The Governesses

During the Victorian era, the governess for the Lockwood children was named Miss Leopold, and was not very well liked by the Lockwood children. She was a stiff, upright woman with a stern face, and always carried around her cane - not because she needed it to support herself, but because she enjoyed threatening to thwack children with it. Her bedroom was very reminiscent of herself; very stiff, upright, no-nonsense and formidable. It was very old-fashioned, with an iron bed, a pitcher and washstand, and old Victorian posters on how to bring up children. That was the old Governess, and that was the Old Governess's Bedroom. Now, it was being used as somewhat as a hideout for the Lockwood children: they used it as the pirate's ship, the headquarters of a spy agency, or whatever they pleased. They laughed over the old-fashioned posters that were hung about the room, and clambered into the imposing wardrobe to pretend they were in Narnia. In all, nothing that the Governess would have approved of.

That was her room now - and I need to construct it! There will be no accessories, because Miss Leopold has passed on, and after all, hasn't lived there for almost half a century. I will need to make a 'stiff and imposing wardrobe', an iron bed, a small table with a lamp that Miss Leopold used to write on, and a washstand with a pitcher and basin. I will also need to make (or rather, print out) posters from the Victorian Era on how to bring up children, because they rather seem like something Ms. Leopold would want. I will also need to make little books from the Victorian Era on education, dusty spelling books, musty arithmetic books, and crumbling reading books. Speaking of Victorian books, I am lucky to possess an original Victorian McGuffey's Eclectic Reader. I would take a photo to show it to you, but I would rather not sort through piles of crumbling books at the present. Anyhow, Miss. Leopold must possess McGuffey's Electic Reader. She simply wouldn't do without it.

But now we travel fifty years later, to the 1930s, with a New Governess and a New Governess Bedroom. Hence the name, the Old Governess's Bedroom and the New Governess's Bedroom. And the name of the new Governess? Miss Jessel. There are no reasons behind the choice of name, it just struck my fancy. Miss Jessel, oh the contraire, is quite the opposite of Miss Leopold. She's very kind and understanding, yet still stern enough to be a firm hand with the children. She lives in a room on the third floor, adjacent to the Old Governess's Bedroom and the Schoolroom (which I simply must construct! I have some terrific ideas for it, but we'll have to see if they can become reality. . .) Miss Jessel's room was updated in 1932, so of course, it's at the height of modern conveince. (No pitcher and washbasin for her!) I also possess a score of 1920s Educational Books (yes, I do have a collection of old books), which will be quite useful in the construction of Miss Jessel's room. It's also rather amusing to compare the 1920s teaching methods with McGuffey's 1860s teaching methods, which I suppose would the equivalent of comparing Miss Jessel with Miss Leopold. I'm going to have a lot of fun constructing these rooms - mainly becuase they can be such a different mix of styles. I will also make one of my favorite 1930s Fireplaces for Miss Jessel, but perhaps this one will be in beige or a light brown.

And we mustn't forget the schoolroom - I'm thinking that we need a door leading from the New Governess's Bedroom to the Schoolroom - and we'll pretend that there was once a door leading from the Old Governess's Bedroom to the Schoolroom, but they covered it up when Miss Leopold left (Probably much to the glee of the children she once governed, knowing how much they disapproved of her). I've found a bunch of terrific inspiration photos for rooms of Victorian governesses, but nil for photos of the 1930s governesses. I mean, what can I say? It was the Great Depression, after all. Did they have a governess for the children in Downton Abbey? It takes place around the 20s and 30s, doesn't it?

Above is an empty and rather derelict room in my dollhouse. In the center is a bed that could do for Miss Jessel, but I fancy something different for her. Also, the bed is a bit low for my tastes, so we'll just have to see.

Also, on a side note, in terms of actually progress (not just planning), I finished constructing the trim around the Nursery and the Scullery, so now I can thankfully say that their interiors are complete! (I would say that the Scullery is complete, but I have to finish the outside.).

And soon to come: I need to write some about the servant's room I've been working on for the Stable boy that lived there in the 1860s, but is now home to the Mechanic who fixes the Packard 120 that belongs to the family in the dollhouse! (Sneak Preview below!)

I've also gathered lots of good information from the vast amount of floorplans online of Bear Wood, a beautiful house designed by Robert Kerr. If you have the oppurtunity to look at some of the plans you can find online, I highly recommend that you do. I've also been eagerly awaiting the arrival of more roomboxes - about twelve boxes are coming there way! Also, I've been having a long debate with myself: Should I rename Lockwood Manor to Clarendon Manor? Clarendon sounds fancier, but then, over the years, I've devoted an awful lot of time to plans and papers (not to mention this blog) of the dollhouse, that all have the name Lockwood Manor. If you have any suggestions, please let me know! Have a wonderful Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

I should be back with more posts and updates soon! But in the meantime, Happy Halloween!

