Looking worse...

image from Clipart Library

...before it ~ hopefully 😳 ~ starts to look better!

Apart from the inevitable unrealistic stair situation, I suppose there was nothing particularly wrong with the house but mock-Tudor just isn't a style I'm fond of ~ nor are Ephemy and Susannah, and it is their house, after all 😉 

The rooms on the left, because they are all different depths, have separate opening front panels.  Over time, all the panels have "dropped" a little.  9mm MDF, which is what the house is made from, is quite heavy so I think that the hinges just weren't quite man enough for the task.

Ephemy and Susannah really didn't like the Tudor "stepped" design...

but the question was should the rooms all be trimmed back to the same depth as that on the ground floor, or built out to line up with the top floor 😕

It was extremely difficult to take photos of the ceiling area of the top room on the left-hand side!  However, I did manage it in the end 😏  

I'm not sure what the original plan had been but as a piece of wood had been attached to both the front and back walls (see also top photo), I assume that it had been planned to add a false ceiling.

As you have probably guessed, we had other ideas...

not least, a completely different roof-line!  Luckily the section on the right hadn't actually been fixed in position and just lifted off.

However, I had to cut away the section on the left...

and whilst I was doing that, it was decided that the rooms on the left would all be cut back to the same depth as the one on the ground floor.

Before I started work, I had noticed that the right-hand back wall had pulled apart from the left somewhat.

Luckily my demolition exploits haven't made this any worse, but realigning the wall into its proper position will have to be the first task carried out before any other alterations can be done.

It was decided to stop work at this point so that Sir Peter and I could have a series of discussions with Ephemy and Susannah about what they want done with their new home.  I'm pleased to report that the planning stage is very nearly complete now, so hopefully work can commence shortly!

Fernleigh House

image from Freepik

As per usual, all gung-ho I had made a start on the demolition/alterations to Fernleigh House, when it somewhat belatedly dawned on me that perhaps it might be prudent to make some plans on what actually needs to be done 😏  So work was temporarily halted whilst consultations took place with Ephemy and Susannah as to what they would ideally like their new home to look like, both externally and internally. 

Quite major alterations have already been made to the front of the house, which I will show you in an upcoming post.  Suffice to say not a vestige of the "mock Tudor"-look in the photo above now exists 😉 Discussions are still ongoing with regards to the roofline, and whether it should be completely altered or just made so that the third floor is more accessible for decorating.  It's not as easy to work up there as it might appear!

 As for the internal layout of the house, that's proving to be a little bit of a headache to be honest.  As I mentioned previously the stair openings are very unsatisfactory, as is so often the case 😒  However I think I can make it somewhat better by moving the internal door openings from the back of the house to the front, thereby giving a little more space for the stairs and landings.  The rooms on the left are good sizes, though, even after the alterations that have already taken place.  Likewise, those on the right are okay in theory.  However, on the ground floor the plan is to have the living room on the left and a kitchen/diner on the right.  This, of course, means that it is going to be a rather tight squeeze fitting the latter into the room currently ear-marked for it!

An extension is therefore being seriously considered on the right-hand side, perhaps using one of the many small kits that I've accumulated over the years and never got round to actually building 😏 One kit in particular might be a very good candidate for making into something else.  The question is whether to add said kit to the side of the house or perhaps see if it's at all feasible to add it to the front.  The house itself is made from the usual 9mm MDF but the kit I have in mind is 6mm, hence wondering whether it would be lightweight enough to possibly attach it to the front opening panel 🤔 Regardless of whether it goes on the side or the front, the footprint of the house will obviously have to increase in one direction or the other.  This kit is also double-storey, so it has the potential to create an additional room on the floor above.  This would give a little more scope for what to do with the rooms on the first floor.

Originally it was planned to simply have a guest bedroom and bathroom on the first floor.  However, if an extension is added to the smaller room, then those two rooms could become the guest bedroom and en-suite.  This would then enable the larger room to be used as a second sitting room/study/library combination.

