Sitting Room

 Frabjous day, Calloo callay...

Having succeeded with the trial box,  I ordered and received the pieces for the other five boxes.  I am going to mention the company again as it was perfect service and perfect product and that is not something you can say often these days.   Cut my plastic   They offer many materials, colours, thickness etc and have lots of potential uses in your home and garden as well as your hobby.  Mine were cut to the exact mm, packed brilliantly so arrived in a perfect read-to-go state.

I am now trying to work at a good pace to get all the boxes made up for all the rooms.  There is no point in detailing how each is done as that will be extremely repetitive.  I will do my best to show you one a week furnished.  At the end of that time the plan is to draw all the electrics together and get those sorted and then it will be the fun part of dressing each room - again I hope to share one a week and then, my friend, that's me finished......   unless the mini itch strikes again.

Here comes the sitting room.... pretty much the same order of attack as the dining room but with small differences like half painted and half papered walls, a different fireplace fitting and table lamps exiting via pretend sockets.  

1. Glue

I made up the box and glued the chimney breast pieces together.

2. Paint

I painted the ceiling, two coats as before.  

For the lower half of the room which was also painted I marked up the line where the paint will meet the paper.  I do this by using a piece of stiff card cut to a three inch width.  I slide this round the walls and draw a pencil line where it comes to.  I then use masking tape to guide me when painting.  You could to this another way and roughly guess the three inches and paint and then mark up neatly for where the paper will go to and the paper over the excess paint.

The black splodge is where there is a gap in the fireplace for the smoke to go up the flue and you can see to the back of the box when it is in place.

I also paint all the trims and varnish the floor ready to go in place.  

3. Drill

There were four holes needed for the wiring in this room.  

The easiest was the central ceiling light.  

One was then needed on the back wall for the fireplace and was centred from side to side and at the right height for the wire from the fire to exit.

Finally two holes were needed for the table lamps.  This was a bit of a fiddle as I had to put in the lamps and tables to see if the 'usual' socket position would work for them.  

Quite often in my new build real house the sockets are about two feet from a corner and eighteen inches from the floor.  I cut a template measuring two by one and a half inches and put that in the corner each side and marked where the socket should go.  I then put in the tabe and the lamps and decided that would work OK.

4. Floor

I cut the floor to size checking carefully at each step.  You do need a template if there is any doubt that your room is not a good even shape.  Luckily with these boxes they are pretty true in terms of being rectangular.  For the first time I didn't do a 'temporary' fix for the floors as they will never need to come out to fix any lights 'below' as they would in a project..  This time I removed the sticky back cover paper from the walnut flooring and laid it straight down.

5. Chimney breast

This fireplace required a slightly different treatment to the one in the dining room.  This time it is designed to fit snugly edge to edge with the fire surround.  Needless to say when I originally bought these things I settled for the nearest I could get.  There is a very tiny gap around the edge of the fireplace (which doesn't show as long as there is no light there) which needs to be 'blanked out with a black painted paper trim.  Here are the components for this fire.  The chimney breast and painted cardboard inner hearth as before, the blanking piece of paper and the fire.

I absolutely love Phoenix Model Developments for all kinds of thing.  Over the years I have bought tons of things from them - cookers, fires etc.  I did paint this one with a touch up nickel paint  but it isn't really needed

The chimney breast was painted and papered.  I make all the folds in the paper before gluing and used a paper scoring tool to make good creases and keep life simple.

 

The whole chimney breast and fire unit  was assembled and glued in place.  I hope you can see the little folded out edges on the paper that are glued to the back wall.  I do this for all wallpaper joins so that you get a really neat join with no gaps.  (PS I can now see in this photo how the fireplace is not set exactly centrally - sadly I didn't spot it before completing the room.  It now annoys me and sometime I have to work up enough courage to see if i can push it out and adjust it now everything is all glued in place.  Right now I can't see how.

6. Paper

The rest of the room was papered.  Please click here if you need lots of information about how to paper a mini room.  Wallpaper. and here if video is more your thing   Wallpaper video  I think there are a couple there.

7. Trims

Trims went in as normal - coving then dado rail then skirting.  The coving was a bit of a pig as it is dentil coving.  I had a lovely one when I did the original sitting room but it seems to have disappeared.  I found one vendor but it was 'out of stock' so I got a slightly different one which proved challenging to paint without gumming up all the spaces between the  'teeth' and, like its predecessor it can't be cut to make super clean corners as there is to much detail on it.

8. Electrics

The centre light went in just fine.  I threaded the wire through the hole, put tiny dots of super glue on the ceiling rose and gently and carefully pulled it upwards until the rose made contact, just then need to press for a few seconds and Bob's you uncle.

I wish I could say the same about the table lamps.  i have always loved these lamps but they have given me problems from day one - missing one ball foot when purchased, wonky lampshades, one light flickered until I could get the bulb seated properly and most of all the very fine wires are a real challenge.  I have had them for so long I had forgotten how to expose the wire from their painted (?) coating.  Too fine to use wire strippers, teeth and nails didn't work, knife pretty much just cuts right through.  Finally light bulb moment and I rubbed them gently with very fine grade sandpaper.   Note the magnifying glass which got used at every stage of exposing the wire and then joining it to some more wire once in place so that they can reach the connector strip.

