Room 3 - Chinoiserie Salon

As I come to each room I think 'This is my favourite room so far'!  Each one is just so delightful and such fun to do.  The Chinoiserie Salon is no exception.  During the 16th and 17th centuries it became very fashionable to have rooms with furniture and ornaments from China and Japan, and papers framed on the walls also from the Orient.  It was called Chinoiserie, the French word for Chinese.

Hungerford Manor has a Chinoiserie Salon next to the Marble Hall.  Here are the walls with all the trim attached, before it was painted.

Isn't the detail lovely?  So intricate.  For this room all the trim was glued on before painting.  Then everything was painted with Ceramcoat Ivory and the raised trim was highlighted with a gold felt pen.

And here it is when that was done and the painted paper panels were attached, then the room was assembled:

Overview of completed room

Right wall, with door leading to Marble Hall

Rear Wall

Left Wall, with door leading to West Wing

Showing ceiling

 Isn't a lovely room? It is a shame to cover those pretty panels with the furniture - especially the central one with the Chinese Display Cabinet that goes there.  I have finished all the furniture but am not happy with the colour of the finish on it so am sanding it back and re-doing it all.  I will post photos of all the rooms with their furniture when I have upholstered the chairs for them.  I am waiting for the fabric for some of them to arrive so it will be a while before I can do it.

I have also been working on the Music Room and will hopefully have the photos of that posted tomorrow.

Room 2 - Marble Hall

The second room to come as part of Hungerford Manor is the Marble Hall, the grand entrance to the Manor.  It is a lovely panelled room with a marble floor, and has the grand staircase on the right and the Chinoiserie Salon on the left.  The Drawing Room is attached to the rear of the Marble Hall.

After some discussions that have taken place on a couple of groups, I have decided that it might be an idea to show how some of the kits I do that look quite complicated are actually so well cut and planned that they aren't difficult if taken one step at a time, so I photographed each step of this room as I did it.

Because I know from the Drawing room that the ceiling moulding takes several coats to cover with the light paint, I thought that I'd start painting it right away so that I could put a coat of paint on it in between doing steps on other parts.  The sample ceiling had been painted with different colours and I really liked it and decided to do mine the same.  First I traced around the moulding onto the ceiling.  I did forget to take a photo of that part so I re-traced part of it on the underside of the floor.  If you are a quilter you will recognise the double wedding ring pattern.

In the photo below you can see it after I painted the leaf-shaped sections with three coats of Semco 'Rich Blue'.  You might note that I've gone over the pencil lines.  That's because when you trace inside something it naturally is a little bit smaller, and I wanted to allow enough overlap that no bare timber would be seen once the moulding was put into place.

When all the blue was dry I started on the red, doing three coats of Semco 'Antique Red'.  I know it looks pretty grotty like this, with the bits of bare wood showing but have a look at it with the moulding piece placed over it to test it out.

In between doing the red and blue, and the other steps (walls) I had been doing the moulding with Ceramcoat Ivory paint.  It took four coats to get a good coverage of this piece, sanding lightly between each coat.  I haven't glued the moulding down here, I just wanted to check that no bare wood showed and that neither of the colours showed where they shouldn't

This is the moulding by itself.

The trim for each of the walls came like this.  Each trim is in the correct place that it needs to go on the wall.  This is the sheet for the right wall, and at the top it has the trim for the doors.  In the archway are the pieces for the wainscot panels.

I did the left wall first, as instructed.  The black area is where the fireplace goes.  You can see how the trim is set on the mdf wall.  I only used the trim on one side of the door because I'll have this door closed and on the other side I'll use the door and the trim for the adjoining room.

Now I'll take you through the process step by step - it's not as complicated as it appears.  I didn't take step-by-step photos of the first wall, but I did for the right hand wall.  First of all you remove the main border and the trim from the sheet and match it against the wall, making sure the edges meet.

Then all the interior parts are removed by cutting through the little tabs holding them in place and the outer frame is glued onto the wall.

The next frame is just to keep the inside trims in place so it is not glued, just put into the outside frame.

I held this frame in place with painter's tape so it didn't move, then glued the outside part of each section inside this frame.

Once the glue had bonded a bit the placement frame is removed.

And here are the trims perfectly in place.

The next lot of frames is put inside those frames, but not glued because they are again simply placement aids for the central pieces.

The central pieces are glued into place.

And the placement pieces in between are removed.  Then the wainscot trim is done the same way on the lower section of the wall, using the upper trims as guides for positioning.

Yesterday I googled Tudor panelled rooms and I saw a photo of two that I really liked.  I know that they are much grander than the manor but they did give me some ideas, including extending a cream cornice down the walls a bit to the top of the panelling.