The Current Servant's Quarters

Well. . . . I thought today that I would take the time to complain about how dreadfully slow I am to work on the servant's rooms in my dollhouse. Today I have approximatly four finished. Yes, four. That might not sound too bad, but out of about thirteen or so, I'm afraid it is. The ones that I do have finished, however, used to be five until I went through the entire process of ripping out the servant's entrance. Don't worry about that, for I'm almost done with the staircase and have printed out replacement wallpaper! I will follow up with a post on how that's going. But for the servant's rooms that are indeed finished, includes:

The Scullery I chose the black-and-white image because you've already seen the color one, and I was having fun playing around with Google Photos.

Servant's Bedroom The bedroom of whom, is the question, but I do not have the answer.

The Butler's Pantry I think it needs something on the back wall! Keep in mind that the photo is outdated, it looks much better now.

Sara's Bedroom The bedroom belonging to Sara, the maid, who once had a very elaborate backstory behind her that I wrote up - I'll see if I can find it. I should really work on more of the servant's rooms. . . I Love Lucy, here I come! I'm afraid that lots of posts here may be about the servant's and their quarters, for they have been neglected for the past year - it's time for that to change! And I mentioned Sara's elaborate backstory - something about her aunt Mildred who kicked her out of her house and sent her to find work somewhere else, I believe! Hopefully the servant's rooms will be expanding soon - until then, stay safe and well!

The nursery all lit up.

Catching Up

I haven't done much miniature work for the past few days, so when I took a look at my dollhouse - it was a mess!

George's room was especially messy - I hadn't done much work there for a few weeks, so I figured, there's no better time then the present!

So I emptied it, and decided to get right down to business. The first step, of course, was to fix the stained glass in the window.

Here it is from quite a few posts ago. As you can see, I left the stained glass messy and unfinished - an error I needed to fix right away! The first thing I did were quite a few experiments - I wanted to make a window valance. My only problem was that I didn't know how, so it became a little bit messy.

I picked a pretty fabric that I assumed would match with the blue-green color scheme of the room.

All of those images you see are a quick succession of making the window valence (or, what was supposed to be the window valance.

When I was about halfway done, I taped it up to the window to get the general effect, and I didn't like it at all. Back to the square one!

I decided to go back to my original idea - bamboo window blinds. Above where the two choices I had: plain blinds, and a sort of green-distressed blind. I chose the plain blinds, and we were off again!

I held it up and liked it, but you didn't get the effect I wanted - that is, it was a bit unhospitable, and it covered up to much of the window to see out of, and after all, I just needed enough for it to cover up the stained glass window. I thought that it was a bit unnecessarily long.

So I cut it in half. It looked swell, but I disliked the long white string that was danling from it - it was needed to pull the blinds up (if they worked), but I thought it needed to be attached to something, so I made a tiny piece of fake tape.

You can see the fake tape in the photo above - I made it stick using my sticker machine from Paper Source.

With that sorted, I took that oppurtunity to photograph the little outlet I had promised to show a photo of. There are actually two in the room.

And with a penny for scale.

Then I positioned two rugs on the floor and liked the effect. I especially like the green colors - they are both fabric samples.

There is also a little hole in the wall to thread any wires through when I add the electric lights.

Luckily, even with the blinds up, you can still see light shining through the stained glass windows.

I added a bit of knick-knacks on the shelves. I still need some toys for the top shelf.

The entire room - you can see that on the middle shelf I added some kind of horn - apparently George plays an instrument!

I made some little pencils and stuck them in a little jar with a label - there is an eraser next to them.

With sun streaming through the windows, it makes George's room look very cosy! All I need to do now are fill up the top shelf and reattach the airplane that felt down! See you next week! Signing off with a old fashioned-looking photo of George's fireplace - I think it looks very 1930s!

George's 1930s Bathroom

Instead of going for an orange-themed bathroom, like I had originally thought of, I decided to go for a cucumber-green and midnight-blue theme. I found an image online of a 1930s bathroom (a real-life one) that had beautiful green and blue tiles, and gorgeous blue fixtures. So, I decided to model George's bathroom after it. Here are the online plans I drew up:

I hope you enjoyed and I can't wait to make these plans a reality!

A Big Step (Quite Literally)

First of all, I apologize in advance: the reason you see bold yellow dates at the bottom of the photos is becaue of a camera setting I have since turned off. But for now, on with the show. It all started when I took a good, long look at the Servant's Staircase.

