A Color Scheme is Born

As promised, there are pictures!  However, due to the fact that the plumbers installing our sprinkler system (hooray!) completely took over the basement, they're not as complete as I'd like and I couldn't reach my better lights to turn them on.  So please excuse the shadows!  In any event, a few more goodies had arrived at the house, and I thought I'd start there.  I'm not really sure, yet, what I'll end up using in each house; the Sue Cook mantelpiece was intended for the house I'm working on now, but I'm not sure I'll end up using it.  I have a kit for a Georgian house waiting in the wings, so it may end up there, instead.  I ordered the grates, because I'm intending to build my own surrounds (probably for a bedroom fireplace).  And, lastly, the plaster rosettes are for the dining room.

Goodies!

In person, this is an especially lovely piece.

 

These rosettes are for the dining room (for the corners of doors, etc.)

My idea is to, hopefully, build something fairly modest around it.

The lighting's really poor, here (I couldn't reach my work lights to turn them on), but these are a few shots of the in-progress shell.  I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing with lighting, etc. before I put everything together completely.  As I find things I want to use, I've been sticking them into the house, so I can see everything at once and get a sense of how it all works (or doesn't work) together.

The main body of the house, which contains the formal rooms.

This is the rear extension.  In this picture, I'm looking down from above on the (unpartitioned) second floor.  Because it contains the more, shall we say, unexciting rooms, it'll be comparatively much more plain.  One contrast that's always interested me, in Victorian homes, is that between public and private.  I've seen these elaborate parlors, dining rooms, etc, then made my way into the kitchen and been shocked by how barren it was.  I'm still trying to decide what to do with my kitchen, here.

An upstairs in progress.

The dining room.

The library.

Yes, I like to write on things with Sharpies.  The dining room will be comparatively monochromatic (I don't like using wallpaper in every room; some solid color walls help calm things down, and set off the wallpaper to its best advantage), but will have quite a bit of ornament.  I plan on using lincrusta ("lincrusta") wainscoting both here and in the hall.  My lincrusta-making supplies arrived the other day, and I'm quite pleased with them--more on that later!

I've been fairly undecided about the kitchen.  Were I to be entirely historically accurate, it would have rough plaster walls and ceiling, and a random plank floor.  I'm considering, though, using bead board wainscoting and linoleum instead.  Thoughts?

The kitchen is on the left, the storage room is on the right, and the inset porch (this I did steal directly from Lincoln's house) is in the middle.  I envision it as being fairly utilitarian.

This is my first Victorian-era house, although I've wanted to build one for ages and have visited many historic homes.  What I find to be the biggest decorating challenge--and it's even more acute in miniature--is capturing the Victorian love of busy patterns, bold colors, and stuff without creating a horrible hodgepodge.  And eyesore!  I've been collecting (what I think will be) my major design elements, so I can see them all together.  This includes wallpaper, flooring, the fabric I plan to use on the larger pieces of furniture, and any other ornament necessary to the room (mirrors, niches, etc.)  After a few false starts--I bought some lovely wallpaper that fits absolutely nowhere--I think I'm finally getting somewhere.

For the living room, a couple of different fabrics, some slightly more bohemian wallpaper, a parlor stove and, find of finds, some miniature-scale grass cloth for wainscoting.

Thoughts?

 In the family room, I'm trying to go for a more relaxed, bohemian feel--to create a room where you can actually imagine people gathering to relax after dinner as a family.  It's still a nice room, and most definitely a public space, but it's also--at least, historically--easygoing and child-friendly.  The formal parlor, on the other hand, is not.  The comparatively more severe golds, oranges, and greens say "sit up straight."  Also, too, while a stove has been installed over the original fireplace in the family room (they were much more efficient), the formal parlor will still have only a fireplace--and, thus, for much of the year be freezing cold.

I'm hoping to work this frame into my overmantel somehow.  Contributing to the severe effect, all the fabrics for the room will tie directly into the colors and/or design of the wallpaper.

The wallpaper for the master bedroom.

I don't plan on using everything I got for this house...or potentially at all.  I purchased a few different flooring sheets, wondering if they could be used either as intended or, potentially, as linoleum ("linoleum") tiles.  I was a little disappointed with the scale of this tile sheet; it's not detailed enough to pass for real marble, but the squares are too large for it to really look like linoleum, either.  So this is going into the miscellaneous materials drawer for now.

OK, but not really what I had in mind.

Still has possibilities, though!

 I wanted to use a little lincrusta in the house, both because I love the way it looks in real life and because, back then--certainly in America--man-made materials were all the rage.  Which is kind of hard to picture now!  Lincrusta was, like linoleum, made from linseed oil and used in a variety of applications.  My personal favorite was/is as wall ornament.  So, I thought I was really clever when I decided to buy a couple of 1:24 scale embossed papers to use.  I'll be making them into dado panels for the wainscoting.  I'll be using their 1:12 scale cousins as ceiling paper in a couple of the rooms.

I plan to use this pattern in the front hall; the angles will pick up the tiles nicely, I think (hope).

And here's the whole sheet.

I thought this would make lovely dado panels for the dining room wainscoting.  Good shapes and textures really work in a monochromatic setting, I think.  Each plays up the other.

 I might have no clue what I'm doing in the kitchen, but I've figured out the hallway.  Both linoleum tiles and encaustic tiles were popular throughout America during this time; linoleum (especially linoleum that looked like encaustic tile) was particularly popular in more rural areas.  It was expensive, and often chosen over (what we think of as) more desirable materials.  So, keeping that in mind, I'll probably doctor this up to look like linoleum.  This is, after all, no gentleman's house.

