Busy in the Basement

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Being unable to do much work in the main part of the house until my various orders arrive, this week I started working on the separate basement.  The basement is made from a cheap shelf unit which was cut down a little to make it a better fit to the main house.  The first step after this was to lay the floor.  I had been planning to use Air Dry Clay for this, but decided I didn't want to wait overnight for it to dry, so I used polyfiller instead.  I mixed a little extra water into the filler to give it a creamer consistency and spread a thin layer over the floor.  I then dragged a stylus through the filler to create the pattern of stone blocks.  A quick sand and several layers of paint later, this is the result:

I'm not entirely happy with the colour, it's a little too brown and not quite enough grey and the matte sealer over the top has almost a gloss finish.  Once the floor was finished, I assembled the basement and then painted the walls and ceiling.  Yes, I did have to keep wiping paint off the floor and yes, a smart person would have painted and then assembled.

The basement is divided into three rooms.  The smallest central room is a stairwell and hallway that connects the other two rooms together.  The staircase doesn't actually lead anywhere, you have to imagine it connects up somewhere behind one of the false doors that will be upstairs.  Besides the stairs is another doorway to nowhere, again you have to imagine it leads to other service areas of the basement.

To the left of the Hall is the kitchen. At least it will be a kitchen one day.  It's accessed via an open arch so that the busy staff don't have to fuss opening and closing a door while holding trays piled high with all the delicacies the kitchen produces.  The walls are painted a pale blue.  In the Georgian era kitchens were often blue as it was thought the colour discouraged flies.  Wouldn't it be nice if it really were that simple?  The range and oven will be housed in a brick chimney in the back right corner of the kitchen.

The structure of the basic chimney is foamboard.  Over this I've added "bricks" made from the tops of two egg cartons cut into rectangles about 1cm x 2cm.  Again I'm not too sure about the paint job here.  The colours are too vivid and overpowering and need to be toned down a little.  Th cooking range will be built into the large opening while the smaller one is for the bread oven.

The third basment room is a bit of a mystery space at the moment.  It could be a scullery, laundry, housekeepers office/bedroom or a number of other domestic type rooms.  As usual, it's a case of too many ideas, too little space.