wouldn't even notice. For instance, this:

I don't know about other people, but my floors never fit perfectly, because they are handmade, and handmade things aren't perfect. Some defects can be hidden behind mouldings; here, for instance, a gap is covered by skirting boards. But around the threshold it still needs to be trimmed, and I have now done it with several doors. Please say that this looks better:

 

I know it does. Bit it takes quite a lot of time, cutting, fitting, staining, gluing, sanding, varnishing. Just a tiny strip of wood. There are zillions of such tiny details all over the house, and I have now spent hours dealing with them. Also adding more mouldings where necessary, and filling and then painting tiny gaps, and painting moulding edges that I had forgotten to paint before I attached them. Boring things and really nothing to show.

As a reward, I have started making some Chippendale miniatures from my most recent bargain.  They are great fun to make, and if you haven't seen my previous pieces, I have collected them in two posts, here and here. 

I started with a bench because I had never made a bench, and it was relatively easy apart from endless sanding. I wasn't sure what kind of fabric to use because I don't know yet which room the bench will be in, but I can change it later.

Right now the bench is in the music room, and the fabric is the same as the curtain. I am going to replace all chairs in this room, and I can use the same fabric.

Then I made a side table, which was also straightforward. It goes well with the dinner table. But of course I have two problems now. There is no space for it in the dining room. And the old side table suddenly feels crude. So it is possible that the old side table will have to go. I am not particularly attached to it. I bought it cheap at Maple Street. There is nothing wrong with it, and it would look good in another room, but a Hepplewhite dining table demands a Hepplewhite side table.

 

I guess this happens in 1:1 scale too - once you've started buying period furniture everything else feels wrong.

Finally, I have started making chairs. I now have kits for seven pairs of chairs, almost all of different models. I am going to have new chairs in the dining room, to go with the table. Chairs are a challenge to make because it is precision job more than any other.

Most of my old chairs have sides cut from a single piece of plywood. In any case, they aren't as elegant as Chippendale chairs, which you can clearly see if you put them beside:

 

The chair on the left is from the very first pair I bought on ebay three weeks into my miniature hobby. I replaced the original fabric. I don't remember where the chair on the right comes from, but until today I liked it. Interestingly, the Chippendale chair is slightly smaller. 

I have two more of the same lyre-back chairs so there will be four of these around the table and two or four of a different model. The dining room will look great with a proper set of chairs. Come back soon.

 

"Immaculate attention to detail"

Every time I wonder why I bother to make all the tiny details of my project as perfect as possible, I keep reminding myself about that newspaper article that made me so angry a year ago. Attention to detail is precisely what those decorators haven't done. But I won't repeat myself - read the post.

This weekend I have been working with details. Some of them I indicated in yesterday's post. When I started making the ceiling in the upper hall, including the ceiling rose for the chandelier, I realised that it would make sense to add the coving first, because the chandelier would be in the way. And before I moved on at all, I should probably fix the candles in the large chandelier. They were just attached with tack, and I removed them when I was working on the railing because they kept falling off. (I cannot take out the chandelier because it is attached in the sealed-off back corridor above). I knew the candles would go on falling off, and I needed to come up with a good idea about how to fix them. Unlike most of my candles, these are real birthday candles - not that I will ever light real candles in a dollhouse, but I had these rather ugly silver ones, so I painted them off-white. I had bought the candles in a charity shop for 30p because of the candle holders: miniature people make cups, goblets and other stuff with them. But after repeated attempts to fix candles upright with sticky dots, I took the holders, cut off the tip and put candles in them, as you normally do with candle holders.

 

My idea was that a holder would stay put better than a candle. But after a while it didn't look all that good.

Since I was multitasking I took down a sconce from a room box that I am dismantling. It goes together with a ceiling lamp I now have in the master bedroom. Let me tell you: it is worth while going through your own creations every now and then. The sconce was very clever, and I saw immediately that it was a solution for my chandelier problem.

Hopefully, gluing metal to metal will do it.

As I said, I was multitasking, and one of the tasks was door pediments. This is what I had in mind.

 

While I was rummaging through my numerous Very Useful Boxes I found another thing from the same shop. Another lesson to self: before embarking on any project, go through all your supplies. I had been saving these filigrees for ages, to make ceiling roses!

Just in time for the small chandelier in the upper hall, but I had completely forgotten them when I made the Adam ceiling in the smoking room! Shall I do it all over again, just to insert the rose? I think I shall. It will look so good.

Meanwhile, the coving I had painted was dry, and it was time to put it into the upper hall (before starting on the ceiling). It isn't proper miniature coving, but a 2 meter rail from B&Q for £1. In most of my rooms so far I have paper mouldings made from 1:1 embossed wallpaper. But for the front hall I wanted wooden coving for better effect.

I had to remove my pretty Victorian tiles because they sat just a couple of millimeters too high. It didn't really matter because I had to rearrange them anyway.

