Servant's bedroom and first brickwork

Had a busy day yesterday, in between all my other jobs :)  I got a lot done on the attic space of the kitchen which will be a servant's bedroom.

First, I made a removable floor for the room, painted the foam to look like aged plaster, and cut the back part of the roof,

Then I designed the front part of the roof, which will have a removable panel so that this room can be accessed.  Below is the cardboard pattern I made, from which I will cut the roof panel from 1/8" plywood.

I decided that this little room would have a fireplace, so I made a simple one out of off-cuts and balsa wood:

I painted it and fitted it to the foam wall, as shown below (first I cut a hole out of the foam the same size as the inside of the fireplace and painted it black.  I also painted the bit of chimney that backs onto it back :)

Then I worked on the external chimney.

I shoved together two bits of wood, marked the shoulders of the chimney, and glued them together.

Then it was time for fun!

Or tedium :)

This is what I got done in an evening of glueing on Richard Stacey's brick Versi-slips.  I'm using the Red/Old mixture.  For this chimney I made my own corner brick slips from 400 grit emery paper -- I will touch it up so it blends better with the warmer brick colours.  In fact, I'm going to touch up the bricks in general so they don't look quite so pristine.  I covered the shoulders of the chimney in the slate Versi-slips, and I think it looks quite nice!

It's very satisfying, but very slow, especially on the short courses where I had to cut and wrap a lot of corner bricks.  But it's easy -- I've discovered that it works better for me if I smear some Tacky Glue down on the surface and then lay a row of bricks, rather than trying to put glue on individual bricks.  The latter got a bit mucky :)

And I've just decided to double the number of windows on the front of the house so I don't have to stick down so many damned bricks!

Chandeliers, including my first Ray Storey!

Got some trim work done to tidy up the joins between the tops of the walls and the first floor ceiling -- some cove moulding in the Blue and White room makes things much tidier!  I also hung (temporarily, because I don't have the ceiling rose for this room yet) the pretty silver Heidi Ott chandelier I bought in England last year.  I'm going to make silver sconces for this room, too.

I was thrilled that my Ray Storey light arrived yesterday! (That's fast service).  It's so beautiful and well-made, I'm just delighted with it.  I installed it in its home in the Library and I think it looks great.  Thank you so much, Ray!

I moved the WAMH to my lower and more convenient worktable so I can make a start on the roofs.  I played around with a cardboard roof for the Kitchen wing -- my original plan was to have this as a fixed roof, with no access to the attic.  I do hate to give up any amount of usable space, though, and I think I'll do a roof with a removable front panel, so I can put a servant's bedroom up there :)  Once I get that all worked out, I can start playing with both wall and roof finishes!

Ceiling of first floor on, next up, the roof!

I finished the final floor on the first floor -- in the Blue and White Room.  Now, it's time to add the piece of plywood that's the ceiling of that floor (the floor of the attic)!

I've been reviewing the instructions in Derek Rowbottom's Making Georgian Dolls Houses and have decided to make a few changes to his design.  Instead of adding four hinged openings across this main section of the building, I'm going to reduce it to just two.  This will let me change Rowbottom's arrangement of windows to more closely resemble actual William and Mary era homes.



This is a line drawing of a country house circa 1700 -- hipped roof, symmetrical windows.  I really like it.  Below it is a photo of the actual house.

This one shows a similar house in Kent -- I like the small hipped dormers in the hipped roof, so that's what I'm going to do with my dolls' house:)

I just got my shipment from Richard Stacey!

Look what was in the mail yesterday!  I'm so excited!  It's my first shipment of Versi-Slips and tiles from Richard Stacey!  (It's very easy to order from them -- Richard's son, Andrew, now sells the whole line through their eBay shop, miniaturebrickbargains.

I've decided to go with these products partly because they're reasonable in price and very well made and partly because I don't want the William and Mary House to be too heavy when it's done.  Real brick and slate must make for VERY heavy models!

I will do some extra faux finishing on some of these, especially the slates, to keep them from looking too pristine, but I'm very pleased with them.  I've just ordered some modelling dust (for the stone work) so I'll be able to make a start on the exterior quite soon!

I'm going out right now to buy the plywood for the final floor and for the roof.  So exciting!

New mini lights!

Hi, all!  I've been busy working hard on some miniatures projects, but wanted to stop by and share a photo or two!

I've been making miniature light fixtures for a while now, and while I'm playing with ideas for the sconces for the Blue and White room, I started exploring some other styles.  These aren't right for the period of the WAMH, but I'm having a lot of fun!

More soon!

