15 June 2012
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Margot’s room is the last quest room in Featherstone Hall Hotel, but before Julie Jackson describes it to you – she has a confession to make…
Top floor confession
Julie has a small confession to make about the upper floor! When Julie originally planned out the house, she'd intended the roof area to contain the housekeeper's sitting room, a linen store and staff bedrooms. However, she was having so much fun with the guest bedrooms below, that when she got to the top, her plan went out of the window and she added the Thistlemere Room and Margot's Room.
This does make it a little embarrassing when visitors ask about the staff quarters, as Julie now has to say that they're in the west wing at the back of the house.
The bedrooms have got increasingly less expensive as we move up the hotel, so on the top floor, the guests only get a washstand and no bathroom facilities either, en-suite or shared as in the floors below.
Margot Dexter’s room
The final guest is Margot Dexter, a retired opera star. Since retiring, the constant stream of gentlemen callers seems to have dried up and she's therefore very pleased to entertain young Albert Fielding, a devoted fan.
In this last bedroom, Julie wanted to have a play with the idea of partitioning the roof space, and although the roof area made for quite a good-sized room, she decided to radically reduce the depth of Margot's room by bringing the back wall forward with a false wall.
To avoid the room being too long and narrow, a partition was added at the end which created a store room for luggage. A door at the back end of the room partition sneakily suggests a corridor running behind Margot's room, probably with a linked passage to the lost servants' quarters! See the next feature for more about the staff and hallways.
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The decoration
With the room shape established, Julie had a play with the furniture. A large burgundy rug had already been selected, as well as black and shades of cream and gold, which provided the colour theme for the room.
The strip wood sheet floor was covered with a mahogany stain and varnished. The walls were papered with striped flower garland paper. Julie made a mistake with the paper, as one piece is upside down. Take a look at the main picture above, and see if you can spot it. The answer will be at the bottom of this page!
After painting the skirting boards and door frames in plain white gloss, the wall and floor edges were finished and the carpet was spray glued to the floor. If you're careful, spray glue will hold the fringed edge of a rug perfectly flat.
The bedroom furniture
The furniture selected was mostly mahogany and included a combination wardrobe, doubling as a dressing table and washstand, bedside table, and cheval mirror. The bedstead is iron, showing the less salubrious nature of the room – it's a white one which was spray painted satin black, and topped with a piece of vintage pink and gold fabric.
The room was completed with some accessories on the combination wardrobe and an oil lamp on the bedside table. Some luggage was added to suggest Margot had just arrived. It's cream leather with chestnut straps, which is a little flashy but fits with Margot's theatrical background.
Margot is sitting on a sofa just inside the door beside her jewellery case, while Albert opens the door to admit a waiter with some refreshments. It’s nice to think that Albert has escorted her to her room, probably carrying her jewellery case, and he'll be delighted to ensure she's comfortably settled in with a nice glass of sherry.
Wallpaper teaser!
Look between the luggage on the bed and the cheval mirror – some of the pink triangles point up and some point down – oops! Need help in this area? Don't miss our quick wallpapering tutorial to master the technique in no time!
Go back to part 17 of the series, where Julie decorates the Thistlemore Room. Now that the guest rooms are complete, Julie turns her attention to the hallways in the hotel in part 19.
