Up In The Attic

The attic in Lockwood Manor has an odd configuration: the ceiling isn't large enough for it to be an actual room, so I had always planned on all of the rooms to be playhouses, little hideaways, or perhaps even extra bedrooms if there were too many guests.

For some odd reason, I had an idea to create a tiny bit of a hallway next to the North Attic Bedroom, barely more than an inch wide. While I do not have any photographs of it, I do have two images of the door that led to it. The door and that wall (on the right of the top image) were a placeholder for when I built a better door that actually worked and had hinges.

Yesterday, I decided it was high time to demolish that wall and build the permanent structure.

As seen in this image, the wall extended all of the way to the floor. This was also just a placeholder: when the time came I would add a knee wall.

First, I had to rip out the wall with the fake door so I could demolish the tiny hallway. Ripping out the wall also ripped out some of the wallpaper I had used in the hallway (the reverse of the wallpaper I had used in the North Attic Bedroom). The problem with this was that I didn't know where the wallpaper I had used for the North Attic Bedroom was. It was actually real-life wallpaper, so I couldn't just print some out. Try as I might, I couldn't figure out a way around this, so I put it off.

When I tried to pull off a baseboard that I had attached to the wall, it also pulled off a bit of wallpaper, but this was fine because it would be covered by the knee wall.

Luckily, most of this mess would be covered up by the knee wall.

I built a mockup of sturdy cardboard and wood for the knee wall, and decided I liked it.

That was the space I would lose by adding a knee wall. At first, I thought I could add wiring, but I hate dealing with the electricity, so I left it off.

I was too carried away to take any photos during construction, but that was the result after I had added all of the paneling.

I still had to add the top of the paneling as you can see in this photo.

All done! Except for the wallpaper. This I couldn't figure out until I looked at the wall that I had demolished from the fake door. It still had some wallpaper on it.

I glued it in. I didn't want to risk ripping the wallpaper while pulling it off of the piece of wood, so I left the piece of wood there, which is why it protrudes out a bit. The wallpaper didn't quite reach the top of the wall, but this was fine because I was going to add paneling there anyway.

After I had finished gluing it in, the knee wall looked like that.

The front view. I had finished paneling where the wallpaper didn't reach the top of the wall.

Unfortunately, where I pulled away the wall with the fake door left glue marks. I wanted to cover that up with wood flooring, but a bit of a disaster episode ensued, so I figured I could do it some other time, and added a coat of paint to it. With a carpet on top, you can't even tell the difference.

There is the mockup of the wall!

Unfortunately, there is a gap between the attic that is part of the section with the Nursery and the section with Anthea's room. Hopefully, I can cover this up with trim.

Most of the problem is due to a piece of wood that bumps into the knee wall, so the sections don't sit flush to each other. I will remove the piece of wood, and hopefully the gap will subside.

I also added trim to the top of the wall, which makes it look a lot neater!

A photo shoot of the knee wall ensued. The radio is a placeholder.

The paneling is completely done! There is a little nail in the wall because it was there when the wall was part of the fake door, and unfortunately it's stuck quite tight so it's impossible to remove. You'll just have to play along with me that the knee wall was there all along and was part of the 1925 renovation of the attic :-)

Hopefully I will be back soon with the North Attic Bedroom complete!

A Bed For the Old Governess's Bedroom

I worked on making this bed for Miss Leopold the other day. I think she will like it!

Enjoy!

On the Subject of Servant's Rooms - Yet Again

If you'll pardon the lengthy introduction, while I was rummaging through my email I was rewarded with an old email sent about a year ago, with plans for the wallpaper of the servant's rooms. And noted there were even the names for the servants: Sara, Sally, Bessie, and two unamed servants (poor them!). The idea for the servant's rooms, if I recall, was to have them be matching, but not quite; matching wallpaper stripes, but in different shades of brown, matching layout for bed, washstand, etc. I'm still quite fond of the idea, I'll admit, for I liked the thought of having about five matching servant rooms but each with their own personal touches so one could see how they differed. I seemed to have been going through quite an obsession with the wallpaper "Annabelle Stripe" from Itsy Bitsy mini, for my selections were all different shades of the same wallpaper. I also, in that email, had made a note to myself to order them in 1:24 scale, not 1:12, so the stripe would be smaller. I still love the idea for the matching servant's rooms - so I thought, why not?

