Grosvenor Hall Living room

Hi everyone! Hope you are all well. I know I haven't posted in nearly two weeks, again, and I'm really sorry. I've been rearranging my craft corner and it's taken a lot longer than expected and I'm still no where near finished. I'll have to remember to post a photo of my craft corner when it's finished.
Anyway back to my gorgeous Grosvenor Hall. Wallpapering time! Yeah! Or should I say boo, I hate wallpapering. I always end up with lumps and bumps or worse, ripping it. Luckily with the living room I wanted half wallpaper and half panelling so it made my job a little easier.
Before I even started wallpapering I had to think about the lighting. I really want lit fire baskets and I was concerned about how I was going to hide the wires. I finally decided that I would cut a section out of the chimney breast and make a small channel through the chimney breast towards the back of the house to thread the wire through, then I can hide the rest behind the skirting board/panelling as I had already done in my kitchen; still need to drill a hole in the back of the house for the wire to go through.
Once I had glued the chimney breast in position I marked in pencil on my walls how high I wanted to panelling to give me a guide on how much I needed to trim my wallpaper.























I trimmed the wallpaper down leaving about half a centimetre overlap on the bottom edge. Pasting the paper and the wall I carefully placed it in the room. I realised quite soon that I would probably not have enough wallpaper to finish the entire room so I decide to leave the chimney breast blank (I will probably add some sort of panelling later).
























I overlapped the wallpaper on the chimney breast and just over the front edge which I will cover with a wood strip when the house is finished to prevent the wallpaper coming away from the wall at the edges.
As you can see in the pictures I still need to trim the hole for the doorway, which I will do when it's completely dry. Overlapping the wallpaper and matching the pattern wasn't as difficult as I first suspected and overall I am quite pleased with my wallpapering.

I temporarily placed the flooring and the fireplace in the room to get an overall effect; so far so good I think. The picture above is of the lights I would like to use for this room with matching wall lights. But before I buy them I still need to make the panelling, finish the chimney breast, secure the floor in place and possibly wallpaper the ceiling. I also still need to decide on a coving I like. Too many decisions, not enough time or money, typical.
I hope you like what I am doing, feel free to comment, positive and negative comments are all gratefully received as I find them very helpful. Thank you again for taking time to look at my progress.

Bye for now.

Living room fireplace and spindles

Hello everyone.
Sorry for the delay, I can't believe I haven't posted in two weeks, bad me! I've just been really busy recently and I haven't had much time for my dolls house. I promise it won't happen again.

Anyway today I thought I would share with you my progress on the fireplace for my living room.
I listened to some suggestions from the lovely people on the dolls house emporium forum and I decided to use a marble effect for my fireplace. I have never painted a marble effect before so this was a real first for me. I started by painting my fireplace with a coat of white gesso and allowing it to dry before painting it with patches of different greys varying from a very light grey to almost black. With the darker colours I stippled the paint on to give it more of a texture.

white gesso

3rd coat of paint (white gesso)

2nd coat of paint (patches of grey)

As you can see from the pictures it did appear quite dark which was not the effect I wanted. So I gave the fireplace another coat of white gesso which brought it to a very light grey colour. All I need to do is add some veining and I think it will be complete. It's not brilliant and I know I can do better I just need to practice.

The next task I tackled was my spindles and the banisters. I used teak for the stairs, so I used this for the banisters. I used the picture of Mulvany and Rogers colonial dolls house stairs for my reference so I painted the spindles white.

I wanted to be able to paint the entire spindle in one go without it sticking to anything. I took a thick piece of card and I pushed metal pins through it to push the spindles on to. Once the spindles were secure on the pins I spray painted them with a Matt white.



I will probably wallpaper my living room before I finish making the stairs. I also need to make some panelling for the lower half of my living room and find  a suitable coving to give the room a elegant look. I'll probably install a chandelier in this room too but I'm not sure what kind yet.

Thank you again to the lovely people who view my blog and leave me comments. I do love hearing what you think it really does inspire me.