Ruth's Cottage

On Thursday, at Knitwits, 14 year old Ruth worked on her 1/12 scale cottage.  We had cut the base (1/2 inch plywood) to size and she had cut out the three walls from 1" thick foam late last year.  On Thursday she cut windows in the foam, scored the wooden base for floorboards, stained the base and painted the downstairs walls.  Then she glued the walls to the base and to each other.  Here's how it looks:

This foam and plywood construction is excellent -- I'm using it for my William and Mary era house, but it's just perfect for younger miniaturists, because they can do so much of the cutting (under supervision) with Olfa cutters/craft knives. It's also very inexpensive -- one large sheet of foam costs less than $20, and you can get many little cottages out of it!

The cottage will have ground floor and an attic.  Ruth is looking forward to making miniature rag rugs for it!

More lights

 Ever notice how sometimes you're just in the mood for one part of working on miniatures but not another?  I'm in lighting mood, clearly :)  I added the sconces (above and below) to the Withdrawing Room yesterday evening.  With foam walls it's certainly easy -- I just jabbed a hole with a bamboo skewer and we were just about done!

 I'm going to make silver sconces for the Chinese Blue and White Room (below), to match the most adorable silver 6 armed chandelier I bought in England last year.  But I wanted this room to have some kind of light, so I installed a fire.  Again, I just had to make a hole with a skewer :)

 And as I was reviewing the contents of the rooms, I realize that this desk/bookcase that I had japanned would work perfectly in the new Library!  It really pops, doesn't it?  I'm going to make tons of really, really small books tonight so I can fill up the very narrow shelves, but I think this is where it's going to live.  I'm going to get Ray Storey to make me a little black chandelier for this room, because I long to own something by him!

Lighting, front and back :)

 I know I've mentioned before how much I love miniature lights.  For me, they're one of the best parts of building a dolls house.  Here's how the WAMH looks this grey, overcast morning!

Do you notice how rarely we show each other the "bad" side of our projects?  The side with all the working gubbins?  I would LOVE to see the backsides of people's dolls houses -- how do you hide the electrics?  What do you do with all the wires?

Until about 10 minutes ago, this is what my power strip looked like :)  Yes, it's balanced on a paint can!

Because I'm not going to finish the backside of this house (it will never be seen, as it's a front opening one), I don't HAVE to hide wires (except from the windows), so I glued on my power strip and taped the wires more neatly to the house, mostly to keep my cats from playing with them.  (They've learned they can get quite a reaction from me by even making a gesture towards them!)

Seriously, I'd love to see your electrical stuff!

Library almost done

 

This is now the Library (even though it's only got one bookshelf at the moment :)) This may be my new favourite room!  I glued everything together, yesterday, all the components of the staircase.  It was a little fiddly getting the bookcase and the bits of wood around it aligned, but it all worked out in the end.  Then I framed it in, stained it all, and let it dry. 

The floor is made from a sheet of premade wooden flooring, which I cut to fit the room.  It was DEAD easy!  I'm glad I left the left-hand wall unglued -- it's much easier to measure and cut the sheet of wood if you've got one wall that's moveable.   I didn't bother backing the wood (beyond the backing it came on, which is a bit like heavy waxed paper), and I didn't glue it down, in case I have to get to the light fixture for the hallway below.   It took the stain brilliantly.  Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

 I grabbed a handful of books from the Castle library to try them out here -- even though some are quite fine and others are just my bodged up leather covered ones, the overall effect is really pleasing.  Ever wish you could curl up in one of your miniature rooms?  I had that feeling yesterday night :)

Mind you, someone needs to dust that chair :)

I just need to finish the panelling and cut and frame a window, and the Library is DONE!

First floor staircase zooming along ...

I was so busy building the staircase yesterday that I didn't have time to post :)  Here's what it looks like this afternoon:

Here's what I got done:

I built the first flight of stairs and the landing.  I made some basic mistakes, but it's all come out okay :)

 Then I built the second flight, the longer one.  Fortunately I have access to all kinds of gash lumber down in my husband's workshop, so I had lots of triangular section dimensional wood.

Then there were many steps I don't show :)  this time I am building the staircase in, before I've done the floor.  We'll see how it goes.  I added the side pieces to the stair units, and glued the upper stairs in place along the wall.  I made the little bookcase this morning, as a replacement for a truly awful bookcase I made in haste yesterday!  It was a little too tall and a little too wide and the pitch of the shelves was rather small.  This is better!  It will be framed into the wall, so it's recessed into the stairwell behind it.  I think it'll look lovely!

 

I still haven't decided what to do with the hallway floor. I could do a wood floor, or I'd love to get some more Mar-like floor tiles and do another tiled floor here, but in warmer colours than the iconic black and white.  I love this octagonal pattern which is also typical of the period, and I like colour M6.

What do you think?