The plans for the top floor are straightforward with the room on the right to be the master bedroom, and a bathroom on the left ~ there will of course be an internal wall put in place for the latter in due course 😉

So that's where things currently stand, with plenty of decisions yet to be made and plans to be drawn up!  Hopefully it won't take too long to sort everything out 😳

The new project...

...and another decision to be made.  As I told you last week, I had already decided to completely scrap Augusta Lodge but I still had a decision to make about Angel House Galleria.

Whilst I really liked the back story I had concocted about Captain Jack, I just wasn't at all keen on the Tudor style of this house.  Another issue, as is so often the case with dolls' house kits, was that the staircase situation was also not satisfactory.  I know some folk leave the stairs out of their little houses altogether but I don't like that idea at all 😏 Whether I went ahead with my original plan to turn the building in a group of little shop spaces or made it into a family home, there would have to be at least some alterations both inside as well as externally. 

 I must admit that by this point I had rather gone off the idea of the shop spaces to be perfectly honest, and didn't want to find myself getting totally frustrated with the project like I did with Augusta Lodge.  So, as I didn't want to scrap this house, I made the decision that it would remain a home 😌 There will be a lot of alterations made over the coming weeks, and it will definitely not be in a Tudor style 😉

I do still intend to have some shops in due course making use of my smaller kits, perhaps stacking them together so that they take up less square floorspace.

And here are the ladies who have taken on this enormous project: Ephemy Lamb and Susannah Lytton, along with their dogs Patrick and Bobby 😊  They recently told me that they aren't sure whether they are being brave or foolish 😄 

Still, I'm sure that they will have plenty of advice from their architect, Sir Peter Buchanan (seen in the photograph above with his mother, Lady Constance and uncle, Christopher Long)...

along with the best building contractors in town, Derek Landry and Albert Holland.  Methinks Graham (Derek's son, who they employ as a painter and decorator) is wondering how long it's going to take him to get all the decorating done 😉 Never fear Graham, there's a helluva lot of work to be done before you'll have to get involved ~ unless, of course, your Dad and Albert rope you in to help with some of the building stuff 😄

Ephemy and Susannah, both 39 years old, have lived together for 15 years although they have known each other a lot longer.  They first met through mutual (older) friends who were celebrating their silver wedding anniversary.  A few weeks later, those same friends invited them both to join them and a few other friends for a long weekend away.  They spent a lot of time together over those few days, and continued to see each other afterwards as they had many interests in common.  Gradually their friendship blossomed into love and they decided to move into a little flat together.

Ephemy is a senior lecturer in culinary arts management at Hazelton University, and Susannah is the practice manager of a very large veterinary practice in Hazelton.  They adopted their two little dogs a couple of years ago, which is one of the reasons they are now looking to live in a larger property.  Susannah is lucky enough to be able to take them both with her when she goes to work, though, so they are rarely left "home alone". 

Patrick is, obviously, a West Highland Terrier.  Bobby, on the other hand, is very much a mongrel ~ no one has been able to decide with any certainty what breeds may be in his ancestry, and suggesting ever-more outlandish combinations has become a running joke amongst Susannah's veterinary colleagues!  They are still young dogs, both being about three years old now, and were picked up together, as strays, on the same day.  The rescue centre suspected they had lived together before being abandoned as they didn't like being apart from each other, so it was decided the two should be rehomed together.

So there we are my lovelies, my new project!  No doubt there will be a lot of trials and tribulations ahead, but I am still looking forward to getting started 😊 

Well, hello there!

image from Freepik

omg ~ nearly a whole year since I last posted here 😮  As you can see I am still alive and kicking, but if you read my other blog you'll no doubt be aware that I've been having some health and mobility issues these last few months.  In my last post on this blog, back in November 2024, I told you about the reorganising I was doing out in my craft room.  That task has been going on, somewhat sporadically, over the last year but rather than detailing everything again, here are a couple of links to the posts on My Cosy Orkney Home if you want to read about it 😊 

https://mycosyorkneyhome.blogspot.com/search/label/chat

https://mycosyorkneyhome.blogspot.com/search/label/the%20craft%20room

Getting back to this blog, you may remember the difficulties I was experiencing with Augusta Lodge.  Well those trials and tribulations have finally disappeared.....because I made a Very Big Decision (VBD) to stop torturing myself and just dump the whole bloody house 😲  This was, for me, an enormous decision and I dithered over it for a very long time.  But omg, the relief I felt when I finally did decide that was the sensible route to take was enormous!  In fact I have made a number of other VBDs over the last year regarding my dolls' houses, which will become apparent over the coming months.

