text: Dollhouse escapes: February 2016
  Some time ago, I had an epiphany as I was looking through pictures from one of my Facebook groups. Clever people have been imaginative and painted Chippendale kit furniture in various colours, added different knobs and generally made something different than prescribed. It was a liberation to realise that all Chippendale miniatures don't necessarily have to be mahogany and that I could use my imagination to make something truly unique.
  In this group, we had a weekend challenge and everybody who had the kit made the same piece, a three-drawer chest, all using different ideas. I will show mine some other time.
  Now I will show what I made this weekend. I got another lowboy kit in one of my bundles, and since I had already made a mahogany lowboy, I thought I could make a different one. The instruction says that lowboys were used for various purposes, including as ladies' dressing tables, and this was an interesting idea. Of course I already have a dressing table in the master bedroom, upcycled from a Poundland piece, replacing an earlier piece replacing a still earlier piece. But this is a huge problem with Chippendale furniture: once you have started with them, everything else feels unsatisfactory.
  Thus, full of guilt as always, when I replace an earlier piece, I made the lowboy. Now, my aspiration was to find the right colour. My all-purpose antique white felt wrong, and I also wanted the shade to match a Carin Backlund chair I have in this room. So my first attempt was to mix antique white with pure white. Which just tells you how little I know about mixing colours.
  This was yesterday evening, and I realised that I probably needed daylight for such a delicate task. Just before I fell asleep it struck me that the Backlund chair colour was bluish (18th-century bluish white, which is just right for this project). So in the morning I added a drop of light blue to pure white and also diluted the paint quite a bit.
  It is still not exactly the same shade, and I will never get it exactly the same. I won't re-paint the chair because it is an artist piece, but it it close enough, and I am happy. It really looks much, much more authentic than the antique white. I added golden beads for knobs and painted the leg balls gold - not quite sure about the latter, but it can be changed.
  The inside of drawers is painted light blue because that's how it was done.
  There will be all kinds of lady stuff in the drawers.
  Here is the dressing table in its room. I found a suitable mirror to hang in front of it.
  I feel terribly guilty toward the old dressing table. I had put so much love into it. But it cannot be helped. See for yourself: which do you prefer?
  But maybe I can use the old one in some other project.
  Posted by Maria Nikolajeva at 14:55 1 comment:
  Labels: Chippendale, dressing table, furniture, lowboy
  Posted by Maria Nikolajeva at 19:46 1 comment:
  This weekend I returned to the exterior of the house. Last time I worked on the exterior was half a year ago, in July. This speaks volumes about the meanderings of dollhouse building.
  The roof balcony rail had been lying on my window sill, and every time I saw it I just took a deep breath and said to myself: Not now. All the railings I had sanded and painted and sanded again made me reluctant to start on a piece with 48 spindles. Yet one day it had to be done, and the day had arrived. After all my training I now have some shortcuts. I have also finally figured out how to use a tool that I had never used for its initial purpose: a lady shaver with a nail polishing tool.
  I know some people use electric toothbrushes, but I have never managed to attach sandpaper to a brush. But here it was simply to use tape. It made the job easier and faster, but I had to wear a mask for the dust.
  Then there was painting and more sanding and trimming, and it turned out that what I thought was a deliberate cut-off for adjustment was actually a broken piece. Well, too late.
  While I was at it, I also glued on the large pediment. I am not sure why I had not done before.
  Lessons learned: unlike many other steps where I immediately saw the improvement I am not sure. Does it look more finished? I can see from the picture that the upper front edge, right below the railing, must be repainted white. I can state again that the fronts do not close properly so I need to work on that.
  The next step on the exterior is the front staircase, and I have already spent hours of frustration over it. The instructions I received, upon repeated requests, from the manufacturer were not helpful, and there are things that don't match. The only thing I could get the manufacturer to admit was that the stairs cannot be attached to the house because the main fronts won't open then. I think this is a big miscalculation in this new model.
  The easiest way would of course be to ignore the stairs altogether, but they do add an interesting feature. So this will keep me busy in the coming weeks. Come back soon.
  Labels: dollhouse, exterior, railing, Womble Hall
  I really thought I was done with ceilings, but of course once you have started any other ceiling just doesn't look right.
  If you haven't seen my Adam ceilings, have a look at dining room, the gentlemen's smoking room, the drawing room, the grand hall, the upper hall, corridor and guest bedroom, nursery and servants' room.
  The reception room has a magnificent ceiling that I am very proud of. And yet, with all other Adam ceilings, the white border around the centerpiece doesn't look magnificent anymore.
  Of course there is no way I can tear down the centerpiece. Moreover, because I was hundred percent sure I would not add any detail I had attached wooden coving. So now I had to build the ceiling around it. With all my previous ceiling training, I knew how to do it.
  It is just a matter of precision. And patience. And more patience. Once again, I wish I had this paper a year ago when I was decorating the ceilings on flat surfaces. But - it wasn't available then, and it is solely my decision to make these ceilings. Whatever you say, my house is absolutely unique.