Bombay House living room

I installed the overhead light in the living room area. Because this is a textured ceiling (textured wallpaper from a teacher I used to work with), I didn't think that the sticky pad on the light fixture would hold so I used general purpose silicon sealant to hold it in place.

Time to bite the bullet and install the staircase. With the staircase in place, I traced along the underside with a pencil. Then I removed the staircase and painted a half inch of glue above the line. I also glued along the top back of the staircase itself. (I didn't glue the bottom of the stairs that rests on the floor because I didn't want to smear glue on the floor.)

The staircase was glued in place then I trimmed the stained handrail and glued it in place.

I coloured the Houseworks 5026 corner/angled side bookcase black and gave it two coats of satin varnish.

Here's the room with the burgundy leather couch and black leather chair.

The first two pictures show the room with two beautiful coffee tables by Shelley Acker from Nova Scotia. The first is one of my favourites but the second one has the black wood which goes well with  the rest of the furniture but is smaller. And I really like large coffee tables....

Another possibility is to cut the legs down on the table I had thought to use in the bedroom alcove and use it as a coffee table. Colour and size would be right for my taste. (And it has storage, something I always need/appreciate.)

I could then use Shelley's black table in the corner by the chair .

The other question is lighting...I like LOTS of light in my living room so I want both a floor and table lamp in here.

I want a floor lamp at the far end of the couch and a table lamp beside the chair.

I love these two floor lamps but I don't have any table lamps that would work with them. And I think I could use the three light one at the end of the chaise longue in the bedroom area. (And, no, there isn't a picture of that here so don't waste time looking.)

These would be great to add a dash of colour to the room. But maybe a bit retro...and they don't give a great deal of light. Hey! I want to read in there.
The cords are very short but I've actually thought of a way I could use them without even having to lengthen the cords. (That can be done easily though, thanks to Jonesy and the tutorial from Victoria Miniland.)

And these would  work...but they're sort of....well, blah:

Would really be interested in your input. Other miniaturists often see possibilities that I've missed.  I do have some ability, lights, and hollow brass tubing so I could make really simple lights.

staircase 2

Just have to show you how it's coming along before I go to bed...

Here's the backside of the staircase with the runner finally glued in place and the ends trimmed:

And here it is placed in position in the living/dining room:

Side comment: Aren't we miniaturists interesting people in that we would put all that effort into a carpet runner that will never be seen? And now I'm seriously debating whether or not to put brass carpet rails on each step...


Thought about that - a lot - and decided not to: mostly because this is a modern house -  and generally you only find carpet rails in older/Victorian houses. Even though I kept the carpet in this as a strip (leaving the wood on either side), I think it's something that would work in a modern house. 


If I WERE to go with the carpet rails, I would  cut pieces of the brass snare wire I bought at Canadian Tire and glue them in place.

And with the handrail in place but not glued or trimmed:

(The colour variation is just shadow.)

I really like how this is coming together!

Living room and staircase

Anything to delay cleaning and doing paperwork...

I taped down the kitchen and living/dining room floors and started work on the staircase.

I had a piece of white swirly matboard that I wanted to 'paper' the back wall of the living/dining room with. As I took the measurements for the back wall, I discovered it wasn't quite square so I made a template from paper to make sure I cut the matboard to the size needed. Then it was taped in place.

Finally decided to do a solid wall up the side of the staircase. First, I covered the bottom of the staircase with a piece of the matboard.

The ends of the matboard need to be bevelled to match the angle of the stair ends.

This is the piece of matboard that will go up the side of the stairs. If I glue it directly to the stairs, it adds just a fraction too much width to the stairs so it doesn't quite fit in the stairwell. So I traced along the edge of the stairs and pulled off some of the layers of matboard.

Here the matboard is glued to the edge of the stairs.

I have a beautiful white stair runner with a border in my stash but unfortunately it's too wide for this set of stairs. But I found a piece of deep burgundy velvet ribbon that would work well. Unfortunately, it has a plastic backing so it's a bit harder to glue in place.

It does glue on but has to be clamped in place for about 10 - 15 minutes so I ended up doing two steps at a time and clamping scraps of wood in place until the glue dries.

At this rate, the runner should be glued in place before I go to bed tonight.

Then tomorrow I'll glue the handrail on and glue the stairs in place.