House restoration: music room, dining room, smoking room

The next point of my attention was the music room. (I believe I am intuitively avoiding the great hall because it will involve mending the stairs). It was remarkably well preserved.

The ceiling decoration got off a bit, but was easy to glue back. The fireplace wasn't even attached so it was just putting it back, but the mirror had come down. The floor was wobbly, but it probably was wobbly to begin with. This floor is the first hardwood floor I made, many-many years ago, and today I would make it differently and better, but I keep it for sentimental reasons. However, this is a good moment to sand it better - again, my demands on myself are much higher today. I sanded a bit at the front, but won't do it properly now. I will finish all the restoration first before starting on further improvements. But I clearly saw that sanding, and polishing afterwards, would be an improvement.

Apart from that, it was just a matter of putting back the furniture.

This room is full of objects and dolls, so I will have to unpack and identify them.

Meanwhile, I move up to the dining room.

It is also in a reasonably good shape. A few floorboards missing, easy to replace, since they are coffee stirrers. I have the same problem with this floor: with my today's eyes, I see that it needs sanding and polishing. But not right now.

I need to hang the mirror and pictures and of course set the table. I also intend to replace the cupboard in the rear corridor with a more appropriate period piece, but this will also have to wait.

So finally, for this round, the study, or smoking room. Again, less damage than expected.

A few unstuck floorboards and mouldings, torn wallpaper.

When I put back objects, I started with the rear corridor, where, in addition to the bookcase, there are some pieces barely visible, except from the side window. I like such hidden nooks. You will see it better when the light is on.

In this picture you can also see the tear in the wallpaper. There is no way I can replace the wallpaper at this point, so I just mended it as neatly as possible. It is difficult to work on this level, because it's too high when you stand on the floor and too low if you use a stepladder. But somehow I managed.

I feel that I have reached the stage when I don't feel compelled to put every single item I own into this house so I will only add a few more. Last time, the room looked overflowing. Of course Victorian houses were overflowing, but it is also the matter of displaying things so that they can be admired and do not obscure each other. I am considering fewer dolls in each room, although this will feel like betrayal.

Anyway, now the whole right side is finished, at least as far as pure repairs are concerned.

I still need to do some work on the front. As I have been saying repeatedly, some people leave the inside of the fronts undecorated or at best decorate with paint or wallpaper to match the rooms. My concept is to create a sense of additional space, as if there were three extra rooms, each decorated differently and with as many flat or semiflat details as possible. As you see, I have mirrors, and I will also put back pictures, wall sconces and a book shelf with books.

Finally I did something long overdue. I had planned to use a magnet lock to keep the fronts firmly closed, but I never got round to it. Meanwhile, on another dollhouse I have, there is a hook for the purpose. I need something urgently because I have two inquisitive cats who have already explored the house, as cats do.

 

 I admit that this looks like a horror movie.

It doesn't work any longer to keep the fronts closed with tape, so I got a hook. I may find a better solution lately, but it works fine for now.

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: music room

Apparently, my step-by-step blog post was appreciated, so I now continue with the next room, the music room, which is opposite from the reception room on the same floor.

When I was planning the house I knew that I would have a grand reception room and a ladies' drawing room, but I wasn't quite sure what I would do in this room. The reception room was new, the drawing room had some features from the old Victorian drawing room, but I also had a Chippendale sofa and armchair, and I wanted to build a room around them. Simply another reception room, to begin with.

I had absolutely no idea for decoration or flooring. But I happened to buy a fireplace front - just couldn't resist it, and to a certain degree it determined the rest of the room. I made dark wall panels (the blog post describes how I made them) and a proper chimney breast.

 

This picture is from mid-September 2014. The shell is not glued yet, and won't be for quite a while. At this stage I didn't use real wallpaper, but a low-resolution copy, just to test the effect. I wasn't at all sure that it was the right wallpaper, but I had it in my Georgian house where the sofa and the armchair were. I wasn't committed to it. The paper is white-tacked. The floor on the right is also a low-resolution printout.

