Tuesday, 16 April 2013

The two small kitchens post


Firstly I have now started on my Grimmauld Place kitchen. It took a couple of hours to strip out the old tiled floorpaper and the tiled/blue wall paper using a wet cloth.  Once that was completed I began painting the walls. It took me a while to decide on the colour(s), but eventually I settled on top half white, bottom half green. I have seen some examples both real size and miniature of Victorian/ early 1900s kitchens (As I feel this is the appropriate style from the book descriptions) using these colours and I felt the green would fit with the rest of the house. I then used tea and coffee to stain the walls.

 I plan on building an enclosed cupboard under the stairs that houses the boiler (and where Kreacher lives). Also I am going to enclose the cooking range at the end of the room, in line with the chimney. The room at the end will be the pantry with some scullery usage. I know this isn't how it would have been done, but I am short of space and any issues with water getting into food storage is solved with the fact that washing chores are controlled by magic ;-). 

 I have a more up to date entrance hall picture. Not complete yet as the top half of the stairs need spindles and rail, a door is required to the dinning room, there are missing house elf heads and other details. I plan to sand and re-stain the grandfather clock and add curtains to the painting of Mrs. Black.


 
Kreacher Lerking on the stairs

The drawing room has also been papered, but paneling, flooring and ceiling are still to come. 



I also have been working on my Fairbanks dollshouse. I have done a few small jobs on the kitchen and have a few more accessories. There are still a few minor things to do.


Front of house
Newly painted doors


 I have also been working on the outside doing brick work using brick slips.It takes a lot of time to individually stick each brick to such a large house! I am not going to put them on the whole house, but on areas I feel they look best such as the front and the chimney.




I will continue working on both projects and hopefully have an update soon.

Friday, 12 April 2013

Returning to an abandoned project

In 2010 I was given a dollshouse by a family friend which I decided to turn into 12 Grimmauld Place from the Harry Potter series as it was a big Georgian style house which was a bit battered. The house needed completely re-painting and decorating. I completely redecorated the outside of the house to look like a London town house in need of repair. I started work on the entrance hall and drawing room and bought many items of furniture at dollshouse fairs. In 2011 I moved house and I haven't touched the house since then. I have decided to work on the kitchen next week, so I am going to outline the house so far.


The house as I received it
Inside
All of the blue and cream was either covered with luxury brick paper or painted white. I am now thinking that I should have used brick slips, but at the time I had limited budget. I probably won't change it as these bricks don't look too bad. Roof tile slips were purchased from Richard Stacey. They are much cheaper than the real slate but they look quite good and are easy to work with. They have a lighter grey on the opposite side too. I dirtied the paintwork on the house and added moss for an overgrown effect. A gritted effect spray paint on card was used to make the stone for the pavement and basement area. 


'Stone' painted bricks were made for the basement using balsa wood painted with white emulsion. The doors were painted with a black gloss and I added the door number 12 and a knocker.







 Inside the house, I worked on the entrance hall and the drawing room. I will have more up to date pictures of these in the next post as more work has been completed. I cut the staircase 
in half and built a raised platform. I used coffee stirrers to make floor boards and stained them. I then built a boxed in area to house the 'stairs' to the basement. I have attempted to age the wallpaper by creating rips and peeling effects.




The door knobs are described in the books as being serpent shaped. I purchased some small wooden door knobs designed for furniture. I then used polymer clay to create snakes heads to extend the size of the knobs. Detail such as mouth and eyes were added with a cocktail stick. After baking I painted with silver enamel paint, then glued nail art sticks to look like emeralds in the eyes, as this seemed like the kind of extravagance that the Black's would have in their house.


Furniture for the drawing room as made from a mixture of kits and pieces of furniture that came with the house. A couch was reupholstered to match the other seating.




Completed seating for drawing room