Extending The Framework

The Boring Bits....

It was a Beautiful, sunny, (if Cold!) Saturday morning, Dear Readers, just perfect for photographing the Tree House in its proper position on the base of "The Folly" to give you an idea of the relative scale of this House! And of course, you will want to see it with the doors open and the morning sun shining into the tiny rooms!

 I had Visions of accomplishing great amounts of decorative progress, but Alas, the Fun stuff had to be postponed in order to get the basic Framework of these newest Rooms completed. And here I refer in particular to the Dressing Room! I must confess that this Dressing Room is a complete "After thought" .... After I had decided that the stairs, which on all the other floors of the house were accessed by going Through the room, making it very public, on the Bedroom floor and subsequent floors the stairs would need to be accessed directly from the corridor leaving the Room itself more private. And so where the stairs were in the lower rooms suddenly became an "unused space" on the bedroom floor.... and That was when it occurred to me that I Could make it into a Dressing Room... with it's own little door opening on the other side of the Tree....!!! and so you see what Trouble I have gotten myself into....!

You can see in the above picture, the beginnings of adding the Dressing Room. It was easy enough to extend the floor a little way further than the other floors.... the idea is that there is a "Gnarly bump" on this side of the Tree........ But the difficulty comes in with the necessity of making the Door wall curved! The Hinged side of the door needs to attach to the same structural wooden "post" as all the other doors. But the interior of the room would be too small without the extended "bumped-out" floor... which is curved! So I built a Door with an angled surface.... you can see the beginnings below.....

Of course, I forgot to take a lot of pictures of me cutting and re-cutting and gluing and fitting and swearing when all the pieces fell down for the hundredth time and cutting some more..... 'cause the really hard part was fitting the Framework that the door rests against when closed... the outer edge of the Dressing Room wall....! Which you can sort of see mostly Completed below.... Oh and did I mention that I Found another one of my Marbles!!! It is now the Dressing Room Window!

And here the Dressing Room door is open....

I apologize for the blurry photo... by then it was Quite Late and Dark...!!!

And you must Not look at how rough and uneven my saw cuts are.... !

And another view of the Dressing Room "Bump" from the side.....

And Another view.... see I promised you some Boring Bits!

And since I have Detoured the stairs.... 

I thought I had better show you where they are going up now...

But brace yourself... they are Really rough and un-finished...!

The Plan is that they will twist in a Spiral Staircase up the back corner of the Tree House..... 

Starting off the corridor at the back of the Bedroom.... 

where the stairs come up from the floor below.....

and using the wire at that corner for the anchoring post.....

Of course, it will create a bit of a "bump out" on this corner of the Tree... 

but I will not have to build a Door to access them... 

they will be essentially hidden from sight... 

but I will know they are there!!

As for Progress on the Rest of the Bed Room..... 

I added the window in the wall beside the Fireplace...

And started the Framework for the Bed.... 

Really just so I could figure out the space it needs in this little room...

But Anna Maria had to come along and have a look.....

I think she was imagining something a little more Ornate.....

Perhaps it just needs some Decoration..... Like This!

But meanwhile.... while we are making up our minds....

 

It is good enough to give an idea of how it fits in the Room. 

 And even if we didn't get to any of the Fun Decorative Projects... 

I made good progress on the Boring but necessary 

Extending of the Framework!

Building Up The Fire!

Baby, It's Cold Out There...!

We have been enduring a Cold spell in this part of the World, Dear Readers, and while it has in No way been Record setting, it has nevertheless stayed below freezing for more than a week! So it can be no Surprise that I begin the decor of the Tree House Bedroom by building the Fireplace! I wanted this Fireplace to have a very Roccocco  feeling to it... and at such a small scale, I was not sure I could pull it off! But I found an old piece of decorative moulding that seemed to have the necessary proportions and so I decided to give it a try! To begin with I cut several cross section pieces about 3/16ths of an inch wide....

Here you can see me beginning to test them against the already painted fireplace opening....

And here you can see I have cut two of the pieces short to meet in the center.......

I wanted the curves to be softer so I took my smallest round file to the edges......

And I also cut a top surface out of thin 3/8 inch trim and shaped it to fit.....

And then painted it all black and "marbled" the surface with white.... 

I think I will try to make the veining of the marble a little finer... 

it looks so coarse in these pictures!

I attached the mantlepiece to the wall section that had the brickwork already painted.... 

Oh, and I also painted all the room walls a lovely soft Grey-green color.....

Then I glued it to the "Marble" hearth slab... 

and attached the painted brick fire-surround to the back side.....

And then I had to test it and see how it looked in the Room...

Of course, it was Dark and Late... 

and we are at the stage when all the walls are just propped in place 

so if you even Think a jumpy thought... everything falls apart...!

But I couldn't leave it there.... 

I Had to see how it would look with "Fire" burning in the hearth....

Of course, I completely forgot to take any pictures of the process of Building the fire itself!

So you will have to bear with me while I just show you the end product...

From as many angles as I can.....

And more shots in the Bedroom....

And a glimpse through the Balcony doors.....

Well, it's not quite finished... 

I still need to add glowing coals and andirons and a fender... 

But it's a Start!

So, while you're waiting, Please come on in and Help me build up the Fire.....

'Cause Baby it's Cold out there...!

The Next Room

Ready Or Not....!

There are still a few items I want to make for the Tree House Library, Dear Readers, but they will have to be added later because I just Could NOT wait to start on the Next Room in the Tree House! There have been several things about this next level that have been unresolved in my mind as I try to envision the structure I will need to build. But then one night I had a Dream, and in the Dream I could see the room so clearly, it was as though I were walking around in it...! So is it any Wonder that I had to get started right away? For this next room will be the Master Bedroom....
In the picture above you can see that the beginning is much the same as for the last two rooms....
I cut the walls out of very thin plywood and loosely taped them in place while I decided the position of the doorways..