I used the sockets (I invented) for added realism.  They are made by Delph Miniatures.  Basically you thread your wire through from front to back, exit th wall and stick the socket in place.  Extensive explanation is here.  realistic sockets.

Tah dah - light, fireplace, lamps all in place and all working

The comes the task of adding a couple of feet of wire to the back to be sure of being able to connect to the power supply eventually.

So, another box prepared and awaiting its furniture.

Library - paint for shelves

 Sadly, when I went through my stuff - moving everything to another rejig of my work area - I discovered that most of the paint and glue had not survived their three years holiday.  I was particularly concerned about finding a match to the already painted shelves for the library.  They needed touch ups and the new trim for the top edges needed painting.  My memory of doing Dalton House was that I mixed several paints or at least let down the colour with some white every time I painted a wall or piece of furniture, so the paint for my shelves could, quite literally, be totally unique.

One paint which had survived the stash was a tester Dulux called Melon Sorbet.  The name seemed very familiar so I whooped with the expectation that was the one I used.

I tested a little on a hidden section of the shelving and even let it down with some white but it clearly wasn't in the same family at all.

The brain is a totally weird thing for sure - days later and for no particular reason I decided the paint had been one from The Little Greene Paint Company and called Eu de Nil.  These are super nice quality paints.  £4 a sample tin but no postage and a good size.  

As it turned out getting this sample proved ridiculous - I ordered it, it never arrived, I chased it up, two emails not answered, I phoned them - said they would UPS a replacement that day - that never turned up either,  another phone call and another UPS replacement promise.  Fortunately that one arrived.  It took a month from order to arrival!

Having said all that, I don't want to deter anyone in the UK who might be looking for lovely quality paint in a nice quantity for your projects.  My previous experiences with them have all been excellent.  

Elf had sent me a trim for the front edges - sadly they had run out of the one I had originally.  after much deliberation I decided against it.  The previous top trim had served two purposes - trimming the edge and making the shelves reach the ceiling.  These shelves of course had been made by Elf to fit the dimensions of that room.

the library being built in Dalton House, showing ceiling height shelves

These room boxes are taller so that wasn't going to happen and the new trim was a bit 'fancy', so I decided to just sand the front edges and touch up along with the dints.

The dents along the sides were from using a screwdriver to lever out the shelves which I had judiciously super-glued to the library wall in Dalton House - they would never need moving!!  They positively screamed damage when set against the side walls.

I am really not good at filler of any kind.  Having tried on real house walls many times over the years and pretty much left them looking as bad as they did pre-filling, just a different 'bad',  I decided there was no reason to fiddle about with it as I probably wouldn't succeed whatever I did.  It was a case of stick a blob on every dent and then sand down best I could.

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the front edges were sanded smooth from where the trim had been ripped off (right photo).  When painted they came up OK (left photo).

After sanding and painting even the sides looked presentable.

How lovely to have straight walls to work with.  This is just a dry fit.  I am now off to do the usual routine of paint and paper and trim and 'electrocute a box until it becomes the library.  At least there are no more chimney breasts to do.

Boxes - Painting

Already in this process I wouldn't recommend a thick porous cardboard  for room boxes.  Ideally if you have a means of cutting it I would definitely go for thin MDF.  However the card is working OK for me so far.... read on ....

I knew in advance moisture would be an enemy to my plan and on first painting the ceiling it began to concern me.

I gave the ceiling one coat of an artists acrylic paint - good old Plaid.  My thinking was it is less wet than household wall paint which is where I would be going next.  I am sure gesso would give it a decent first coat and help seal the surface.  I was also recommended to try a spray matt painters' varnish which would certainly work.  These two ideas were kicked into touch as the whole reason for choosing card was to keep the cost down to an absolute minimum and use pretty much what I already have.

It went on well and covered the grey.  When I looked carefully I could see a bit of bowing on the front edge so I waited for the paint to touch dry and left it overnight under a piece of wood.  I wasn't very concerned about the finish if the wood marked it as it was a first coat and there will be at least two more and a light sanding

It dried perfectly and does seem to have made a decent base coat and even strengthened the cards so after step one I am more pleased than I expected to be

Always pleasing when a spirit level says something is OK

We managed a trip to good old B and Q and my favourite counter  - Valspar - where I picked up two of their tester pots - Tidy White Matt and Tidy White Silk.  I always use these for ceilings and woodwork. Valspar tester pots are all round fabulous.  £3 for a useful amount of paint (236 mls), a choice of a gazillion colours and shades and the paint quality is excellent with good pigmentation.  Win, win and another win.

I have also discovered, courtesy of my grandson's latest bag of paint brushes, the joy of Sponge Bob brushes.

It picks up just the right amount of paint and covers well and quickly with (of course) no brush stroke lines.  It then cleans up easily.  this has been used three times and washed under a cold water tap.

The finished result is (so far) working just fine.  This is the ceiling after one coat of artists acrylic and two coats of white household paint.  It will get a rub over when absolutely bone dry (couple of days plus) with an extra fine sanding pad - more of a buff than a sand.

The box had stayed 'square' with no bowing and the tape is not affected by the paint. The next challenge will be applying wallpaper.