2nd Floor Study

We are now moving onto the 2nd floor, having completed the ground and 1st floor.

The 2nd floor is accessed from the 1st floor by means of the two staircases either side of the gallery landing. 



The 2nd floor landing.



View of the stairs leading to the top floor.



There were two smaller inner rooms of the central hallway but I have eliminated these to create a larger middle room. I am also making some alterations to the hallway, I feel that the hallway in this house or should I say the size of it, rather takes over from the room sizes, therefore I am going to have a wall just in front of the stairway to the 3rd floor, the staircase will remain, as we need the flight to rise to the next floor and to be seen from the upper floor.

Firstly we need to secure the wiring from the large chandelier in the hallway below, this runs along the floor on the 2nd floor, the wiring will go through a hole in the rear wall. I am fitting a light in the rear section, this must be fitted before the wall is in place as it would be difficult to add later, if you fit a ceiling light you will be faced with problems if at a future time the bulb goes!! With this in mind I am going to add a socket to the rear wall, this will enable me to plug in a table lamp with its long wire if the bulb goes we can easily change it. The wiring for the plug will go through the same hole as the chandelier wire.

I have fixed some wooden flooring to the small landing area, a cornice and skirting board to the wall, this will give us a nice finish from the bedroom when the door is open, I am also adding a small table which is permanently fixed to the wall, the lamp will stand on this. There is also a picture hanging above the table.    

The stairs can now be fitted on top of the flooring, we don't have to worry about the banisters on the stairs as these will not be seen once our rear wall is in place.

Decide which way the door for the new room will open and fit the newel post to the lower flight of stairs as it will be visible when the door is open.

Once these tasks have been done, the rear wall can be fixed, fit the door, just off centre of the rear wall. In the rear wall mark the point where the bottom stair will be on the rear wall, cut your doorway to the side of this mark and fix in your door. Secure the wall in place, It is advisable to fix a small block of wood to the side walls, this will keep the rear wall in place.

 

View through the doorway into the hall {I intended this room to be a bedroom, but changed my mind, hence the pink walls!}

What was the central landing, is now a room, it measures 11 inches deep by the width of the landing the new side walls left and right will be solid.

 

The outer rooms will have false doors on the inner side walls towards the back of each room, it should look as if the doors are leading from the rear hall section. We will cover this in the next instalment.

I have decided this new central room will be a Study, I have changed the wall colour from pink to green, before we fit the flooring into the new room, we need to fill in the gaps where the original partitions would have been, I have used some thin strips of wood the same depth as the groove, on the floor it is only necessary to fill in the very outer section as the floor will cover them and the only visible section will be the floor edge.

The same needs to be done to the grooves in the ceiling.

These joints will be hard to disguise, even if we fill them, they will be visible if we just paint the ceiling, so I will be papering the ceiling to cover them. I tried some thick lining paper, but this did not work so I opted for some blown vinyl with the smallest pattern I could find. Once the ceiling has been papered and painted the cornice can be fitted.

I am fixing a fireplace to the left hand wall in this room, there will be a corresponding fireplace in the room next to it. I have made sure that the rooms on the left hand side of the house have fireplaces on the same wall, just as they would in a real house. The wiring for this fire will go through the wall and it will follow the same route as the fire in the next room.

The fire surround I have chosen for this room is ornate, French in style. I have sprayed the fire surround with a black / gold crackle glaze, this gives it a more masculine / heavy feel, as this room is an office. The hearth was made from some 5mm balsa wood and covered with a darker marble effect vinyl, I have used the same vinyl at the rear of the fire.

The lighting is a smaller 5 arm chandelier, the room doesn't really have the height for this, so I have removed the upper hanging section which makes it closer to the ceiling.

For the furnishings in this room, I have chosen a selection of wooden furniture in a walnut colour, there is a lovely curved desk with decorative carving to the sides, on top of the desk we have a blotter, and letters etc. On the rear wall there is a large shaped cabinet, filled with books and other sentimental items.

    

On the other side of the door, there is a curio cupboard again filled with a selection of items

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Please visit Carol Carke’s website for more ideas and inspiration for your dolls house. www.dollshouseinterior.co.uk