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.