So I decided to do that for the Hall.  I didn't decide until after I had glued the dentil trim on to the top so for the other two rooms I painted the underneath first and also did a coat on the dentil trim each time I did one on the ceiling moulding

Here's the left wall with the dentil trim glued on, and also with the fireplace sitting in place but not glued on.  Another thing I checked when I googled was whether the panelled rooms had stone fireplaces like I thought I remembered seeing on television and those photos both did have them.  So I played around with paint colours until I got something that seemed an okay colour for the white stone I wanted and gave the fireplace three coats of that.  Then I added the teeniest bit of grey (leftover from my playing around with colours) and sort of stippled/dabbed in circular motions with that over the white.  When it was dry I did it with black, first drybrushing to get a less definite look on the sides of the fireplace and on the hearth, and the tiniest bit up over the front as though the fire has smoked over the years, then doing some areas with straight black.

After all that it was time to commence painting to get some sort of wood effect.  The method Gayle suggests is to give everything some coats of mid-brown so I used  Nutmeg.  Here's the rear wall,

the left wall

I meant to take the right wall but ended up taking two of the left wall - I have a foggy brain at the moment! :)  That's one of the ways that grief is manifesting itself.  That and a feeling of detachment from life.  But back to the manor house.

Today I started by going over the Nutmeg paint with what I thought was burnt umber but I had picked up the wrong tube and it was a much darker colour called coffee.  I painted over the nutmeg colour, using an old raggy brush,, and going in a direction that the wood grain would go.  Then I dampened the brush and rubbed it over the centre of each of the raised panels, removing some of the paint as though age had darkened the corners and recessed edges. In some areas I was a bit enthusiiastic but the overall effect is okay, and most of the flat panels will be covered with paintings probably.  It actually looks worse in the photo than it does in reality.

Then I glued the cream moulding to the painted ceiling, and the marble paper to the floor. putting them under some heavy books to flatten them while I waited for the paint on the walls and doors to dry.  I had to leave for an appointment and didn't have much time when we returned, but there was time to put a final coat of cream on the dentil moulding and that dried quickly.

It doesn't take long to assemble the roombox once all that is done and once again it looks spectacular.  Altogether different from the Drawing Room of course, but quite a dramatic room even though it has come out considerably darker than I had intended the panelling to be.  I really like this room.

The door in the left wall goes to the Chinoiserie Room, the arch on the right wall goes to the Grand Staircase and the double doors at the back (which fell of when I was taking the photo and I didn't notice) go to the Drawing Room.

I'm glad I did the colours on the ceiling though, and I will definitely look for something that looks quite bright for the upholstery.

 And I really like the effect of the dentil moulding done in the cream as well.  The ceiling doesn't quite meet all the walls so I need to touch up the gaps with cream paint.

All in all I'm really pleased once again with this room.

Room 1 - Drawing Room

I was really excited when Gayle Baillargeon of Petworth Miniatures sent out a newsletter last year announcing that she was planning a new quarter scale kit, called Hungerford Manor, consisting of 24 single rooms that would be available on a subscription basis, one a month starting from May this year. The rooms can be used as stand-alone roomboxes or can be combined to form a complete manor house.  There will be a lift-off front, but the sides and back will be open for viewing, or that was the plan last year.  I immediately signed up for the subscription.  I intend to buy every room despite the fact that the price for us in Australia is $67 US including postage for the room itself.  Then there's the furniture.  However I figure that I can afford that each month, and to buy a 24-room mansion kit all in one go would be very expensive indeed.

On the ground floor there is a Marble Hall,  Grand Staircase, and Chinoiserie Salon at the front.  At the rear there is a Music Room, Drawing Room, and Dining room.  In the west wing there is a Study, a hall and a Library, and in the east Wing a Kitchen with Butler's Pantry and a Garden Room.

On the first floor front there is a Tapestry room, Ballroom and the staircase.  At the rear there is an Egyptian bedroom, Guest bedroom, bathroom, and French Provincial room.  In the east wing a bedroom, sitting room and bathroom and in the west wing there is another bathroom, sitting room and bedroom.  There are also four attic rooms that Gayle apparently doesn't count.

In April 2015 there will be a catch-up month when anyone who has missed one of the ground floor rooms and decides they want one can order it before the first floor rooms start shipping.

And the quality of this manor house is just outstanding!  The instructions are excellent, everything fits together perfectly, and the finished rooms are stunning.  I can only spend a few hours each day on minis so it took me four days to do the first room, which is the Drawing Room, but here are some pictures of the finished result.

Overview of Drawing Room

Right wall

Left wall

Showing ceiling

The walls are done in Burgundy, and the ceiling, cornice, pilasters, and other trim are all done in Ceramcoat Ivory.  The colours are even richer in real life and the whole room is quite stunning.  I have actually done the doors and didn't realise until I had uploaded the photos here that I haven't put them in - I meant to tape them into place.  I won't be installing them permanently until the adjoining rooms are finally attached.

I have done the furniture for the room as well.  There are four wall sconces, four chairs, some tables, and mirrors.  I've painted them all in gold but I haven't done the faux painted marble on two of the table tops or upholstered the chairs yet so I'll wait until that is all done before I take photos with the furniture in place.  Before I upholster the chairs I have to find where I've put the fabrics I keep for miniatures.  They don't appear to have arrived in the studio, so I have no idea where they are.  Sigh.

Today I've been working on the second room, the Marble Hall.  Hopefully I'll be able to show you tomorrow.