La Malcontenta, YouTube, and poor Fred

Well, a week of small accomplishments, of non-accomplishments, and of frustration.

La Malcontenta:
--Den:
This has been a strange week for some reason. I have been trying to accomplish finishing the interior of La Malcontenta, but the more I poke at the dollhouse, the more I find to do and sometimes change--which is deadly. I have decided to buy the Clare-Bell black “wrought iron” chandelier for the den.

Clare-Bell chandelier for den.

The one there now is just a placeholder but its time has come to go!!! I did get the crown moulding up and I think I am going to add some table lamps or floor lamps… maybe … somewhere in the room. The crown moulding is a combo of Home Depot small detail moulding and the Victorian baseboard from HBS.

Den composite crown moulding

Den crown moulding in place.

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--The Living and Dining Rooms and Poor Fred:
The living room finally got its table lamps by the loveseat. Of course, I had neglected to drill a hole at the back of the room for the wires to go out the back when I was building. So I had to take everything out of the room to drill and pull wires—YUK!! The lamps are just what I wanted – a torchiere style table lamp from HBS.



I do have another problem to solve with regard to the living room chandelier. The "sticky pad" supplied with it to hold it to the ceiling gave way (which I thought it would), and since it fits flush against the ceiling, I have to devise another way to hold it up firmly, but still allow me to lower the chandelier if I have to replace a bulb. My husband and I are still percolating on this. Right now, the light is pulled out of the house since it was just being held up by its wires!

See the lamps in situ. Then disregard the crooked picture and see the crooked chandelier hanging by its wires!

I did the interior decoration on the dollhouse door for the living room and den, and that took more time with more problems than I wanted.

External door for living room and den.

I have also finished the dining room side dollhouse door (except for the moulding over the arch of the kitchen door) which also took more time with more problems than I wanted.

External door for dining room, kitchen, master bedroom, bathroom.

I have to redo the floor in the dining room—I didn’t like it after I did it—and still don’t like it—so it has to go. Of course this means removing all the furniture, etc, etc, and etc.

And then there are about a thousand other little things here and there—this all makes my head hurt.

I am planning to re-do the dining room floor, and then go back Sunnybrook Farm—Fred is very upset that his workshop is still not finished! But at least he has a nice table saw! The sewing room is almost finished. Of course, if the chandelier comes from Clare-bell, then I will put that in, and then go back to Fred.

Fred is hanging a light in the workshop while Giuseppe watches.



Molly likes her sewing room which is almost finished (as opposed to "poor Fred's workshop"!

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YouTube Videos
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We have been making “videos” for YouTube, another nerve-wracking experience. Is anything ever easy? Of course NOT.

We just added two new videos:

-- Sunnybrook Farm Exterior Views (a walk around)

-- Sunnybrook Brook Farm’s Ground Floor

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A week or so ago, we added the first two:

--Dollhouse Overview (Exterior views of our dollhouses)

--Sunnybrook Farm’s 1st Floor

I hope you enjoy them. They are about three minutes each.

You can also get to the videos from the We are on YouTube image at the top of our blog in the sidebar, or you can go to YouTube and put “irismarchcreations” in the search box.
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Sorry this blog has no "glitz" and is really a "blah" blog.

Interior Design- Housekeeper Suite: Sunnybrook Farm

The housekeeper's bedroom--to rest after a day's work.

This is the housekeeper’s bedroom, one of the rooms in the “quiet spot” for staff members. The rooms include a sitting room, a bathroom, and two general purpose rooms, a laundry room and a storage room. Some of these rooms are still “not entirely” finished.

Floor plan of ground level:

Floor plan of ground floor.

The rooms we will discuss today have the red stars.

The ground level has 9 inch ceilings.

The earlier post Kitchen, Larder, and Wine Cellar  started the ground floor chronicles. This post describes the rooms away from the main hustle and bustle.

The Sitting Room: 

The sitting room.


The sitting room is 14 x 10 inches.

Any of the staff can find respite here: Maggie, Molly, and John MacGregor as well as Dinah and Fred. The Titchmarsh brothers: Giuseppe and Luigi, who are in charge of the landscaping, are always welcome and do come, but worry about their outdoor clothes messing up the room. Actually, the Titchmarsh brothers and Fred often relax in his workshop since they all work out-of-doors at lot.

