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?

Bits of This and That

I haven't much to show in the way of progress, but I do have some things to show you, such as George's Bathroom. I don't recall if I mentioned it before, but I figured if George's room will be on the third or second floor, whereas his siblings will inhabit the fourth floor, he might need his own bathroom.

Yes, above is George's bathroom. . . hopefully I will be able to show some progress in it soon! I find it difficult to locate good bathroom sets for dollhouses, they're either too expensive or not the style I would prefer. And they're also never custom fit - very difficult to find ones that will fit your specific dollhouse bathroom! So, against my better judgement, I decided to make my own. If I had a 3d printer, I'd print them, and if I had a Cricut Maker, I'd find a way to make them using that. Having neither, I decided it was a hit-and-miss situation, so what can go wrong? A lot will, probably, so bear with me. So far I just have a placeholder in place for the bathtub - it's a little short, I think, and not long enough, but what's your opinion?

I decided to have an orange theme, to go with the green bedroom. . . but I might change my mind, I'll have to see.

And here are three adorable turtles that are making their way across George's room. I'm trying to get some ideas to fill up the shelves in his room, and I do have some very nice 1930s magazines that I got for my birthday, but a ten year old having 'Vogue' or 'Good Housekeeping' in his bedroom seems a bit odd. But I'm sure their some other (older) inhabitant in my dollhouse will be thrilled to have them! :-) Maybe a few strewn around the reception room, so guests can pick them up while waiting for the Lockwoods to make their way to them!

And here is where I decided to pull the wall forward a bit, to create a space for more windows. The room with white walls is the scullery, and above it is the Billiard's room. The two rooms that were pulled forward are the Butler's Pantry and George's bathroom, which are not where they will end up. (Now that I write that, I think George's bathroom might possibly.)

Here is an image of the Grand Staircase. The "carpet" on it is just paper, I'm waiting until I find a more suitable fabric. I will need to have some paintings around it, I'm thinking on basing it off of the Entrance of Hillwood Estate. (For those who don't know, Hillwood is a beautiful house in Washington D.C.).

I also made a couple more trunks for the Trunk room. I'm going to have to make quite a few more before it starts to fill up!

And here is the beginning of the Music Room in Lockwood Manor. It's located next to the Reception room. I made the pianos myself, which was quite a fun job. I made the light colored one first, so there are a few defects in it, but I had so much fun making it I decided to make the second.

And there is the north end of Lockwood Manor, with the Servant's Entrance at the very bottom, George's Room on top, an unidentified room on top of that, and then the Nursery. Have a good day! Signing off with an interesting sepia photo of my dollhouse that I took a while ago. . .