Ah, how I love plans! I'm going to put this project on hold for a bit - I already have a lot going on in the Manor, and I also have to complete a few rooms before I work on new ones! Besides, the back part of the dollhouse will need to be constructed before I can begin work on these servant's rooms, but in a few years, maybe I'll have these completed. Who knows?

My New Obsession - Bring on the Parquet!

I'm afraid that a new obsession has overtaken me. I've grown insane about parquet flooring after finding out how fun the parquet flooring in George's Room was. That is, making parquet flooring. Which is actually quite lucky for me, because a lot of rooms in my dollhouse need it. I've currently been re-flooring Anthea's room. It's a bit fiddly, but I find it relaxing - I play piano, so my fingers are used to moving at quirky angles and moving quickly which is a must when you're about to drop that little piece of flooring your fingers are holding!

Before I started re-flooring, the floor in Anthea's Room looked like this. Because this was a box I refurbished way back then, and the previous owner had kept crayons and markers in it, it was a bit mucky. I tried to wash off the markers that had stained the box - yes I quite literally gave the box a bath - but they didn't come off. I sanded it some, and you can't really tell in photographs, but in real-life, it's glaringly obvious, so I covered it with a green velvet carpet and pretended it wasn't there.

That was fine until yesterday, when I had had enough and decided to redo it. After all, I've been going through a phase of "Finish All of the Rooms Before Getting Started On New Ones But Still Continue Planning", so I thought it best to get started on Anthea's room. I'm not sure if you can see it, but at the bottom left corner, there are two toothpicks that way back in yester year I had glued as base boards. Yuck! So I had to take them off, but the glue had stuck rather hard. . .

So, when I yanked it off with tweezers (or rather, gently pulled until it gave away), it left me with a big rip in the wallpaper. And it wasn't exactly the kind of rip that one could ignore, either. Luckily, the wallpaper (although still glued to the baseboard), was fully intact, so I was able to glue it back on.

It looks much better, if I may say so myself! (The gap between the bottom of the wallpaper and the floor will be covered up by baseboards.)

Even though I had no idea what type of parquet I wanted, I glued in the trim pieces on the walls. Then I encoutered a slight problem.

The gold foil that was the separation from the wooden floor and the hearth had a small indent in it, which caused a gap in between the floor and the foil, where you could see the sub-floor beneath. The floor was dark, the foil was gold, and the sub-floor was light, so it was a noticeable gap. I covered it with stain and even though some got on the gold foil, it wiped off easily.

But. . . the piece of wood I cut for it had a larger grain, which made it darker colored than the rest of the wood. You can see the comparison above. The wood I cut for the fireplace is on the left, the glued-in trim is on the right. I solved this by sanding the wood on one side, which reduced the grain sized, and the stain didn't take it as harshly.

Then, I had all the trim glued in, and had to decide what to do for the inside. I thought about doing little Mosiac parquet (if you look it up on Google, you'll get an image), but I didn't want to deal with all of the fiddly bits near the fireplace. I considered herringbone, but I've read you need to use a graph drawn on the floor for this, and I thought it would work better in a room that didn't have the wallpaper glued in yet. Then I thought about dividing the floor into four different sections like I saw somebody do on a dollhouse website (cider12.com).

I liked the idea, and for the inside, I thought I would do diagonal boards, like in the image below.

The first one I glued in. It was a bit nerve-wracking, I'll admit!

Square one completed!

Square two completed!

A closeup. Perhaps if it wasn't a children's bedroom, I would have expanded the trim to three sections, and had the middle one a mahogany for a highlight, and had the four quadrants also become three sections, the middle one also maghoany. But it was a children's room, and I'm a bit of a newcomer to this land of parquet, so I stuck with the simpler version. However, I'll surely find a room to do a very extravagant parquet on!

Square three completed!

Square four completed!

Making the parquet floor is very rewarding because you can see your progress immediately, and I'm insanely proud of this one.

More parquet floors coming my way? Of course! I'm toying with the idea of redoing every single floor in the Mansion that I used stick-on-flooring for. (Ignore the dust in this image, I have since sweeped it off with a dollhouse broom!)

As a reminder, the trim before I glued in the rest of the parquet.

And the finished parquet!

I hope you enjoyed!