Dining Room - Furnishing

   I thought it would mean less clutter if I furnish each box when it is done even though it probably means doing it all again when I get to the dressing-the-room stage; for example in the dining room I will need to access the display cabinets to fill them.  I would still like to light these but I can't convince myself to drill a hole in a vulnerable part of an (expensive for me) mini. 

The first thing to go in was the rug.  This came from My Tiny World which I think had something like 600 rugs to choose from and at good prices.  It is one of the fairly ubiquitous Turkish rugs you see around so obviously there are other vendors. 

I really don't like fringed rugs - no, idea why - so I get rid by either coating with fray stop and cutting off the fringe, or turning over, gluing down and taping when dry as I did with this one.

I love all things Georgian (style) as I am a sucker for symmetry, so there will be multiples of some things.  The first is a pair of glass display cabinets.  These will hold some of the dinner service and maybe some silver.  I am sorry I can't point you in the direction of the vendor.  It was a stall I always visited at Miniatura but can't for the life of me remember the name and I have searched. These are part of the Jia Yi range of furniture.

The next pair are House of Miniatures Huntboard kits and are also a case of hunting them down.  Most of mine have come from eBay.  I was lucky in being able to buy several when I was part time living in the States.  

Huntboards are  tables which can be easily moved around grand houses and laid with buffet style food such as a hunt breakfast (post hunt).  They make excellent 'serving' tables in a dining room.  They are a comfortable standing height so are taller than a table.

I love making up House of Miniature kits and may well do some (and sell) if I still have the mini bug after this project.  (The tiny drawers do open)

I worked my way through several iterations of dining chairs and finally landed on these.  The set of six  were a spoil myself purchase (with birthday mini money) from Masters Miniatures

The table is another House of Miniatures kit probably from a lengthy eBay search.

I love this table and would have loved it more if I had room for the extra leaves..  The mass of legs is because of its brilliant design.  The real life Hepplewhite three piece dining table was two demi lunes which could be used as such or put together to make a small round tea table.  You could then add in another slim table to make a small dining table (as in mine) and then add one or two more flaps to create any seating length you needed for grander dining.

The inlaid wine cooler is by Masters Miniatures again and I can honestly say these photos do not do it justice.  It is in perfects scale and beautifully made - a joy to handle and look at.  I am hoping to find 'ice cubes' and a bottle the right size to go in it after I have made a 'lead' liner.

The over-mantle mirror is a lovely detailed one which I think is from Sue Cooke. 

I am not convinced it isn't overkill for this room.  I had a simpler round modern mirror in here at one time, which I liked, but have swapped it round trying to find the right one for the sitting room

The paintings for this room are from Ellie de Lacy.  when I first started in this game I found a wonderful person who made paintings to order so in Wentworth House I got precisely what I wanted and beautifully made and for a sensible price.  Sadly she disappeared.  For following projects I made a reasonable stab at making my own grand paintings but they were never professional looking so I moved on to these..

I chose two 'eating' paintings.  They did not have to be Georgian as I see all my rooms as being in the present in some large house (like Dalton House 😀)

A little tip here.  A general guide for hanging mirrors and pictures is that their centre should be between five feet and five feet six from the floor.  Basically this is so that the viewer is looking straight on at the painting.  Obviously there are times when this will change.

.... and so the dining room is furnished for now....  dressing to follow in several weeks time.

Dining Room - wiring

 Just a couple of quick pointers and reminders about doing wiring.  As always if you want more detail and videos take a look at these posts in my Dalton House blog.  You can also find some videos using the link you see there. 

Here are a couple of useful tools.  The first I would not be without if I had a a large project or I knew I would be making projects for years, is this handy wire cutter and stripper.  Saved a lot of fingernails and teeth over the years when stripping off the plastic from the copper wires.  I got mine from Small World which is now run by Little Houses Plus.  

The second useful thing here is either a fine knife, like a scalpel, or teeny, sharp,  pointed scissors like these embroidery ones.  I use these to just make the first snip between the encased twin wires which you can then just gently pull apart.  I have had them too many years to know where they came from.

Obviously the first thing is to decide exactly where the lights are going.  I do this by furnishing the room. If you are lucky it may be just a simple centre light and that's it done but, in the case of the dining room that would have set the chandelier of to the back edge of the table.  So I put the table where I wanted it to be and measured carefully from the front edge of the box to the centre of the table and transferred this measurement to the top of the box, centering it also from side to side.

Hoping this isn't a too obvious tip... I dampen a piece of kitchen roll and put below where I am  going to drill the hole.  I catches all the sawdust and being a bit damp stops it flirting about when you remove it and crumple it up.

When you drill the hole you often get a scruffy finish on the painted ceiling - generally this is easily covered by the light fitting and has never bothered me.  I suppose to avoid this you could drill from the ceiling side upwards rather than downwards especially when using a room box as you could turn it upside down easily.  