My first thought? Instant dislike. Oh, it's not that I can't tolerate it; I think I could, but there are some aspects of it I just hate and know I could do better. And I know I won't be satisfied and won't be able to move on to bigger, grander rooms in the dollhouse unless I fix these problems, which are: The Skinny, Skinny, Wall

There's no place on earth you'd find a wall this thin except for this servant's entrance and a house made of cards. The Ginormous Step

It may not look that bad in the photo, and I couldn't find my little dolls to compare the step with, but our tiny people are going to have to take a big, big, leap to hop up this step. (Which is probably not the best idea when you're carrying ashes from the fireplaces you've just swept to empty in the rubbish bin outside.) The Ugly Floor

I seriously don't know what I was thinking when I laid this. Well, in all, I don't think I can live with it. Before you freak out, yes, I'm keeping the room (I could never part with the beautiful exterior, but I'm going to redo the interior. Our first step (no pun intended), will be to fix the staircase.

There's the enourmous step with a standard dollhouse-sized riser. I can't get to the ugly staircase without pulling out a wall, so I put that on hold for a minute to work on a brand-new staircase. The first thing was the layout. I think I'll stick with the original staircase layout, but a problem soon arose: I want to inclose it in a wall (like the previous version of the room had), to make it look narrow, but the staircase from the previous version didn't lead anywhere, so the question is: Should this staircase lead nowhere, or shall I cut a doorway for it to lead to? Well, I'm lazy, so I decided to have it lean nowhere. It is, after all, just a roombox. . . And so began the demolition.

I ripped out the false back door and the bells for the servants (never fear, these will be salvaged!), figuring that if I freaked out, I would be able to glue them back without any fuss.

Then I pulled the skinny section of the wall forward, bringing another wall with it, and revealed the rest of the stairs. (I constructed these myself a long time ago, which is why they were so clumsy looking).

I started to rip sections of the staircase apart. . . I wonder what nasty critters are hiding under there? Pint-sized mice?

It was very dark under that staircase!

Here you can really see what I mean about the other staircase being too large: three steps of my new staircase that I constructed out of coffee stirrers equals two steps of the old staircase.

It's even clearer on the higher stairs.

At this point, I freaked out and abandonded the project for about an hour. An hour later of I Love Lucy, I regained my courage and began ripping out the staircase.

After I ripped out the top stairs (which came out very easily 😯), I still had a mess of debris to work with.

From above. I'm not sure if I would trust this staircase any more. . .

I ripped out the top riser. It looks even messier 😨.

And the wall I pulled back. I sure hope nobody wanted to go through that door at that moment!

I was a bit weary of all the hot glue that had been used to hold the landing in place (made from a children's block), so I watched a bit more of I Love Lucy before I continued. Boosting your morale is important, you know! :D

I'm not sure if I'll keep the wallpaper. I like the pattern, but it doesn't photograph well, and servant's halls wouldn't have had wallpaper, which was quite expensive back in the Victorian Times. Not to mention, this is the 1930s, they were more weary about arsenic poisoning, probably!

The whole room. It looks like an earthquake occured! Let's pretend this photo is from the 1920s. On with the restoration!

The state of this landing is definitely against building codes.

Meanwhile, four stories up, in the attic, all of this shaking from the restoration of the servant's stairs had caused quite the gap between the roomboxes.

So I safely moved the Nursery and part of the attic to another wing of the house, away from all of the dust and shaking.

George's Room and another empty roombox were moved to another part of the shelving that houses the dollhouse.

I ripped out the landing, which came out quite easily without any fuss and muss, but it left the trim behind. You can sort of make out an invisible landing there.

Then I met my big adversity. You can't see it well in the image, but it was this wooden block glued very strongly to the ground. No amount of jiggling or shaking would remove it. So, I turned on I Love Lucy (yes, I do Love Lucy), and managed to get it out, using a round-about process. It took me about ten minutes to remember that there was a hole in the wooden block (I think they were for necklace making), so I stuck in one end of a pair of broken scissors, and it popped out! Hurray!(As if on cue, the studio audience on I Love Lucy started to clap!)

Look! No obstructions!

I then ripped out the staircase trim, and with it came some wallpaper.

So far, I have built that much of the staircase. Looking good, if I may say so myself!

Here is the wall color I think I have decided on. There will be stained wainscotting up part of the wall.

Or should I have the staircase in this layout? I'll have to see. . .

The nicely lit hallway above. I wish I had spent my Saturday sitting in it instead of inhaling all of the construction dust! :D Well, that's how my Saturday went by. How about yours?