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!

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?

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!