The Dolls House Halls

Work on the hallways has been painfully slow for two reasons. 
Reason #1 My chronic inability to make up my mind!! 
First there was the wallpaper, what colour? 


red was my first choice, but I wondered if this and a contrasting red carpet would be too much. 

Next came this sort of blue flowered one but that looked a bit drab

 Then when I was out with my friend D browsing round a dolls house shop D suggested this green one which as you can see is the one I went with even though I'm not 100% sure about it, but after struggling with the papyrus thin paper and having to re-do bits of it I really didn't want to start again with a different paper.

So having completed the wallpapering the next job was the flooring. I wanted real wood but it's quite expensive, and I've already decided to put real wood and a medallion floor in the library. I found some wood floorboard strip at £10.95 for 1.3 sq ft. I think 2 would have done the three halls, but then I had brainwave - 

 spatulas, at only £1.59 for 100, two boxes did the job.

At first I pencilled lines across each end of the spatulas  to get an accurate cut, but that was labour intensive so I just cut them. The next job was fitting them.

 Most of them were straightforward, full length, halves at the front and back, and fitting around stairwells.

Cutting around the bases of the doors was tricky

So now they were nicely cut out I had another decision to make - what colour to stain them. 

                                                                                                       Light Teak or American Walnut

Contrary to my usual MO I actually made up my mind more or less straight away. I like the American Walnut but I wanted a richer colour so I decided on the Light Teak. After gluing them in place I stained them. I did the ones around the door out of situ as I didn't want to risk getting the stain on the doors. It didn't matter if I got it on the walls as I was going to put skirting boards in. Most of them warped slightly so I piled some heavy books on top overnight and that levelled them out nicely. Varnishing wasn't such a trial, I knew I wanted a gloss finish. They needed about 5 coats and I'm very pleased with the result.

I put that bubble wrap round the edge because I was forever catching the wallpaper every time I reached in - I was reaching in a lot of times measuring and trying to join angles.

With the floors looking good my next job was the skirting boards, oh boy that was a trial. The straight bits were fine, I've got a miniature mitre box so the corners were easy. The problems arose when I wanted to put skirting board on the wall at the same angle as the stairs. I thought it would be easy. 

Reason #2 My brain just isn't wired to understand anything remotely to do with maths - equations, angles, calculations. I thought I could just cut the wood at an angle and it would fit, I still don't understand why it doesn't!! Anyway after much cutting, fitting and swearing I was ready to abandon the idea. 

After struggling with the ground floor and about to start on the first floor, eureka, another brainwave - USE CARDBOARD TEMPLATES Sometimes I amaze myself!! ha ha :-)...... 

It was full steam ahead after that. Put the lights in, run the wires underneath boards that were in place but not glued, in case I need access, and pretty soon the project was finished. Yeah.