I have started on a new project, which has temporarily been put on hold whilst I finish off sorting out my craft room, but watch out for upcoming posts 😊    

Still nothing to report.....

image from Clipart Library

Well, I say "nothing" but that's not entirely true to be fair to myself 😉

Whilst I haven't yet restarted work on Augusta Lodge, I have been able to make a start on sorting out my craft room.  I posted over on MCOH about the chaos that was once again reigning in said craft room and although it's a daunting task to tackle, I actually made a start out there whilst we were still working in the garden.  I was finding it was getting harder to do quite so many hours in the garden ~ a combination of tiredness and the colder weather.  I compromised by doing just a couple of hours gardening in the morning on the better days, weather-wise, and then another couple of hours or so in the afternoon in the craft room. 

I have also made on start on selling some of the things weeded out thus far, and the things to be donated have now gone ~ some to Restart, and a tub of craft items to Hamnavoe House (the residential elderly care home here in Stromness).  Being the proud (?) owner of a notorious Butterfly Brain, I have managed to acquire a lot of "stuff" over the years to make whatever-the-hell the latest thing to catch my eye has been.  Which, of course, has then sat gathering dust waiting for me to actually make the bloody thing 😏

In the end I realised that enough was enough, and I had to make some serious decisions about how I was going to occupy my time for however many crafting years I may have ahead of me.  Nope I'm not being morbid, my lovelies, just trying to be sensible for once 😉 It always comes back to my love for both crochet and dolls' houses ~ it's impossible to choose one over the other, really.  And in all honesty, why should one be my most favourite?  After all, I have two kids and I don't love one of them more than the other 😄

So the upshot is that my craft room will be mostly devoted to my dolls' houses, although not entirely as there will still be forays into other crafts that I would like to try from time-to-time.  My crochet, of course, is an in-the-house pastime; luckily for me I don't have to find room for my not-insubstantial yarn stash in the craft room, as it lives in the base of the bed in our guest bedroom 😏

There is still an awful lot of tidying/rearranging to do in the craft room though.  We've put gardening on hold now until the spring, so I was hoping to really get stuck in to it now.  Alas I've been thwarted by a run of very wintery weather!  We've had snow and it turned very cold, making the short walk from our kitchen to the craft room a tad treacherous!  And, of course, if anyone is going to slip over on that slope out there it's going to be me 😄  Still, the weather seems to be turning again with Storm Bert sending tentacles of wind and rain up here, so hopefully the snow will be washed away and I will feel that I'm safe to trundle up to my craft room to carry on the good work.  We have family coming up for Christmas this year (yay 👏), so until then I'll hopefully be alternating getting the house ready for our guests with working in the craft room.  It would be so nice to get it all tidy and ready to start working in there once again in the New Year so fingers crossed, eh 😊

In dangerous territory!

image from Freepik.com

I mentioned over on MCOH that Adrian and I have been south to visit family and friends.  As we most often do we travelled off the island by ferry and continued our journey by train, stopping off overnight in Inverness both on the outward and return journeys.  As you can imagine this takes a number of hours by train and after all these years of taking this journey, we both have a cosy routine of watching the passing scenery, reading, and of course napping 😉  Like me, no doubt Adrian does a fair bit of thinking about "stuff" and whilst I have no idea what thoughts were occupying his mind, my own little brain was mulling over what's to be done in the garden and also what to do about the stair situation in Augusta Lodge.