The room will be entered from the hall at the top of the stairs.... 

which runs at the back of the room....

And on the right side where the stairs usually go up in the lower rooms, 

in this room the door will lead not to the stairs, but into a dressing room instead. 

The stairs will take a different path upward..... 

but I will have to show you that step when we get there!

And as usual, I have started on the design of the room by working on the outer door wall first.....

And rather than have windows, like all the other rooms, 

 it will have doors that open onto a little Juliet Balcony.....

Here below you can see the roughly cut doors.....

And here you can see the Hinges being added.....

 

(And you KNOW how much I LOVE Hinges...!)

Because it means the Doors Open and Close...!!!!

And here you can see the rough framework for the Balcony floor....

And the Outer Door is attached to the Frame of the Tree House.....

Which is starting to look quite tall...!!

Oh, I think I am going to LOVE this little Juliet Balcony.....!

With the doors that swing wide open to let in the fresh breezes.... 

(I will need to patch the wood on the insides of the doors....)

And the view through the room to the hallway door beyond.....

Please Forgive me while I play with the Hinges...!!!

Because Ready or Not.....

We're in the Next Room!

Hiding Wires

Tying Up Loose Ends......

You May remember, Dear Readers, that it was AGES ago that I began to try to complete the wiring for the Lights in The Folly! The difficulty is that this kit has Very Thin walls! There is no room to bury the wires in channels cut into the walls themselves, and so I am having to be sort of Inventive with ways to conceal the wires and still end up with lights where they would be most practical and realistic! I have decided that this is a step that has been delayed long enough, as all the rest of the decorating depends on the lights being in place. There are still several lights I have not decided where they will go.... particularly in the kitchen.... but I have decided to at least Finish the ones that I do have in place!
For the Upstairs bedroom I have made a very Bohemian Style ceiling fixture out of a jewelry piece... a Silver bangle from India.... and you can see (in the picture above) it is attached in the topmost peak of the roof. I ran the wire across the wall inside the peak and will hide it inside the roof edge over the stairway....

where you can see it here still dangling loosely....

It is really difficult to get pictures of this... 

so you will just have to use your imaginations....

Eventually it will run in a channel down the edge of the kitchen wall..... 

I haven't finished this yet!

But I did hide most of the wires for the Sconce in the Book Nook.....

I forgot to take pictures of the process.... 

but the wires run down under the decorative wood trim below the light.... 

and come under the window beneath the baseboard trim. 

See... you can't see the wires! 

They will also get hidden in a channel along the kitchen wall... 

and so reach the plug strip in the cellar below the house!

For the rest of the upstairs lights, 

the candle in the bedroom nook, and the wires for the Porch light, 

I have run them through the wall into the bathroom......

Where I have had to hide them under the baseboards running around the bathroom walls......

Here you can see the wires where they come through the wall....

And here the baseboard on the right side is in place,

 and I have started the process of trying to glue the wires in place neatly enough that they can eventually be covered by the baseboard.... 

which I have carved out on the back side to accommodate the thickness of the wires....

I glued them one wire at a time... one section at a time.... 

taping them in place until the glue dried...

And even this way the thickness of the wires is such that I will have to gouge more out of the back of the baseboard for it to really fit snugly.....

I will also add a section of baseboard over the wires at the far end.... 

although with the sink and tub in place they are hardly visible!

The overhead light in this room (when I decide what sort of light is needed...) 

will run down the roof panel the same way the Bedroom light does....

But already it is looking So Much more organized!

And while I was tying up loose ends.... 

I decided that the time had come to bury the wires on the Tree House too! 

I probably haven't shown you what a terrible mess the wires were on the back side of the Tree House...!

Keep in mind that the Tree House is run on battery powered LED's which means they have polarity and so it is very important to keep the red wires and black wires separate! If they touch... they blow the bulb... and I am NOT replacing any of the lights in the Tree House! So I have been treating them VERY Carefully while I try to figure out just How and Where I am burying their connections!!! These kits from Evan Designs are Wonderful and very easy to use... and it says you can join up to ten LED's on one battery. I have used nine LED's so far in the first three rooms of the Tree House... so I decided it is time to fix this circuit grouping in place. The lights for the next rooms will go together on another battery and it will need to be kept separated from this first circuit so no wires can get mixed up in the wrong circuit.!

I started by deciding that the red wires and black wires needed to all meet up at the base of the tree in two separate spots.....

Of course, it is really difficult to see these clearly...... 

but I had to shorten the wires that were close to the base, 

but still leave enough length to manipulate them and twist ends together securely.... 

And because the wires from the higher rooms would not reach the base junction spots... 

I decided to join them together higher up and run single wire extensions down to the base joins...... 

Here you can see the upper wires joined together before I added the extension wires....

And I have carefully covered all the junctions with shrink tubing..... 

which you can see here below before the shrinking.....

And here it is  with the wires all joined..... 

I have taped them in place with masking tape 

which will all be covered with more paper mache when the outer layer of the Tree is built.....

And now for the Really big question.... do the lights Work...???

YES!!! They do!!!

All neatly connected to One battery pack.... 

with long lead wires so I can adjust them later...!

And The Folly Too....

The wires have been covered with a piece of cardboard to make the surface of the bed nook.... and in the corner where they go through the wall they are painted brown to camouflage them! There is an outlet in that corner too in case a table lamp is needed as well....

And when the lights are on....

It's starting to look ready to finish decorating .....

I've made some real progress.... 

But there is still a ways to go with hiding all the wires!

Just a Little Tying up loose ends....!