Master Bedroom

This bedroom still needs a few touch-ups, but I like how it turned out.

My attempts at making opening windows failed miserably - the two open windows are half-scale French doors. I was originally going to do an 18th-century style French painted ceiling, but it just didn't work in this room - too much pastel. The cherub is based on one that appears on several Jimmie Martin pieces, and I like the contrast with the surrounding stormy sky.

I will post an update once I've added wall art and dressed the bed.

Feed Me, Pet Me, Meow

I don't have the skills to copy my 1:1 things in miniature, but I've come reasonably close with this vignette.

My 1:1 sofa is a different color - but only because I couldn't find a sofa in a good shade of purple when I bought it. However, the style and size (when accounting for scale) are nearly identical.

The cats were given a few dabs of paint to resemble my real-life pets. (Cats and sofa are all from Dolls House Emporium.)

Hall table

I'm glad Dolls House Emporium has added a collection of French-inspired furniture for collectors who like fancier furniture...but, as always, I can't leave well enough alone.

Like the kitchen prep table in the last post, this little console table has gray marbled paper decoupaged on top. I've photographed it lying flat to get the best view of the silver leaf paint I applied to some of the details. Now I just need to mount it on the wall in the hallway, with a very tiny handbag on it.

Kitchen prep table

Since the house is supposed to be old, a fitted kitchen wouldn't do.

Some sort of prep surface was a must, of course. I bought a plain whitewood potting bench and proceeded to completely ignore its intended purpose.

First, I marbled some white paper with a mix of four different grays. While it dried, I painted the table glossy black. When the second coat was hard, I decoupaged the marbled paper onto the top of the table to mimic a marble countertop. I also plucked out the original knobs with tweezers, replacing them with tiny Swarovski crystals - they are meant to mimic vintage glass knobs.

I am VERY happy with how the prep table turned out.

Greenleaf Spring Fling 2012

As mentioned long ago, I ordered and built Greenleaf's 2012 Spring Fling kit, with the skylight upgrade. I never actually got around to posting pictures of it anywhere...until today. 

I decided not to enter the contest because I know this piece isn't pretty or impressive (have you seen the Spring Fling entries? They're all brilliant) - and it's not meant to be.

This piece represents someplace I lived a long time ago, when I was very young, very broke, and spent as much time somewhere else as possible.

Try, if you can, to imagine a former storage room converted into a tiny apartment. There was no kitchen, just a sink and a fridge (but it's not like I knew how to cook at age 19 anyway...). There was a bathroom, but it was one floor down and shared. You'll have to imagine the hooks on the back wall that held my clothes. And as long as you're imagining things, please humor me by imagining the New York skyline in the background (and I don't mean glamorous New York, I mean gritty New York).

All I needed was music and a place to sleep. (And a skylight. How could I live in a grimy urban loft and not have a skylight?)

My Ace Bathroom

My taste in interiors is pretty eclectic. Case in point: my miniature bathroom was inspired by the Ace Hotel's Portland and New York locations.

There are a few little things I need to touch up, and I still need to make and install towel bars, but between the black-and-white palette, curtained transom door, and classic fixtures, I think the influence is pretty clear.

Some Ace Hotel rooms have claw-foot bathtubs (I've always wanted a claw-foot tub), and I originally planned to include one. However, the only ones I could find that looked right were 1) way out of my budget, and 2) too wide to fit the space. Yes, I know the bathtub I chose overlaps with the door frame a bit. It didn't during the dry fit, and the front sits flush against the wall, so I've decided not to let it bother me.

There isn't a medicine chest because if this were a real house, the logical place for it would be on the non-existent back wall. I did make one before I realized this (classic white with a red cross on the door), so it's going to be in the kitchen instead. In real life, I am most likely to injure myself in the kitchen (cuts, burns, slipping in spilled liquid, that one time I dropped a heavy Le Creuset pan on my foot...), so that's where I keep my first aid kit anyway. There will be a toothbrush holder, I just haven't glued it in yet (the mini toothbrush holder and toothbrushes I bought came in rather unattractive pastels, so I'm repainting them in bolder colors).

I realize the chandelier is a bit flashy for the Ace aesthetic, but the Art Deco ceiling fixture I ordered was sold out, and I love chandeliers anyway, so in it went. Someday I want to have one in every room of my house, whether they go with my vintage/antique/industrial furniture or not.

From the Inside Out

For the obvious reason that the upstairs landing is blocked in by the bathroom and living room walls, I found it easier to install the interior of the smaller bedroom and the landing interior at the same time, glue the staircase in place, then add the bathroom and living room walls.

Here is the smaller bedroom. It's not 100 percent complete - I still need to install stair railings and fix the gap under the cove molding on the left side - but I love how it's turning out.

Here is a glimpse of the landing from the front of the house. (I couldn't get a good angle on the bathroom wall, stairs, etc.) I initially painted the window frame white, but it looked much too plain. Glossy black paint to the rescue!