Master of the House

It's been a long time since I posted anything new. Life happens that way sometimes. I'd like to continue sharing our journey and I hope you will join me.

The master bedroom should be luxurious, comfortable, and reflect the style of the owner. I'm not sure how that fits in a dollhouse, but my sister was very clear that the furniture in this room should have a gunmetal grey color. I love strong colors and a mix of patterns, and my mother wanted "fancy" windows (truly, I think she just had these 2 - which don't match the rest of the house - on hand and wanted to use them ;)


This room was actually the last room to be finished. By the time I got to this room, I had already used most of the store-bought furniture that my mom had purchased and gained confidence in my ability to manufacture my own. So apart from the mirror and some accessories, this room was entirely hand-crafted by me.

I made the bench at the foot of the bed using the legs of a chair I didn't want. I cut a rectangle of card stock and wrapped it with some scrap fabric and called it good. The purse is also made out of some scrap fabric. The shopping bag I picked up at a visit to the Museum of Miniature Houses, which is definitely worth a visit for mini-enthusiasts. Like the other rooms, the rug is an online image applied to a piece of felt with iron-on transfer paper.

Let's take a closer look at the bed.


The bed itself is made of card stock (I'm pretty sure it was a Cocoa Pebbles box). I made it to check sizes before I cut my craft wood, but liked it and kept it. The headboard was curved to fit between the windows to help make them appear more purposefully chosen. Since I was feeling short of floor space, I decided to go with wall-mounted nightstands. Notice the rhomboid shape to them? When I cut them, I forgot to account for the width of the wood itself and when I started glue-ing, they came out wonky. I loved it and kept them as is.

All of the fabric came from scraps I already had or from Goodwill:
  • The headboard is trim from a dress
  • The bolster is the sleeve of a shirt
  • The bedspread was a bustier
  • The shams were a pair of gold jeans
  • The bench was covered in scraps from a quilt I'd made long ago
  • The purse was made from scraps left-over from a Halloween costume    
http://designinminiature.blogspot.comThe dresser was made of craft wood. The knobs are small beads and the tassels came from an old set of earrings. The drawers are not functional. I have enough clothing to put away in my full-sized house, I didn't need to do the same here. Since this is a family heirloom, no one will be playing with it, just admiring the fact that our grandfather built something that is still loved all of these years later.

I made the vase out of a bead and some flowers. The jewelry box is a charm from a bracelet. Jewelry is an amazing source for miniatures. They are well made and the scale fits.

I shrunk an online image and mounted it to foam to make the painting. I spent a lot of time on Pinterest searching for "blue, gold, grey" images. If you haven't tried searching by color, do it! 

The fireplace started with the original fireplace that my grandfather made years ago. As you see in the picture, it's just a block of wood with an arch carved out. I covered that fireplace with an embossed scrapbook paper coated with several layers of enamel paint hoping for a tiled look. Then I surrounded it all with the Craftsman-style moldings that I love. 


When I was happy with the look of the fireplace, I added cabinets on both sides made with card stock and craft woods to match the dresser. I love how it turned out. It makes me excited to keep building. 

One quick note about the accessories: The mirror is a compact lid framed with pearls I pulled off of a Goodwill sweater (the sweater itself ended up in the entry so keep an eye out for that one). I made the camera and lenses on the left cabinet out of Sculpy in honor of my sister, an avid photographer.



I wanted to finish this post by showing you the wiring in this room. My mother used round-wire for this dollhouse. All of the wiring was run through the ceiling of the room above so the wires in the following figure are from the living room. The wiring for the chandelier in this room runs upstairs to the floor of the office. All of the wiring runs to junction boxes on the exterior of the building and I'll feature that in another post. The flooring, wood veneer sheets, is applied to card stock and secured in place with U-channel molding. This method makes it easier to remove the flooring and replace faulty wiring without damaging a finished room.  


More rooms to follow.

Comments

  1. Such a fun journey to watch. The master bedroom looks great.

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  2. Thanks Carrie. I'm excited to share.

    ReplyDelete

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