As usual, this is a casually-appointed room: sofa and comfortable chairs made for collapsing into, TV and music to soothe, books to read, and a soft but tough carpet to withstand abuse. We found the sofa and matching chair in a dollhouse shop and then looked for items that fit in here and there. I am considering changing the carpeting. It never stays flat and I didn’t want to glue it down lest the glue show through.

The wall paper is scrapbook paper.

Also, I think a ceiling light would be nice and then I could put the second table lamp on a table! (It was never to stay on top the china cabinet, but as with real homes, a “temporary” spot often becomes permanent!)

Small crown moulding will be put in place.

--The Staff:

 Dinah Mullins, Giuseppe and Luigi Titchmarsh, Molly, Maggie, and John MacGregor, and Fred Mullins.

As you can see from their names, the staff is a family affair.

The Laundry Room:

Laundry room.

The laundry room is 6 x 10 inches.

For anyone in desperate need of clean clothes, the laundry is available with washer and dryer, a big sink for serious cleanup, and a drying rack for “drip-dry”. The drying rack is from DHE ; the other items from HBS.

This room also serves general household cleaning needs.

The laundry room linoleum floor is scrapbook paper sealed with two light coats of acrylic semi-gloss gel medium.

The Storage Room:
What to store in this 9 x 8 inch room?

The rear door goes to the housekeeper’s bedroom and bath, so perhaps the storage area should be walled off with a door to it. My sister thought this area could be for dry-goods, but we haven’t made up our minds. We have some nice steamer trunks that could be stored here. To be decided… 

Storage room for ????

 The bathroom:

Cheerful bathroom

The bathroom is 6 x 8 inches.

We put this room together after the bedroom was wired and wallpapered. No way was I going to cut into all of that to make a real doorway! Thus the door you see “goes” to the bedroom but is a faux door. The bedroom doesn’t even have a faux door. I debated about that but I decided that since you can’t see the bedroom and the bathroom at the same time, I wouldn’t glue one on the bedroom wall. My sister thought my reasoning was weird!

The bathroom is small and cheerful—a nice place to take a soothing bath. The walls are white and the door is yellow because when we decided on a faux door, I remembered that we had a leftover one in our stash. It was already painted bright yellow so it added a nice touch of color.

The furnishings also came from our stash.

The tile floor is scrapbook paper sealed with two light coats of acrylic semi-gloss gel medium.

The bathroom needs a few more finishing touches such as a ceiling light, a robe hanging on the door, and a shower head—of course then we will need a shower rod and curtain too!

The Housekeeper’s Bedroom:

Housekeeper's bedroom.

The bedroom is 15 x 14 inches.

Close the door here and Fred and Dinah close the world away. Sometimes one just has to be left alone!

Fred and Dinah "want to be alone"!

The lower walls are wallpapered from a book of authentic Victorian designs, Victorian Decorative Papers by Muncie Hendler. They are nice but small sheets. The upper walls are plain white. The door is stained MinWax Colonial Maple with two coats of MinWax gloss polyurethane.

Once again, the furnishings are things we picked up here and there but do make a cozy room. The chenille spread is made from a (new and clean) wash cloth and looked good to us. The brown rug was actually picked for this room and I think perhaps a colorful small rug should go in the sofa area.

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There are two more work rooms on this floor: Fred’s workshop and the sewing room. Both are far from complete so I don’t know when they will be ready for viewing! But I did just buy Fred a table saw and he is very excited about this purchase.

Interior Design- RecRoom and Hall: Sunnybrook Farm

The rec room -- a place for friends to gather.

The ground floor is always the busiest place in the house. The work rooms are here, all deliveries come through the ground entrance, and the children enter here after school, drop their books and head into the kitchen for home-baked munchies.

Floor plan of ground level:

Discussing the starred rooms.

The rooms we will discuss today have the red stars.

The ground level has 9 inch ceilings. The previous post Kitchen, Larder, and Wine Cellar started the ground floor chronicles. This post describes the hall and the rec room.

The Hallway:

Jeremy and Bertie have after school snacks.

