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.