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.

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.