Downton Manor Interior Decoration

Attic Landing and Stairway

Now that all the rooms on the 2nd floor are decorated, we are moving on to the top floor with the attic rooms.

The room layout on the top floor originally consisted of one large room to the right, a small landing with the stairs from the lower floor, and four equal sized rooms to the left of the hallway. All rooms were accessed from a rear passageway. I felt that the rear passageway made the rooms rather small particularly the four rooms to the left. So I have omitted the rear passageway and removed the middle partitions from the rooms to the left. You can see from the picture where the original sections have been removed.

My top floor will consist of a small hallway including the stairway, the original room to the right and two equal sized rooms to the left with the centre room being accessed by a rear hallway.

Firstly I am concentrating on the small hallway, as this room hasn't been altered the ceiling doesn't need to be filled and papered, as with some of the rooms, so the first thing to do is to fix the flooring. Remember to measure the area just to the point where the roof closes.

   
 

The stairwell also has to be measured and cut out, once you have made a plan of the floor and cut the wooden floor, it can be stuck down.

Next I painted the walls in a cream colour to match the rest of the hallways, this I should have done before the flooring was laid, but I managed to paint the walls without messing up the floor!

   
 

For the lighting I am fitting a small wall light, this is enough I feel for a small landing area. Should you wish to fit hanging ceiling lights to any of the rooms on this floor, be aware that the wiring will be visible on top of the roof, the easiest way to overcome this is to have a thin 2mm piece of MDF cut to roof size, this will hide all of the wiring.

When this has been done we can fit the doors, firstly I am fitting a door to the end room on the right. I am also fitting a door to the opening to the left, this will actually become a corridor behind the middle room. Now all we have to work on is the stairway, for this we need to add spindles to the stairs, because the stairs cannot be seen from the lower floor {the front study room hides this} we only need to add the spindles and rail to the point where they can be seen.

We need a single newel post, for the far side of the stairs a piece of banister rail angled at the top to fit to the newel post and approx 5 spindles. I have made two railing sections which run the length of the opening and will protect the stairwell.

   
 

Glue the newel post at the top of the stairs along with the far railing section. Allow the glue to dry.

Carefully glue a single spindle to the top 5 treads, keeping them in line with the newel post.

   
 

When they spindles have dried in place we can add the banister rail.

Glue in place the last railing section.

   
 

When the stair furniture is in place we can measure and fit the skirting boards, I am using a shorter skirting board for this attic level.

Finally we can fit the coving, filling in any gaps and touching up any paintwork if necessary. The hallway is now finished.

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