As you could have expected, while I was working on the back wall I happened to ruin a part of the railing. I should have made the mouldings before I made the railings. But then... and so on.

Anyway, here is the result of my immaculate attention to detail today, and I will continue tomorrow, so please come back. 

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.

Lamps and candles

I will not be showing every picture of every room where I have now added mouldings made with full-size wallpaper (I am glad I invested in a whole roll rather than pinching samples). As I show further details of various rooms please pay attention to the mouldings, and I will draw your attention to any particular aspect. I've done all rooms on the upper floor: master bedroom, bathroom, corridor and smoking room. I think it looks nice and neat. I cannot say it was child's play because it was a lot of quite difficult precision work; but it was certainly easier than using proper wooden moulding. If I some time in the future decide to add wooden cornices I can place them on top of paper.

Meanwhile, I have also been doing some other things. I had a miniature shopping binge in Stockholm last month.

Of these lovely objects, I have already shown what I did with the kitchen shelves. Some things went immediately to their natural locations: the rocking horse to the nursery, the cutlery to the kitchen, the chair to join its twin that I bought in the same shop last year; the doll to the music room. Some of the ornaments have also found their right spots.

 

But my favourites are the two magnificent chandeliers.

It took me a long time to consider where they would be best displayed. The grand reception room seemed a natural place, but no, it actually didn't work ar all; the style was wrong. So the reception room will still have a plastic Christmas tree decoration. While I was deciding I added a chain to the chandelier that didn't have one.

 

I have various chains from junk jewellery so it was easy. The hard thing was the candles. The smaller chandelier has candle holders. The shop owner suggested that I use birthday-cake candles, but they are far too large, even cut in two. It doesn't look natural. So I made candles with my usual technique, from dowel. It suddenly struck me that there is a simple way to calculate how tall a candle should be: a real candle divided by 12.  Which is 2 cm. No wonder all my earlier attempts failed. My candles were too tall.

The other chandelier has spikes, and the shop owner wasn't confident with advice. I have tried to put birthday-cake candles on such spikes - let me tell you, it doesn't work. Possibly if you make your own candles and make holes in the bottom while they are still soft, and they will crumble anyway. So I had to think of another way. I won't burn real candles inside a dollhouse so it doesn't matter exactly in what way they are fake.

This is what I did. Painted a drinking straw and cut 2 cm long bits. Put a bit of tacky wax into each end and added tiny bits of thread for wicks. Then put the candles on the spikes, with wax holding them in place.

I still wasn't sure where I wanted the chandeliers. Pieces like this should be foregrounded, and eventually I decided that I will have them foregrounded, literally, on the two levels of the Great Hall. They will match each other and immediately attract attention.

 

Yes, immediately attract attention because the candles are all lopsided! They are temporarily attached with small sticky dots. Of course I only noticed after I had taken the picture. It doesn't matter, however, because I will still need to drill a hole and find a suitable ceiling rose.

The other one looks better - this is the one with candles made of straws, they are more stable.

Mind, both rooms are still under construction - the stais aren't glued yet.  So you need to use your imagination to see what it will be like some time in the future.

As I have now invented this new way of making fake candles I made two more to go with an ancient mirror I bought in the same shop last year. It has candleholders with spikes. I have now put it in place, with candles. 

Lower entrance door

I have now put back the basement fronts, after all my work inside the basement rooms. An unfinished detail that drew my attention was the basement entrance door, the deliveries door that will eventually be under the grand front stairs. So far there isn't much to see on the outside.

On the inside, it looks weird. The door does have wooden hinges, but they come off easily, and there is no surround so I wonder whether this door is meant to be opened at all.

If you have followed my blog you know that I decorate the inside of the fronts, to create an illusion of additional space. To the right in this picture, you see the extension of the best kitchen. To the left is the fourth wall of the lower entrance hall, but I don't think I will use the wallpaper, it will be too messy. But I needed to do something about the door, to keep it in place and have neat trimmings. I used my favourite full-size wallpaper for the surround and a craft stick for the threshold. The door knob is a paper clip. The horse shoe over the door comes from some junk jewellery. And the hook for the keys is a tip from champagne wire. I really like it. In fact, I like it so much that I may replace all nails in both kitchens with such hooks. I have plenty of champagne wire.

Finishing touches on the basement

I know I have said this before: I cannot understand how it is possible to decorate a dollhouse after you have assembled it. I would have never been able to make the elaborate decoration in my two kitchens unless I had worked on flat surfaces and before the roof was on. The final steps were really painful, and I only had to glue on cornices and some small details.

For any kind of work, you need two hands and you need to be able to see what you are doing. In a space 40 cm broad, 20 cm high and 50 cm deep, there is very little margin for movement and almost no light. I put in a battery spot, but I could not get both my arms inside and look into the room. So for the cornices, I had to get in one arm up to my shoulder and feel around. Mind: it was paper, easily attached: I can't imagine how I would do it with proper wooden moulding. (If you know how it is done, please tell me).