I didn't make any progress on this room for a long time, mostly because I was working on the basement, but also because I could not decide on decoration. I browsed dozens of Victorian wallpapers, and nothing matched the fireplace and the dark panels. It wasn't until mid-January that I made a ceiling for this room, still not knowing what the walls will be like.

I worked as long as possible on flat surfaces, so when I finally chose the wallpaper I first decorated the side wall:

 

As you see, the windows are not properly inserted yet.

Then I decorated the opposite wall, and again, the door is not inserted. It wouldn't be inserted until all floors were done.

 

In mid-March 2015, I glued the shell, and here you can see the back wall of the room, with the chimney breast:

In April I got an incredible bargain at a flea market, including a piano and a doll that immediately went into the music room.

 

The window is still not inserted. The herringbone parquet had moved from the reception room to this room. I kept moving it around and frequently moved it into the room I happened to be working on, just to see the effect. The violin with case came with an ebay lot.

I added some furniture to this room, but it wasn't until next October I returned to it, to discover that I had left it totally unfinished. Apparently it looked okay, but in fact the wallpaper and the panels were not properly attached.

After some hard work the room looked like this:





There were some finishing touches left, for instance, curtains:





But on the whole, the room hasn't changed much. I have added a harp and some Chippendale furniture. There is a flickering fire in the fireplace, a tea light in the chandelier and display lights hidden behind mouldings. The coving on the right doesn't look neat (yet) because there is a wire switch in the corner.



I like this room. I may add more paintings and ornaments, but otherwise there isn't much I can do. It is as crammed as a Victorian room should be.

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.

 

Music room

I was in total shock when I finally got to finishing the music room, which is to the right on the ground floor. I knew that the wallpaper wasn't quite fixed and that the wall panels didn't quite fit, but I had been postponing this project because I knew it would be difficult. I didn't know how difficult. My greatest revelation was that I made those wall panels exactly A YEAR AGO! No floor, bare walls. It is a good indication of how slowly things move on. So much has happened in this room since. I wallpapered the walls, and I made a magnificent ceiling, all on flat surfaces. I inserted the window. But when I assembled the house, somehow this room escaped my attention. I put in the old herringbone floor, the very first hardwood floor I made seven years ago. I had to cut off a bit because the old room was larger. Then I leaned the wall panels onto the walls, filled the room with objects and pretended it was finished. The objects went in and out as I moved the house around recently.

But I couldn't postpone it forever, and once again, I removed the objects, the floor, the panels and the fireplace surround. Which left me with a sorry sight.

 

Well, the wallpaper looks good if you don't notice that it isn't properly glued in the corners. The ceiling looks great, and I am proud of my chandelier. But apart from these, it was more or less start from scratch.

I glued the wallpaper in the corners, which was easy, but when I started attaching the panels it turned out that they were on both sides an inch too long, and I am glad I then started checking every detail, because the floor turned out to be half an inch too deep (the front wouldn't close), and also I obviously needed to insert the door before putting in the panels. You may remember that doors are my particular enemies. This one was especially evil until I remembered that I had the same problem with the opposite door: the surrounds were slightly too large. Bold as I am now, I trimmed them with my precious mitre scissors. I had decided to paint the sourrounds dark brown to match the panels, and I also gave them a coat of mahogny stain. I think it looks better than white ssurrounds that would have stood out too much. When I had glued in the door I discovered that it wouldn't open and had to sand down the floor. Believe me or not, it was an improvement, so I will sand and then re-varnish the rest.

I then trimmed the panels. In both cases, I had to redo one square on each side, making them more narrow, but I don't think anyone would guess. I also made neater sides on the fireplace. 

Meanwhile, I put back the objects, made a fire in the fireplace and switched on the ceiling light. I thought it was good.

 

Apart from sanding the floor, the remaining touches in this room will be: 1) curtains. I haven't decided yet how I will make them 2) pictures on the walls, on both sides of the fireplace and on the side walls. Ancient pictures in heavy gold frames 3) coving. I haven't decided whether it will be white or dark, and whether I will use wooden moulding or paper. I am also considering painting the ceiling, but perhaps it will be too dark. But anyway, another room presentable.