Floors, lighting and fireplaces

Hallway for main entry

With the basement lights installed, it was time to move on to the first floor. This will be the main entry. The hallway flooring is marble paper which is why I put the wire for the basement hallway in a conduit and smoothed over with plastic wood filler.


I decided to use walnut veneer for the floor in most of the upper floor rooms. I bought a 250' roll of edge veneer with heat sensitive glue. The roll was 3/4" wide, so to make planks, I cut the roll in to 12" long strips and then cut the strips in half lenghtwise so the strips would scale as 4 1/2" wide. 

Living room floor

I used a 12" length as the rooms are 15" deep, so as I laid the strips, I would get a 3" stagger between adjacent joints. Once all the "planks" were glued down using an iron, I trimmed the edges flush with the subfloor and sanded the entire floor.  I used furniture wax polish to  finish the floors. The first coat of wax was applied very generously and rubbed in. To speed the absorption, Andrea had the idea to melt the wax in using a hairdryer. This greatly helped the wax penetrate in to the floor. A second coat of wax was applied and again melted in with the hairdryer. Then a final coat of wax was applied and the floor was allowed to cool overnight before polishing with a soft cloth the next day. The three layers of wax and the heat treatment gave a deep, shinny finish that can be repolished as needed.

5-arm chandelier in the living room

Genevieve choose a blue and gold peacock pattern wallpaper for the living room. To match the paper, I painted both the ceiling coving and rose in blue and gold over a white base. The picture rail will be gold. A five-arm chandelier is attached to the ceiling rose.

Dining room floor

The floor for the dining room was finished with walnut veneer planks. Genevieve selected a green damask paper for the dining room so the coving and ceiling rose are painted green. I used two shades of green for the ceiling rose, matched to the green shades of the paper

6-arm chandelier in the dining room

Dining room with painted coving ready to be installed

Second floor hallway

The second floor hallway has walnut veneer planks and the same three-arm chandelier as the main hallway. I installed the flooring before the doors so I didn't have to cut the flooring around the door frames.

Library floor partly finished

The library is on the second floor. Here are the walnut planks before sanding and waxing. I kept the wires for the light covered with tape until the planks were up to the channel cut in the floor. I then removed the tape and laid a veneer strip over the wire in the channel. The veneer is stiff enough so after sanding and waxing, you can't see any dip in the floor.

Finished library floor

I used gold trim as a unifying theme for the ceiling roses in the library and main bedroom. The library will have a walnut wainscot and beamed ceiling.

Library lamp in the library (of course)

I used a slightly different pattern for the gold detail on the ceiling rose in the main bedroom. The blue tabs were markers to center the rose on the ceiling.

3-arm chandelier in the main bedroom

The main bedroom also has gold details on the ceiling coving and maybe the picture rail.

Main bedroom

Bathroom floor

The bathroom floor is an embossed plastic sheet with a white and black tile pattern. As the sheet was slightly translucent, I covered the wire channel in the floor with a strip of white pvc tape before gluing the flooring down.

Top floor hallway

Trying to install the top hallway flooring around the railing resulted in a few hits that knocked the railing loose so I removed it. As suggested by experienced dollhouse builders, next time I would install the stair railing after the finishing floors and stair runners.

The three fireplaces

Once all the floors were finished, I moved on to the fireplaces. I glued brick paper in the backs and used marble paper for the hearths. 

Library fireplace

Dining room fireplace

Living room Fireplace

The front panels stacked with windows installed

Here are the four panels that will make up the front of the house. Making the lap joints to fit the mullions in to the windows frames for the center bay window over the doors needed some care. 

Inside of bay windows

The window kits came with only plain wood trim for the interior window sills. I decided to build custom window sills to look more like real windows, but also to create a continuous sill to unify the three window frames in to a single unit.

Blue masking tape holding window sills in place

A little plastic wood was needed at the window sill joints to fill in small gaps. Once sanded and painted, the bay windows should look like a combined unit. To be able to ands into the corners I need to buy some riffler files. Once they arrive, I will post some more pictures as I finish the interior of the window and more on to the exterior.

Completing the window sill joints