When you have your fire or light (etc) in place the wires will normally go in a groove to a suitable exit.  With a room box grooves aren't necessary - which is a small joy as they are a pain to do.  I simply taped them down with some masking tape.  I may swap it for sturdier tape I think.   They are being 'aimed' at the centre of the back of the box and a hole will be drilled through the book case at some time to let them pass through.

All the wires on the things I removed from the house are all sorts of lengths depending on the difficulty in removing them so they all need extending to exit the bookcase and travel on to the connector.   

The important thing here is to remember to cut one wire shorter than the other on both the extension wire and the fitting's wire..  

You then join the short extension wire to the long fitting's one and then via versa.  This offsets the exposed wires from each other to ensure they don't make contact.

.... a shrink tube is pushed over them and shrunk with a hairdryer.  Again, go to the link I gave earlier if you want more details of the process.

So, finally, the first room box room is ready to be lived in.  One down and five to go.

Dining Room - Chimney Breast and fireplace

 I have made chimney breasts quite successfully with thick cardboard  but I have also bought a fabulous kit from Dollshouse Cottage Workshop so I did so again.

It comes in three simple pieces which you just glue together, making sure you have a good right angle join.

You can just paint the back wall of the room where the fireplace will go for the back of the fire box but, being fussy, I like to make a brick back.  Again this should be made 'dirty' with some smudgy black paint but I am choosing to cheat a little as my 'Georgian' style dining room is actually modern and with a real flame gas fire so I am happy to leave the bricks pristine.

The brick sheeting is a very nice one from Jennifers of Walsall

I have nipped out at the bottom so that it can sit neatly behind the hearth.  The side 'wings will be glued inside the chimney breast on the side walls so they are cut to fit.

My fireplace will have a hearth extension in front of it so I need something to level up the internal hearth area to the same height as the outer hearth extension in the room so that the fire will stand nicely with its feet on each part..

This inner hearth is just cut from a lump of good old thick cardboard, after using the chimney breast to draw round as a pattern.

This gets painted black.  I don't do jet black as it sort of 'shouts' at you, so I use a blob of green, black and white and blob them on as a mixed colour

I papered the chimney breast

The cardboard hearth is then put in place behind the front face and the brick back is glued in place.  It is glued along the back edge of the hearth (covering it) and glued in each side of the chimney breast.

This brick panel back will eventually be glued on to the back wall of the box

This is the finished front view.  I have made a hole in the centre of the back piece and at the right height to accept the wires from the fire and pass them out through the hole which has already been drilled in the back of the box.

This photo shows how I line it up with the back wall and get it centered.  I push a toothpick through the hole in the back wall and jiggle the chimney breast in place until the hole in the back of that lines up.  Obviously I need the walls papered before the final fit.

I cut and glue in the coving pieces either side on the back wall.

I then cut and dry fit the pieces that will wrap round the chimney breast.  the 2 cm pieces for the sides can be fiddly but I was lucky this time and all went right first time on everything.

I then take away the pieces and construct the wraparound piece.  I did the usual paint touch up after this photo was taken and it looks perfect..

The breast is lined up as I showed above using a toothpick to locate its position and checking the side measurement quickly before the glue takes.  Again, this should just be easy and spot on. The wraparound piece is glued in place and all joins touched up with paint.

To finish off the hearth the wire is threaded through the bottom of the grate and the coals settled in place.  They can be held with tacky wax if you want to but I suggest you don't glue in place in case you ever need to change the bulb/

The hearth extension is glued in place with a few dabs of UHU  this is a lovely piece of Decrastone.  Sadly the man who cut these has retired and I haven't located a replacement.

The wires are threaded through the hole at the back of the hearth and the fire is stood in place.  Again, this can be left freestanding or fixed with tacky wax but I don't glue in place in case I need to make any adjustments or changes.

Finally the fire surround is fixed in place with glue.

In Dalton House I did wrap the skirting around the chimney breast but it is a real challenge to cut the front piece to an exact shape around the hearth and in real houses of the period I have seen it left off.  Seems like the wallpaper would get easily damaged in real life when cleaning so I am not comfortable with the solution ....  but if a grand house would risk it who am I to argue.  Decision made.

The Dining Room

 With the box finally built and feeling pretty stable, I cracked on actually trying to finish the first room ready to dress.  

I did a quick review of everything I had and found every room was missing something with the exception of the  Dining Room,so this would have to be the first display box. 

I am not putting you through all the processes of painting and papering, flooring and trimming again as I covered that with the cardboard fiasco.  If you ever do want tons of detailed how-to posts and even my videos just visit Dalton House and use the search box or the links in the left hand column.  Everything you could ever need is there.

Here is the order of work for a room with a chimney breast and fireplace.