Now this is where the "dangerous territory" comes into play ~ not regarding the garden, I hasten to add, as that's all pretty straightforward.  No, the danger is that I had plenty of time on my hands to think about those bloody stairs!  Which wouldn't be quite so bad if it wasn't for the fact that I can't even make a start on the Lodge until I've got my craft room sorted out 😏

Still, that didn't stop my butterfly brain (BB) having another long think about the situation 😄 I had previously come to the conclusion that dog-leg staircases were the only way to move forward but this was a very reluctant conclusion, to be honest, as I really wanted nice straight runs of stairs.  Unfortunately for me and my "wants" Augusta Lodge just isn't deep enough to properly accommodate such staircases, hence the dog-leg solution.  I was getting rather annoyed with BB for bringing up the thorny subject yet again, when in plopped another thought.....why not make the house deeper 😲

As I'm sure you can imagine, BB was very excited by this new thought ~ I confess that I was somewhat less so!  Still, the idea has been growing on me and could well be the solution I've been looking for.  I already had it in mind to attach a shallow false back to the house to cover the lighting wires, more to keep them all tidy, and hopefully less susceptible to damage, than anything else.  It's a tad unfortunate that BB didn't have this brainwave before I reattached the back to the bloody house 😒

If I do decide to take this route, then I have to decide on whether to remove the back of both the house and the basement or made the addition at the front.  The basement wouldn't be such an issue as I haven't yet glued anything in place.  However the main body of the house would be rather more problematic.  Now that I have re-glued the back I really don't think it would be so easy to remove without causing a lot of damage, which means I would have to cut it off somehow.

It would be fairly straightforward, I think, to add to the depth from the front though.  If I were to build out the house as far as the point where the basement garden wall meets the "pavement", I think that this would give me the extra depth needed.  Of course, all this will need to be carefully measured and planned out, but I really do think it is a possibility.  

The only downside to this is that I would have to scrap my ideas for a courtyard garden, unless I extend the base.  It's not an ideal option, to be honest, as I don't want to make the footprint of Augusta Lodge too big for the position I had in mind for it in the porch.  So now I will have to decide whether I still want that courtyard garden, in which case Augusta Lodge will have to be displayed in my craft room with one of the smaller dolls' houses, yet to be built, put out in the porch instead.

Uh-oh, BB is now floating the thought that if I leave the Lodge in my craft room, then I could probably make that courtyard garden a tad larger than it was originally going to be 😲

Well that's given me plenty to mull over ~ who knows, though, by the time I'm ready to actually start working on Augusta Lodge again BB may well have thought up other stuff to throw in the mix!

Whew.....

image from Clipart Library

Copying the old dolls' house posts over from MCOH didn't take as long as I thought it would, as it turned out that there weren't actually all that many to copy over! I mentioned in my first post  that I don't anticipate working on my dolls' house projects for a while because of all the outdoors stuff to be done.  As soon as I've got my craft room sorted out yet again, though, I'll be back to show off my (hopefully!) spick and span work space and then all being well, I should be able to make steady progress over the winter 😊

I managed to get the copying-over job done whilst I've been waiting for the washing-machine to do it's thing ~ which it has now, so I'd better get the laundry out on the line before the sun buggers off 😉

Happy New Year... (first published on MCOH 2nd January 2024)

image from Clipart Library

 ...albeit a day late!  I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and here's to a fab 2024 for us all 😊

I don't usually go in for new year resolutions as I'm so crap at keeping them, but this year I'm going to try very much harder to blog regularly.  Mind you I couldn't really blog much less than I did last year, so hopefully I'll be a tad more successful in my endeavours!  I also have "good intentions" to be more creative, so I will be attempting A Make-A-Month again this year.  I've got crochet projects to finish plus a long list of new things I'd like to make, both crochet and other crafts.  And, of course, I have all those dolls' house projects waiting for me to get to them 😏

In particular, I really want to finish renovating Augusta Lodge in the next couple of months or so, not least because I will soon have the ideal space available in which to display it ~ more on that in due course 😉  I haven't touched it since the end of last August, mainly because I really got myself bogged down with the issues with the stairs.  Bottom line is I could easily have simply got rid of the bloody thing last year (not sure how I'd explain that to Lady Constance and Christopher, though!), or get on with what I actually decided to do: get stuck in and work through the issues.  Just to warn you in advance, though, be prepared for upcoming Augusta Lodge posts to be filled with whinging, grumbling and angst!

