Sunday 22 January 2023

Build in progress: Lady Zonneschut's dressing room, the sash window and the finishing touches.

Hello my friends, 

I started this room as a lockdown project during the first year of the Covid pandemic. And now, after almost two years I have finally time to finish building it. It is the first miniature room I have brought to completion and it has been an interesting learning curve for me. 

In this post I will show you how I made the window to fill in that huge window opening. Well not really. I got so caught up in the work itself That I forgot to take pictures. The above picture tells a lot of the story though. I cut a piece of 2 mm thick cardstock to fit the window opening and measured out where the 20 windowpanes would end up in the window frame. After marking them and cutting them out I had the rough shape of the window. I glued a piece of moulding (visualy) dividing the window in two parts. Then I painted it and and let it dry. 

While the paint was drying I cut out a piece from a clear plastic folder. I would prefer to use wood and real glass for these windows but again, this roombox started as a "lockdown project" and I limit myself to the materials I had available at that time. So cardstock and plastic it is.

And here we have a look of the window from the outside at a dry fit. The outside is not yet painted. I like the glimpse it offers of the interior of the dressing room.

But it does not end there. Because of the altered layout the four original walls no longer connect to each other. So I needed to add some wall pieces to fix the pink background of the corridor or side room to the walls of the green dressing room.

And then you get something like this in the picture above. The dark brown pieces envelop the walls and tie everything together. After I glued the different wall pieces together it became one sturdy roombox. And that is for the first time. 
Until now the walks in all pictures of the room in  previous posts were made with paint cans and whatever was at hand placed behind the loose wall pieces to keep them standing upright. Now that all the wall pieces are fixed together the visible seams needed to be filled in, smoothed and painted over to hide them. 

And that brings us to the dressing room looking like this. A window in place and no gaping gaps in the corners. We're really getting somewhere now! And now it was time to cut the floor and ceiling panel to size. 

And speaking of the floor panel, my chosen floor, the print of a highly decorative parquet floor had started to anoy me a bit. The wallpanels in this dressing room are also decorated with prints and so is the ceiling. Lockdown project or not, all these prints together are becoming a lot of prints for just one room....

So why not try an alternative for the floor?

So, with the help of the brown paint that I used for sealing off the supporting wall pieces I tried to mimic a wood grain for a plank floor. I added the paint with a large brush in a layer thin enough to let the white undercoat shine through in places.

Although the result is bit coarse for 1:12 it looks quite decent for a first try. With a sepia coloured fineliner I have given the illusion of individual planks. 


Now all this is done, it is time to furnish the room and make whatever miniatures are still missing. The picture below
is just a first set up. The "yoga mat" on the floor is just a placeholder for the Chaise longue I am making. But that will be the subject of another post. 


14 comments:

  1. The photos of the "view" through the windows (I think it is your Real Life garden!) makes the scale dressing room look like a full, human-size room. And that means the room is perfect! The details are amazing....

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  2. Thank you Marijke. The view through the window of the dressing room is indeed the view from my craftroom. Unfortunately the pond and the wooded island that you see are of the parc that borders our garden and not our backyard. However, we consider it our 'second' garden because most rooms of our house look out on the parc which is very large. And our garden and the parc are not divided by a visible barrier like a fence or a wall but by a small canal. So the transition from one to the other is hardly vissible. And what is more fun, the parcel of land we bought came with an old 'right of way' to the land that is now a parc (it used to be farmland) so via a little dam with a gate we have a private entrance to this public parc from our garden. Which is great for walking the dogs. But stil, it is not ours :-)

    Huibrecht

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  3. Huibert, wat inderdaad begon met de voorzichtige bouw van een klassieke kasteelkamer tijdens de lockdown periode is uitgegroeid tot volwaardige kamer. Leuk om het proces hier te hebben kunnen volgen. Het brengt me overigens wel weer op het idee om die van mij ook weer eens op te pakken. Groet, Thea

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    1. Hallo Thea,

      Dank je wel voor het compliment. Het is niet half zo snel gegaan als ik het oorspronkelijk voor ogen had, en ook is het ontwerp en de indeling van de kamer veranderd, maar uiteindelijk is mijn eerste kasteelkamer nu vrijwel gereed. Binnenkort zal ik wat foto's in de groep zetten maar ik wil eerst nog twee meubelstukken afmaken die belangrijk zijn voor de aankleding van de kleedkamer en het roze pruikenkamertje.

      Huibrecht

      Je zou zeker moeten verder gaan met jouw project! De ronde kamer is een hele uitdaging en ik ben heel benieuwd hoe jij hem gaat afmaken en inrichten!

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  4. I've enjoyed this post to the fullest... so many beautiful views of this stunning room. And thank you also for giving me a broad smile with the yoga mat. Just looking at the picture I really started to wonder if Lady Zonneschut was far ahead of her time... *LOL*

    And when studying the picture of your cardboard window I was really wondering if this would have been "better" if it was made from wood. In my opinion it now has the right appearance of a weathered ancient window.

    I'm really looking forward to see more progress... aka more furniture and decoration. And now a big applause for taking away the helpful paint cans and getting out the glue. You made it... your first room standing on its own feet... eh... floor! And it's beautiful and totally worth to be the personal room of the house's lady.

    Hugs
    Birgit

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    1. Hello Birgit, Yes the yoga mat, I suspected that it would attract your attention. I am now turning my attention to the furniture that is still missing.

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  5. Dear Huibrecht, this room is looking so lovely! And I really approve of the simplified floor! In that era the floor was still mostly a rough wooden surface and even carpets were still a luxury! (After all, who could afford to put such wonderful textiles on the floor to be walked on?!) I think the private nature of the Lady's dressing room would have expected the more informal flooring too. It was not yet the "social hub" that the later fashions demanded where Ladies held court from their bed chambers! I am excited to see the whole shape of the room assembled and Glued!! together. It is a wonderful feeling when the long stretch of "falling down walls" is over and the room is solid! And the window looks wonderful too! Great work as always!

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    1. I agree with you on the floor. The design was so pretty that I wanted to use it, but intricate parquet floors were not the norm in dutch interiors until the second half of the 19th century and the level of ornamentation was bordering on the ostentatious. So I decided that the floor should be simpler and rather a canvas to set of the miniature furniture, than screaming for attention itself.

      Huibrecht

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  6. La ventana queda preciosa.
    Me parece impresionante que el suelo quede tan bonito solo con pintura. Excelente.

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  7. Het grote raam heb je knap gemaakt, geweldig! En de mooie vloer super goed!

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    1. Hallo Gonda,

      Dank je wel. Ik ben blij dat het raam jou bevalt.

      Huibrecht

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  8. I just love the grand feeling the window gives the room! You really get the sense that you are in a beautiful palace! The floor came out incredibly amazing and I bet if you did not say how you achieved it, it would fool everyone who sees it. You have a real talent for recreating opulence in miniature, and it is even more incredible when you know that it is merely card, prints and pain! Can't wait to see more progress!

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    1. Thank you Jodi, I like the phrase 'opulence in miniature'. My next adventure is the chaise longue for which I await the delivery of materials, and the draperie to dress the window. Then this room will be finished for now and can I turn my attention to the stewards room.

      Huibrecht

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