I promise, these colors really do work together--a fact which will be more obvious with the introduction of some solid colors, i.e. the wood flooring, the paint in the hallway, etc.

I don't know if it's totally obvious from this picture (the lighting really leaves something to be desired), but the orange in the wallpaper is the exact same burnt orange shade that's in the tile sheet.  They pick each other up nicely.

Also very hard to see in this terrible light, but the same orange is picked up again in my bohemian wallpaper.

So there it is.  It's a start.  I've brought up my plastic model-making supplies (although my metalizing sprays still haven't come), so hopefully I'll be able to work on the fixtures over the next month.  We'll be home after Labor Day, and I'm hoping by then that I'll have all my design issues worked out, so I can start right in on building the rest of the components (fireplaces, etc) and start installing everything. 

Thoughts?  It's really OK to tell me it's horrible (grin).  Anyone else facing any design issues?

NOT the Abraham Lincoln Dollhouse!

I think Real Good Toys' Lincoln Springfield Home kit is probably the best dollhouse kit on the market.  The detail is really spectacular, the proportions are excellent and, perhaps best of all, it lends itself really well to kit-bashing.  Of course, there are many other wonderful homes out there, but, for me at least, they each have some significant flaw.  Mostly, this is to do with proportions--both internal and external.  It makes no sense for a (supposed) grand Victorian manse, or Georgian palace, to have 8' ceilings, a tiny kitchen, and one staircase.  Also, too, there's the problem of simple size: big is good, too big is horrendous--especially when the space at hand isn't terribly well utilized.

This is, perhaps, my problem with modern architecture as a whole.  Which is probably why we live in an aged heap, ourselves.  But anyway, moving on...

I loved the Lincoln kit the first time I saw it...and then I was inspired by another pair of miniaturists, Paul and Dianne Trautt of Saint Charles, IL.  If you google yourselves and see this, guys, I'm a fan!  The Trautts built a wonderful, historically accurate replica of the real Lincoln Springfield Home using this kit as a base.  You can read more about it here.

Their biggest inspiration, to me, was in demonstrating a way to (finally) overcome a challenge I'd pondered on and off for years: how to make a Federal or late (American) Victorian-style home with a back wing.  You see this form all over New England, in grand homes and farmhouses alike.  I'm a big fan of historical accuracy, and the lack of extra wings (with their attendant kitchen placement, maids' rooms, etc) always bothered me.

I hope the Trautts don't mind too much that I'm stealing their idea.

Although, in my case, it's to build something entirely different.  Rather than the Lincolns' home, I'm replicating one build almost wholly in my imagination.  I've wanted to do something late Victorian for awhile, and, here, feel like I finally have my opportunity.  I'm altering quite a bit of the detail, both inside and out.  The proportions (and, in some cases, functions) of the rooms will be different, I'm adding a small formal garden--to wit, I'm enlisting a friend of mine with better power tools to build me a base--and, ultimately, it's intended to be a very different sort of house.  Much of Victorian "style" was pretty tacky, a fact which I find liberating! 

This is the floor plan of the actual full-sized house:

Abraham Lincoln's real house, and the only home he ever owned.

In my version--I'll try to post pictures soon, so this description makes more sense--I've lengthened the back wing, switched the rear parlor (which is now a small library) and the dining room, and increased the size of the dining room (which still connects directly to the kitchen).  The library is, too, a comparatively smaller and cozier space.  One of the things I don't find especially enchanting about the original house is that all the rooms are basically the same size.  The original dining room is very small.

I also reduced the number of bedrooms, possibly because I find decorating the same room over and over quite dull.  The boys' bedroom has shrunk and become a bathroom, the guest bedroom, thus, has become the master bedroom on account of the bathroom, and Mary's bedroom has become a children's bedroom.  Throwing historical convention aside, my dolls are quite friendly with each other and share a bedroom, modern-style.  The maid's bedroom is still there, as is the back staircase (although I've changed its shape), and the trunk room has become a work room for sewing, etc.  My dolls are upper middle class dolls, but certainly not gentry.  They have one servant, live on a small piece of land, and are in trade.  So, naturally, they do many things for themselves--such as sew their own clothes.

I'm still working on what the outside colors should be; if you have any suggestions for a scheme, then do by all means share it!

My other project, currently, which I'm also just beginning now is an American Colonial saltbox.  Again, I'm kit-bashing.  Historically accurate colonial house kits are very hard to find, which is odd, considering the fact that they lend themselves quite well to the typical design conventions of low ceilings, small rooms, etc.  One wonderful kit is the Lyndeborough, from Earth and Tree Miniatures.  I have this same kit in 1:12 scale and 1:24 scale.  I made on in 1:24 scale, previously, for a customer.  As I'm now doing this purely as a hobby, and refusing to sell any of my work, I feel liberated to create exactly the home I want.

My initial inspirations for this house--which isn't, design-wise, as far along--are the so-called "Salem Witch House", which is comparatively nearby, and several of the houses in Colonial Williamsburg.  I've never made a true colonial before--always ending up, somehow, with something a bit too Federal--so this should be interesting.  Right now, although I don't have the funds to purchase too much, I'm sourcing materials.

Thoughts?  Ideas?  What's everyone else working on?