The hall is 9 x 24 inches and runs front to back with exterior doors, and a staircase to the foyer. The staircase is the Classic #7000 from HBS.

The hall is in the process of an update. I guess because of all the use it gets from the little people it is looking its age, and is in need of a repainting. Also it had an electrical problem.

The flooring is slate made from a vinyl self-stick shelving paper. I glued the vinyl onto poster board in 12-inch squares, cut them into 1-inch squares, glued the squares onto a poster board floor template, and then glued the template in place. The slate was then sealed with two coats of MinWax clear gloss polyurethane. The staircase was placed on top of the slates. The Rowbottoms had the back of the staircase left open for storage of oddly-shaped items, for instance bicycles!

The walls are painted white and any stained woodwork was done with MinWax Colonial Maple and then sealed with two coats of MinWax clear gloss polyurethane. We added some comfy furniture, storage units, items coming and going, and a large table always set with food so that one could eat in peace and avoid the heat and bustle in the kitchen. This place is user and dog friendly.

 --Electricity: Oh, Thomas Edison:
The electricity enters the ground floor from outside and through the rec room (right) and into the hall to the back. There are two tape wire branches crossing the hall under the slate to light the rooms on the left. Somehow one of the tape wires got damaged and no longer lit the kitchen. I had to carefully tear up a six-inch portion of the slate. I cut the tape wire to make sure it stayed “broken”. Then I used lamp wire and bradded it into the tape wire on the right wall, laid it along the floor and bradded it into the tape wire on the left wall—et voila-- lights in the kitchen! I then replaced the slate, putting the wire under it, and tacked in down lightly in case I have to fix any more problems.

The ground floor was the first floor we wired and it has always been problematic as to which lights “light”. Also, I am using some “pound-in” lights. Well, they don’t pound in easily, some not all all, and then they fall out! Even if they stay in, they may not light.

Pound-in lights.

The Rec room:


A nicely set up rec room.

The rec room is 20 x 13 inches.

This room is entered though stained glass swinging doors. The stained glass is commercial "stained glass" printed on velum that my sister found somewhere. The doors are stained with MinWax Colonial Maple and then sealed with two coats of MinWax clear gloss polyurethane.

Swinging stained glass doors.

The walls are painted white above, and wallpapered below with MiniGraphics “Jake”, as is the bar. The swag lamps are from HBS and the pool table light from DHE.

The flooring is a wood parquet made from a vinyl self-stick shelf paper. I glued the vinyl onto poster board in 12-inch squares, cut that into wood strips, and then glued these directly onto the plywood floor with Elmer’s glue. The flooring was then sealed with two coats of MinWax clear gloss polyurethane. I used these strips for the baseboard and the chair rail, also.


Parquet flooring

This room has all the proper things: a well-stocked bar, a large cooler for soft drinks, a complete audio-visual system, an upright piano, a pool table, the requisite dart board, two cigar store Indians, and food. Festive posters line the walls.

Dart board -- spectators stand clear!



Cigar store Indian

The bar is a pine armoire, turned on its side, with some pieces removed and some added!

A bashed cheap, pine amoire becomes the perfect bar.

Thus ends today's visit with the Rowbottoms.

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 The Housekeeper’s suite will be discussed in the next post ... I hope. Some of this is v-e-r-y slow going.

Interior Design- Kitchen, Larder, Wine Cellar: Sunnybrook Farm



The kitchen--the heart of any home!

 Work...work...work... It all gets done here on the ground floor. Here are the work rooms: the kitchen, larder, wine cellar, laundry, storage, workshop, and sewing rooms; and a few rooms for resting: the rec room, and a bedroom, bathroom, and sitting room for the housekeeper and her husband (Dinah and Fred Mullins).

There is also a main hallway running front to back with exterior doors, and a staircase to the foyer. The elevator is in the wing.

Floor plan of ground level:

Floor plan of ground (basement) level.

The rooms we will discuss today have the red stars.

The Kitchen, Larder, and Wine Cellar:
The ground level has 9 inch ceilings. This post just describes the kitchen, larder, and wine “cellar”--and once again, what was envisioned isn’t exactly what happened. I wanted to see the kitchen, larder, and wine cellar all at the same time and the wing was simply too narrow for that.

