Adding the Portals

Getting around in Bellerose House has become a little easier this week with the addition of doors that allow the residents to move from one room to another (albeit with difficulty as none of the doors have door knobs just yet!).

In the Dining room, the main entry door now sits on the back wall.  The door has side lights and a deerfield pediment.  On the right you can almost see another door leading toward the kitchen.  These (and the other doors in the house) were made with the door slips I showed you a couple of weeks ago.  I can tell you that they are very effective and easy to use.  The one flaw in them is that they are possibly a little low, only just over six inches high.  They probably wouldn't be right for a modern house, but look OK in a period house when doorways tended to be a little lower than today.

 In the kitchen is another "slip" door on the side wall and the one door in the house not done with the slips.  For the 'tradesmans entrance' I used the side door that came as part of the Garden Pavillion kit (aka the Dragon Wizard's Lair).

On the next floor up, there are no doors.  A window has been added to the back wall of the faux hallway behind the sitting room.  In the middle of the room currently rests one of the four pieces of coving for the room; the only one painted so far.

 More doors on the top floor with the bedroom portal now in place.  Technically the doors that I've used aren't typically Edwardian.  The framing around the door is Victorian while the six panelled doors are more Georgian.  I could have made some doors that were more suited to the era, but I see this house not as a new build but as an older house that has been modified over the years, hence a mix in the styles of some of the built in features like the doors.

 

The final two rooms have seen the most drastic changes this week.  The bathroom and second bedroom are no longer emtpy boxes but have been wallpapered, tiled and had doors added.   In the bathroom the door is on the back wall, mostly hidden by a pony wall.  This short wall will block the view of activity in the bathroom should the door ever be opened at an inoppurtune moment.  It will also help protect against chilly draughts blowing in.  The stacked black drawers next to the door will be replaced by a proper storage unit eventually.

There were only three colours that really worked with the bathroom tiles; green, white or pink.  I have a few personal issues with pink, but there will already be a lot of green accents in this house and white would have been too stark and clinical.  So the upper walls were done pink . . . . Is it just because I have issues with pink or does it really look as horrid as I think it does?  I'm thinking I might have to replace the pink with a light green.

The second bedroom walls are covered in "jubilee" paper by JLB miniatures.  I really like this paper because the colours aren't as bold as many miniature papers and the softer effect really helps the pattern look right in scale and not as overpowering as some papers tend to be.  Just to add a little interest I added a small dogleg in the back wall bringing the door forward a little.

The house now needs trim throughout (cornice/coving, skirting and lots of very 'Federation' (Aussie Edwardian) fretwork details).