If you too have things you'd like to make, please do join in with me; I'd love to hear about what you are creating and wouldn't feel quite so lonely in my self-imposed crafting challenges 😊

For the next couple of weeks I don't expect to be blogging much, if at all, as I'll be a bit busy with some upcoming "family stuff".  However, I'll be back later this month bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.....well, perhaps not exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed but I'll be back nevertheless, and that's the main thing, eh 😉    

Slightly less scary 😉 (first published on MCOH 31st August 2023)

image from Clipart Library

I got out the Sonicrafter to make an actual hole this time, rather than simply trimming off edges.  Now to be honest I really don't know what the various blades are called, but when I trimmed the edges of the upper house base I used a semi-circular one to work my way across in a straight line.  This time I used a rectangular one with the teeth just at one end to make plunge cuts.  There ~ now you know as much as me, in fact I'm pretty sure it's highly likely that you know a helluva lot more than me 😄

I didn't take these photos at a very good angle, so you may have to tilt your head a wee bit ~ sorry about that 😏  Anyhoo, this is what will be the third floor of the completed house and is in effect Lady Constance's floor.  Her bedroom is beyond the wall and I'm taking the photo from what will eventually be her bathroom.

As I mentioned previously the floors below had two doorways so that folk could get from one staircase to the other, but since there was no access up to the attic this floor simply had the doors to the rear of the house.  This does not fit in with my plans so I needed to cut out a doorway at the front ~ the door at the rear will be blocked in later.  I took my time with the measuring ~ you know, all that "measure twice, cut once" malarky 😉  You may be able to see that the original doorways are a little taller than what is needed for the doors I purchased (from Bromley Craft Products if you're interested, who seem to have become my first port of call when I'm looking for stuff!), so there will have to be a little filling-in along the top of the other doorways.

Since I was cutting out a new hole here I was able to make it to the correct dimensions.  I must admit that I found making this doorway a wee bit harder than the trimming I did the other day, but since it's only the second time that I've ever used anything even remotely like the Sonicrafter I'm still pleased with my efforts 😊

Thank goodness, though, for architrave!

Next step is working out how to configure those pesky staircases 😕 

A tad scary 😟 (first published on MCOH 29th August 2023)

 

image from Clipart Library

I admit that I've been procrastinating but I finally pulled up my big girl panties and used my anniversary gift from Adrian ~ the oscillating multi tool.  I've been putting it off because using power tools is all very new to me and to be honest I was feeling a tad scared 😮  But needs must as I really wanted to get the base of the upper house trimmed.  It's only a few centimetres bigger all round than the top of the basement so I wanted to bring it as close as possible to those dimensions.  

The first job was to trim off the front edge which as you can see in the photo above extends beyond the front of the house, either side of where the original entrance door was positioned.  As luck would have it, simply trimming in a straight line brought the whole of that edge level, and doesn't affect the opening front panels.  The upper house now sits level with the top of the basement.  The top of the basement overhung its own walls in any event and I'm still undecided whether I like how that looks or not.  If I decide it doesn't look quite right I will just add some simple moulding all round to soften the transition.

I was quite nervous when I began cutting but I took it very slowly, starting with the lowest power level. 

After I had trimmed the left-hand side, I felt a little more confident to move up to power level number 2 😄  The base of the upper house now sits level with the top of the basement at the front.  It does still extend a couple of centimetres or so at the back but I've decided to leave that be.  I think I may well be able to absorb that overhang with the plans I have in mind for the whole of the back of the house.

The upper house base also extends about a centimetre either side of the basement top so I decided to be brave and trim the side edges, too 😧

Once again luck was on my side as it just so happened that the side walls of the upper house fit in grooves on the base.  Trimming off a centimetre from the very edge doesn't affect the sides from still sitting in the grooves, although I shall have to glue them in very securely when I rebuild the house.