In the best kitchen, I had to take down a shelf on the back wall to glue on the cornice, but when I had to put it back, again I had a choice of either using two hands without sight or one hand, and I want to see you work one-handed with tiny nails inside a half-meter deep room. My arms are simply not long enough.

I felt very much like Alice in Wonderland, crammed in a house far too small.

I am, however, pleased with the result. I also found a ceiling light for the best kitchen; I had it in my old kitchen and had completely forgotten about it. It fits nicely with the rest.

The next room, which is the lower entrance hall - delivery entrance - was a bit easier because is doesn't go all the way back. Still I had to do it by touch only, as I could not see what I was doing. The ceiling lamp is something bought cheap; it was a real light with a wire, but I use it as fake. Eventually, there will be tea lights on remote control placed strategically here and there.

I moved the delivery boy to this room from the kitchen, and it made a huge difference.There is a lot that can be added in this room.

The larder was worst because it is just 12 cm broad, hardly enough for one hand.  The shelves are fixed permanently so I didn't want to remove them. The fake ceiling light is made from an eyedrop-bottle cap.

The working kitchen was hard again, because it is full depth. There are also various shelves which I, after the problems in the best kitchen, didn't want to remove. Either way, it's complicated. But since it was the fourth room, I have developed the skills. For the ceiling light, I found a lamp I had made long ago but never used anywhere. It is made from a glass candlestick decoration and champagne wire. I cut the ceiling rose from a chocolate box.

 

It is very difficult to take decent pictures of such small rooms, so here is a closeup, to show more detail.

Having done all this, I am immensely grateful for the serendipity of my big mistake. If I had glued on the roof six months ago I wouldn't yet have discovered the magic of full-size wallpaper which makes moulding soooooo much easier to do.

More "spot the difference"

I have mentioned repeatedly that it may seem odd that I keep putting objects into half-finished rooms only to remove them the next day. But if you think closer it makes sense. At each stage, I need to check what it will look like, and it is here I can spot mistakes and correct them. It isn't an option in 1:1 decoration, so there you must guess and trust your intuition. I don't mind moving things around, and I like putting everything back in the evening so that I have a nice view when I see it next morning.

So I removed everything from the smoking room to add moulding. As I was doing it, I realised that I wouldn't be able to fix skirting before I knew that the floor was right, and I wasn't sure that the adhesive lining floor was right. That's the problem: once you have started doing proper floors you aren't satisfied with half-measures. At least it didn't feel right so I tested the floor that I initially made for the nursery, but it is much too sofisticated for the nursery so I thought it would go well in the smoking room. I had to trim it a bit. The mouldings aren't fixed yet except for rails.

And then - yes, you have guessed it - I put everything back again.

This is the first room that is actually finished - apart from mouldings. I cannot yet fix the skirting because I need to attach the ceiling light in the room below, and the hole is under the floor. Apart from that, it is all done, the door surround glued, and I can start thinking what else is going into this room: pictures, ornaments. occasional tables, smoking utensils, lights. Maybe another male doll?

Bathroom

I will now go back to the beginning of the second floor and the rear corridor even though I have shown similar pictures before. The reason I think it is important to account for some projects step by step is that, if people only see the finished room, they have no idea how much work lies behind it and how much needs to be planned and considered.

I had removed everything from this space.

The only thing I had done is fix the pictures permanently because I won't be able to do this once the partition is in place. You can also see where the LED light sits. It won't be visible through the doors.

This was the time to glue in the partition, and you know what? I decided not to. It sits quite firmly in the groove, and if I for whatever reason need to remove it I will only have to tear down the mouldings and wallpaper. I do hope this never happens. Not in my lifetime anyway.

I put in the wall and placed the furniture in the rear corridor. I have added and rearranged the ornaments on the chests. I visited a stately home last weekend and noticed, once again, how crammed chests and dressers were.

Then I put in the middle partition and of course noticed that the edge needed painting. These are the small details you discover as you go, and it makes sense to paint the edge before putting in the wallpaper.

I made the bathroom tiles more than half a year ago.  This sets the whole project in perspective. Now they are finally in place.

But there are still several things to do. For instance, door posts. In the adjacent room I could do this on flat surface because the wallpaper was already done, but here I had to do it afterwards. Another argument for doing as much as possible on flat surfaces! Frankly, I don't know how you can do all decoration after assembly. But I have a bad shoulder.

That done, compare the difference.

The next step is moulding. Now, it isn't my strong side. I have never figured out how to mitre cornices, and I think I won't bother.

 

The cornices are white-tacked so far because there is yet another detail I need to decide on. I won't have skirting on the back wall because it will be hidden by a dresser.

Now some objects to get the general idea.

 

The whole project, from the first picture above to the last, including painting the mouldinds, has taken six hours.