A word about Electricity:
This level was the first built and our first introduction to wiring a dollhouse. We bought the supplies for a tape wire system and tried to follow the instructions. I won’t go into all the problems but suffice it to say, it was “interesting” experience and many phone calls to Cir-Kit Concepts (very nice people and much pulling out of tape wire and junction splices, and then rewiring, but we finally did it.

We learned a number of things. I cannot run the tape smoothly up the wall to the ceiling for the ceiling lights. There are a few remnants of this in some of the rooms, and because they work and I can’t rewire at this point, the tape stays and looks weird (blame it on cheap labor). At some point, I will go back and try to smooth the edges.

I quickly learned to wire ceiling lights to the room above and NO sconces unless the wires can be hidden behind moulding and bradded into floor level tape wire in the room above.

I also quickly learned about the power strip system which I now use when I can in newer houses.

The Kitchen:
The kitchen is 15 x 15 inches.

The kitchen is the realm of the housekeeper Dinah Mullins (of course, her name is Dinah! -- remember “someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah”?) and Chef Jaime.

Everyone loves to visit the kitchen, even the animals. Stopping in today to visit Dinah and Chef Jaime are Giuseppe Titchmarsh the groundskeeper, Prudence Plum the owner of Plum Delicious Catering, and Dinah’s husband Fred, the property manager. The cats are Calico and Ali Baba and the Old English sheepdog is Bertie.

Always people dropping by: Giuseppe Titchmarsh, Prudence Plum, Dinah's husband Fred, and Calico and Ali Baba the cats, and Bertie the Old English Sheepdog to visit Dinah and chef Jaime.

This kitchen has all the cabinets and things that I wanted to be there. I love roosters so rooster wallpaper and rooster items are in place.

This is also a kitchen in which a lot of cooking is done, so two stoves are needed.

Two stoves with large copper hood.

There are nice rooster tiles on the wall behind the stoves. I made the stove hood from fancy copper heavy-weight card stock . The top rectangular section has a balsa block inside to give form, the bottom is just folded into the shape I wanted and glued to gussets on the sides to hold the shape. There is a light inside made from a grain of rice bulb on a wire. The bulb comes through a hole in the wall from the back room and plugs in there. Furniture or something will hide the hole and wire. With this, I can easily change the bulb.

I debated about wall cabinets and decided “no” simply because I didn’t want to hide the rooster wallpaper.

When I am finally satisfied with the base cabinets, I will make continuous white counter tops over the two continuous sections by the stove.

Besides the roosters, I love the vintage Shackman chairs I found on eBay.

--Kitchen lights, cozy but not for working under:
The ceiling lights are bradded into the dining room floor tape wire. The lights are nice-looking but do not give out much light. I will probably keep them—they add a homey touch to the room, but not enough light for a working kitchen.

I bought the LED “lights on a strip” from HBS (#95303) and I am making a “fluorescent” type light (probably a section of six LEDs) to put above the rear work area so Dinah and Jaime can see what they are doing. I have to decide how to wire it. If I can’t wire it to the ceiling tape, I will bring it discretely along the ceiling to outside the house and brad it there. One discrete way to run ceiling wire is to put shallow beams across the ceiling, attach the fixture to one, and hide the wires in the beam. (Note: this house has tape wire all over the place: in the house and on the exterior side wall that is covered when the wing is in place.)

Once I complete the lighting, I will add a simple crown moulding around the room.

--The Heart of the home:
Some say that the kitchen is what makes a house a home. It certainly is that way with Sunnybrook with everyone passing through the kitchen! In fact, even the Christmas party extends to the kitchen:

Christmas party extends to the kitchen--always food coming out of the oven!

The Wine Cellar:

Too many rooms, not enough space--original area for the wine.

The rooms in the wing on the ground floor suffered the same fate as the sunroom and butler’s pantry on the first floor--too little room. We wanted a larder, wine cellar, hallway, and workshop all in this area. The workshop is in the rear of the wing and is a decent size room, but trying to fit a full-size larder, wine cellar, and hall side by side in 15 x 12 inches didn’t work out. We decided to have a full larder and just a wine “closet”. (I looked up alternatives to a wine cellar on the web and found a number of options.) The closet turned out fine and is 5 x 5 inches.