I clamped the base to my bench to do all the cutting and was able to keep it held pretty firmly.  I know I haven't done a perfect job by any means, but I am still happy with the end result.  Ultimately the whole of the house will be "clad" with textured wallpaper to represent harling (roughcast render), similar to how our real-life house is finished, which will hopefully cover up a multitude of sins 😉 

I've been very sensible, by the way, and have equipped myself with appropriate dust masks.  They are probably the most uncomfortable masks I've ever worn but better safe than sorry, eh?  Dust from MDF is horrible stuff and I definitely don't want to be breathing it in ~ I also vacuumed as soon as I'd trimmed each edge before moving on to the next section.  I look quite a fright, I know 😏

I had a rummage in the dolls' house garden stash and found a bench for the lads to sit on ~ they were very happy to relax and watch me, offering lots of "helpful advice" as I'm sure you can imagine 😄

And then there was the basement... (first published on MCOH 28th August 2023)

As I mentioned in my previous post not only are there a whole heap of issues with the upper house, the basement isn't problem-free either 😒  It's called the Copford basement and I've had it so long that I can't even remember what company made it!  What I do know, however, is that I bought it because I wanted an additional floor and it was close to the size of the Somerby house.

Its opening panels are on the sides so that creates a bit of a problem straightaway.  Because my ultimate aim is to have it in our new porch, every time I want/need to get to the rooms I shall have to turn the house since the cabinet it will be displayed on won't be sitting in the middle of the room in splendid isolation!  However that's not too much of a problem because I don't think I will actually be needing/wanting to get inside every five minutes.   

 

Nope, a far bigger problem takes us right back to the thorny issue of stairs yet again *sigh*  Before I removed the lower section of the back of the upper house, I balanced it on the basement (minus its base) so that I could see how things lined up.....or didn't, as you can see.  To be fair, I wasn't really expecting the walls to line up since the basement wasn't made for the house.  Had the rooms in the basement been set the other way around, though, then I think the dividing wall wouldn't actually have been that far off being in line with the walls on the left-hand side of the upper house.

I've finally come to the conclusion that the most sensible solution for the upper house is to make the rooms on the right smaller, so that the landing areas can be large enough to accommodate dog-leg staircases.  I've been saving cardboard boxes so that I've got plenty of material to try some mock-ups before I commit to anything 😄  I shall also have to go down this route with fitting stairs from the basement.  I think I shall get the stairwells cut out in the upper house, including the base, then use said base as a template for the top of the basement.  I will cut out the corresponding hole for the stairwell and see what I can do to alter the dividing wall in the basement to accommodate it.  Of course had the upper house and basement been three or four inches deeper I could have had runs of straight staircases, which would have been very much simpler all round. 

This wall needs some alterations anyway because I want the doorway between the two rooms set closer to the front wall.  It may come down to having to actually move the wall further to the left so that it is in line with the walls in the upper house.  The problem with that is that the walls are all set in routed out grooves, so I would either have to try to rout some new grooves or trim down the wall so that it is simply set between the base and the ceiling.  As they say, watch this space 😉    

So after Derek and I had had a long chat about all the staircase issues, he pointed out other problems he and Albert had come across too.

First of all, the doorway from the basement out to the garden area is simply not tall enough ~ it's not very wide either!  What do you think of Derek's pink trainers, by the way?  He wore them all day for a bet ~ I believe he won a few pints down at his local that evening 😄 

It would be very awkward getting out of the door beneath those steps to the upper house.

The steps themselves are also somewhat steep, narrow...

and uncomfortable to walk up and down.

And just look at all that unusable space beneath what is meant to be used as the pavement!

The upshot of all this was that after consultations with Sir Peter, Lady Constance, and Christopher the decision was made that the entrance to Augusta Lodge will be moved to the side of the basement, as I mentioned in the previous post.  This really opens up the space in front of the basement, which will make a nice little courtyard garden in due course.  There are going to be a number of alterations made to the front house wall of the basement ~ it's a bloody good job I've got that shiny new tool so I can help the lads out 😄

I'm pretty sure the lads weren't terribly thrilled when I showed them the schedule of works Sir Peter and I had drawn up (that's what's on the clipboard on the right) even though I bought them a couple of shiny new saws ~ especially young Graham, who I expect sees his future holding much more physically exerting work than he is used to 😄