Lots more on the Mystery House

and a soggy end to a wet holiday .....

I never mind the weather when we go away, and nor do Peter and Nathan. We just love being away. Which is just as well, because apart from Monday and a few hours this morning, it has been showers or solid, steady rain all the time - usually the solid, steady rain. We have however had a lovely time with our wonderful friends in spite of that. And we haven't had any problems with the widespread flooding affecting all of the east coast of Australia. Even Warragamba Dam, which supplies Sydney's water, has reached capacity for the first time in 50 years and they've had to open the sluice gates and let water out for several days now. The name 'Warragamba' is an Aboriginalword for 'place where little rain falls' by the way, so of course they built Sydney's main dam there! Just a few years ago it was down to something like 30% and we still have water restrictions in place, though not as severe as they were then.

Sadly, tomorrow we pack up our soaking wet annexe and the soaking wet and muddy flooring to the annexe and our damp clothes etc and go home. And yes, I have taken photos of the beach, the lagoon, the seagulls and the pelicans. But it all looks quite grey and misty so they are not good photos at all.

Today we went to the Nan Tien Buddhist Temple, a very large complex with the biggest temple and the only Buddhist university in the southern hemisphere. It is really beautiful and very peaceful and we enjoyed our visit and the delicious vegetarian meal we had there. However the photos again are against a grey and misty background and I came home soaked to the skin from taking them.

Progress on the Mystery Project

There is a lot to show here!

Ground floor wallpapered

The ground floor looks great with the wallpaper done in all the rooms. On the left looking from the back is the dining room, and on the right is the living room. The dining room is done in a green stripe with a lovely ivy border around the top.

The living room is elegant in its burgundy wallpaper

And the little porch room going off the living room is papered the same but without the formal border.

Tall doors

There are three tall doors leading from the ground floor out onto the verandah: two into the sunroom from the dining room and one into a small porch room from the living room. These are an elegant touch. The instructions suggest adding lace to them for decorative effect, and I will look for something suitable. So the doors are just sitting in place at the moment in order to enable me to do that.

Entrance hall & staircase

I love an entrance hall, and this one makes a 'statement'! It is quite spacious for the size of the house, though there's not a great deal of wall area to arrange furniture against.

The staircase is really beautiful, with the balustrades specially laser cut by Bruce Steinke of BJ Miniatures. I decided to paint part of mine with brown instead of keeping it all white. Then I adhered a laser-cut edging from Jeanetta Kendall as a ‘carved’ feature. I’ve left the stringers and risers white, but done the treads brown as per the instructions. Then it looked odd with the underneath still white so I did that brown too.

Another change I made was to wallpaper the little wall under the stairway in the same paper as the rest of the hallway instead of doing it the same as the living room as it is supposed to be. What do you think? Oh, and I also changed the wallpaper.

Columns seperating living area

Two pairs of columns define the entrance to the living area from the hallway. Each pair consists of a full column and a half column, set against the wall. They are pretty elegant, I think.

Ground floor completed

Showing you the completed ground floor:

Textured finish on foundation

A small bag of texture material is supplied, to be mixed with paint to a creamy consistency and painted on to the foundation of the verandah and the parts of the house that will not be covered by the verandah. It is painted the same colour as the house in the model but here it is still white, as it went on.

Ground floor ceiling/first floor installed

I have put the ceiling/floor in, but the ceiling is not completed. As the lighting is installed, I will be also be putting in a textured ceiling. The instructions are to wallpaper to provide attractive ceilings but I am going to try embossing heavy paper to create something like the lovely ornamentation that one sees in 19^th century houses.

The first floor (or second floor to American readers) has two bedrooms. It is much more straightforward than the ground floor was. On the left is a bedroom papered in a pale brown with a turquoise border, called Mocha Floral (I think)

and the bedroom on the right is in blue.

The hallway has stripes on the bottom half and green 'Impressions' on the top. I've put a dimensional two-layer strip between the two, and need to put a border around the top because there is still a gap. The walls were freshly papered when these photos were taken, so the windows weren't cut out yet and the paper hasn't been trimmed properly at the edges. And yes, most of the papers are from the Lydia Pickett Collection.

I couldn't resist dry-fitting the 2nd floor once I got to this stage (naturally!). There are two more rooms, a small bedroom and an office in the model, and a 'hidden' bathroom in the centre.

Have you guessed yet what the house is? Try looking at posts for 2010!