We now have an official room: a Wine Closet!

The sliding glass door of the wine closet was made from the same greenhouse remnant acrylic as the sunroom wall (see previous post—The Sunroom). I used aluminum tape to edge the acrylic. I then made a more elegant wine rack with a wood frame and mesh shelves to hold the bottles.

All beverages are the domain of John MacGregor, who prefers to be called “MacGregor”, and who has a picturesque Scottish brogue.

MacGregor is now one happy dude!

Hallway:
There is a complete hall with elevator behind the wine closet. It’s too bad the elevator can’t be seen very well because it’s kind of cute.

The Larder:
The larder is the domain of Maggie MacGregor (John’s daughter). She makes sure the larder is well-stocked and that she has a very sturdy step stool to reach the upper shelves.

Maggie MacGregor stocking the shelves using a very sturdy step stool.

The larder was fun and easy to make and is 10 x 12 inches. A small fortune was spent on food to fill it.

The larder includes a sink for washing produce and cleaning fish, a dishwasher, and lots of storage space. Right now the freezer door is open (not a good way to run a freezer) so that the food can be seen. I want to put a “glass” door on the freezer and a light inside to show off the food. Also, I have to decide on the ceiling fixture.

Furnishings:
I found it funny as I was reviewing the ground floor, comparing its furnishings with the main floor, the piano nobile so to speak. Now Rebecca and Derek always wanted a house that was entirely livable, after all, they have three children, three Old English sheepdogs, two cats, a couple of birds and some fish, and this is a working sheep farm! That said, not purposely, but it just worked out that the ground floor is the cozy spot—wet, muddy feet welcome! The following picture was not taken on the ground floor--so everyone had to promise to be on good behavior!

The Rowbottoms: back row--son Jeremy, Rebecca, Derek, and son Antony; middle row--one sheep, the Old English sheepdogs-Algernon, Jeeves, and Bertie, and daughter Victoria; front row--the cats-Calico, Ali Baba, and another sheep.

The ground level has the cheapest furnishings of any floor in this house.  We didn’t do it purposely-- my sister and I were always bargain shoppers and we certainly didn’t realize how much the rest of the house would cost. We found that we could find “good stuff” in inexpensive sets, bargain tables at shows or in shops—if we liked it then we could fix it or modify it. We used scrapbook paper for wallpaper (except for the roosters), and wallpapers on sale. Most of the walls are painted. Lighting and some furniture was bought from HBS but only when he had a 20% off sale. Flooring is material, wood planking made from Con-Tac wood-look shelving paper, slate made from Con-Tac marble-look shelving paper or from scrapbook paper. 

Wood flooring in the rec room made from strips of Con-Tac vinyl shelving on poster board. It really is very impressive and it was cheap!

It was fun. Of course, here and there, we did splurge a bit!

The Windows that aren’t there:
There are windows in the rear rooms and I did plan to have them in the front also (they are in my original drawings). In fact, I cut a few in the exterior walls. The problem became evident as soon as more of this large, tall house took shape—the house was overrun by windows. These looked all right in my drawings and probably in real life, but in miniature, not for this house. Anyway, just imagine the windows!

Adaptive Reuse:
The cost of making Palladian windows and doors for Sunnybrook was pricey. The Palladian doors from HBS cost about $18 a door, the Timberbrook double French doors cost about $19, and the Classics windows cost about $7 and did not come with acrylic. We don’t begrudge the cost because we had a certain idea in mind and we didn’t know how else to do it.

We did find a way to recoup some of the cost: we used the exterior doors from the HBS frames as interior doors. All we had to do was make a frame and all the interior doors on the ground level were in place.

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There will be more on the ground level in the next post. By the way, just in case you all think that I am sluffing off with my other houses—not so! Wait until you see the Spanish verandah off the living room at La Malcontenta!!

Interior Design- The Sunroom and Butler's Hall: Sunnybrook Farm

Sunroom and Butler's Hall.

 Surprise! … No Chinese Chippendale ... no glitz ... no artwork-- we just wanted an ordinary sunroom and butler’s pantry! This did not turn out as we originally thought it would.