1. Paint the ceiling

2. If painting the walls do that next.  This room was being papered so the floor went in next. It needs to be in before the chimney breast so you don't have to cut flooring to fit round it.

3. Make up the chimney breast  including wallpaper- next week will have a how-to for this

4. Drill a hole for the wires from the fire in centre of back wall and at the right height

5. Glue in the chimney breast, using the hole in back wall and hole in the back of fire wall to centre the chimney breast on the wall.  As you can see I put a cocktail stick through both holes to get them aligned properly.  Check the space each side quickly before the glue takes.  This honestly went in spot on first go - they usually do.

6. Paper the walls  I had an unbelievable tortuous route to this wallpaper.  I was determined to find the paper i used before.  I will cut a very, very long story short and say I eventually settled on a fairly look good alike from Les Chinoiseries  and tried not to cry too much at having to pay long distance postage yet again.

7. Add the coving

8.  Add the dado (chair) rail

I use a piece of card to mark the walls for where the dado rail will go.

I even mitre the corner for this teeny trim

9.  Add the skirting

10.  Put in the fire surround and the hearth extension and. of course the fire.

It is now almost ready for the furniture and dressing.

I need to locate the position for the light to go in and make a final decision as to whether I am lighting the mini glass cabinets or not.  

The fire (and possible cupboards') wires will just be fed out of the back of the box and anchored in place with a few inches of masking tape.  The ceiling one will lie across the top of the box and be partially taped down and all will be passed to the centre of the back of the box.  They will then exit the bookcase through a hole drilled in the back of the cupboard.  There will be my usual connector on the centre back of the cupboard waiting to receive the wires.  I want to assemble and tidy up the wires for this in one go when all the boxes are ready for that stage so that the cupboard just gets moved one time for connecting to the electricity.

Boxes - so here we go again

 After kicking the cardboard idea into touch I found a place online who cut all sorts of materials very accurately at a very good price.  Take a look around at what they can do - cutting, routing,shaping all sorts.

Cut my Plastic

Don't be deterred by the word 'plastic' they have lots of stuff.  I chose 6mm moisture resistant MDF.  I worked out  how I would want to construct the box and what its exterior dimensions need to be and with a teeny bit of maths to allow for the 6mm material thickness ordered the appropriate sheets.

(footnote:  I discovered when built there was a slight miscalculation here on the size of the back section, so don't use these dimensions.  It still gives you an idea of how to determine what you need but be always be aware of allowing for the thickness of material.  The sides should be 248 x 250)

They did an excellent job and I was happy with the price.  

The wood and cutting for the whole box was only £8.91 but then, of course, VAT , delivery and a small order fee kicked in but the whole box still cost me about twenty pounds.

(footnote:  when I ordered the wood for the other five boxes they came in under ten pounds each, what a fabulous price for a bespoke room box)

They arrived beautifully packed with some extend pieces of extremely hard cardboard to protect all four corners, so I started with spot on size and pristine edges.

I set up the world's most sophisticated working area to try and act as a right angle jig to keep the boards square to each other as they were glued....  This consisted of silicone coated baking paper taped to the wall behind my little work desk, a piece taped to the desk (all to keep desk and wall clean) a piece of MDF shoved to the wall because there is a gap between my desk and the wall. 

The first two pieces go in place... this is the top leaning against the wall

I applied glue to the edge of the side piece.  You might be able to spot tiny dabs of super glue gel here and there in the wood glue just to give an instant grip while the wood glue sets up.  I promise you the dabs of superglue make a difference.  I forgot to add it to one piece and ended up hanging on to it for ages (twice) and, in the end, I had to relent and dab on the superglue dots.  There was no way I could let go of the pieces and get on with something else as they set up, just didn't hold without it.

The side was carefully pushed in place and held for a long while until I was fairly sure it was OK to release and let it dry

The next day I added some reinforced Kraft parcel tape.  I have no idea if this will help the joints but I am thinking the box will be handled quite a lot before it is finally settled in place and I am hoping this will just give it a bit more stability.

With lots of combined holding in place and taping for support the four sides were ready for the back.  this would be the moment of truth as to how square on everything is.

It feels fine.  So a day of patience while the back is weighed down with books and the making-of-a-room can begin again.

So far, so good.

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Bit of a footnote:  

When I built all the various kits I have had I always painted the ceilings before the build so I didn't have to go inside a small space and perform gymnastics trying to paint it in situ.  I considered it for this too but I was a bit concerned about leaving a precise 6 mm edge paint free so that the wood glue could make a good bond.  This is not so vital in a large house construction as they are 9mm MDF and sides are slotted into routed grooves and there are layers of floors each stabilising the other.    Also, this being a box, it is easy to turn it this way and that and I will be painting the ceiling as if it were a floor which is easy.