We never completely thought out how much room a sunroom and butler’s pantry would need before we built the wing structure. This led to a lot of rethinking of these two rooms, and to some disappointments.

We wanted a sunroom this in space, and butler’s pantry since the kitchen is on the ground level. 

Kitchen is on the ground (basement) floor.

Floor Plan:

1st Floor Plan

To remind us where we are--* marks the spot.

The problems begin:
No matter how we tried to arrange it, the room (14 x 22 with 11 inch ceilings) was just not big enough for two good-looking rooms. We did not want to modify the room size so we had to adjust our plans. After a lot of soul-searching, it was decided that the rooms had to go front to back, and that a staircase to the ground level was not possible in this area. Then we had an inspiration--we decided on a faux elevator to get the little people from one floor to the next.

The butler’s pantry became a “butler’s hall”, literally—a small place to keep china and silverware, dinner dishes coming and going, and the faux elevator. This area has swinging double doors to the dining room and a doorway to the sunroom. This room is 5 ½ x 22 inches.

Now, the sunroom just did not have enough space, so I had to bump out a 3 ½ inch wide floor-to-ceiling 17 inch long “bay” window. I suppose this odd shape looks interesting—or maybe not. This room has a double door to a balcony (when it’s finished).

One benefit of the build was that I got to use a lot of remnants of wood and acrylic.

The Butler’s Hall:
I tried to give this area the look of a plant room since it was so close to the sunroom: the ceiling paper is a blue sky scrapbook paper, the wallpaper is a woodsy scrapbook paper, and the flooring is a yellow pine flooring sheet. The elevator door has a wood surround. The elevator needs its floor dial yet. That’s Betty waiting for the elevator.

The only furniture that could fit here (only 5 ½ inch wide) is a narrow long table near the dining room door to hold things coming and going, and two glass shelf units at the other end to hold some china, glasses, etc.(still to be worked out). I have two simple ceiling lights but they are not installed yet. They will probably attach into the floor above.

Butler's Hall--that's Betty waiting for the elevator.

The Sunroom:
The tile floor is real-house wallpaper from Home Depot. The ceiling is real-house blue sky wallpaper. There are two interesting architectural features in this room: the wall between the butler’s hall and this room, and the bump-out window.

--The wall:
Since these two rooms are so squashed looking, I wanted to give the feeling of light and space. I had some clear double-walled acrylic left over from replacing a greenhouse window. It had the extra “interest” of having clear channels inside the acrylic. This made a very nice pattern and kept it from being a plain acrylic. I then decided to alternate pieces of this material to make an extra pattern by putting the “channels” in different directions. This is a heavy duty piece of acrylic but cut easily with my band saw. (This stuff is not hand-cut-able.)

I then cased the pieces with narrow channel moulding and made a wall!

Wall from greenhouse window acrylic remnants.

--The window:

Opening cut for window.

First I cut out the window opening.

Then I used 1/8 inch thick clear acrylic I had left over from another project for the window. This too, was cut with my band saw. I cut many narrow windows, cased them in narrow channel moulding, and then glued them all in place. This took a while!

View from front.

View from back.

Since I wanted a sloped roof, I had to cut angled pieces of the clear acrylic for the sides at the top.

I cut a piece of the double-wall acrylic for the roof. This roof had to be removable since it is almost impossible to arrange plants in the ”window” otherwise. The acrylic roof sits on the window, and has a small fancy nail for extra hold. 

Window all ready for plants!

The ceiling lights are not yet in place--in fact, I don’t even know what I want to use.

The Furnishings:
The furniture in this room is just pieces we found here-and-there. The orange wicker set is delightful. We also found black and white “wrought iron” pieces, and other wicker chairs. All-in-all, an eclectic mix—just right for a sunroom!

Love that orange and white wicker set!

Another view, the back door is in place, and poor Betty is still waiting for the elevator!

Then we added lots of plants.

Very nice after all is said and done! What an experience!

The back exterior wall of this room was the last thing put into place.

All things considered, the two rooms came out reasonably well. In retrospect, I think that when we all realized that our plans needed more space, I should have just moved the exterior side wall out 3-4 inches (just for this and the ground floor beneath). Oh well….