Fox Manor

Ground Floor - The Entrance Hall

Hello everyone, I hope you are all well and thank you for the lovely, and very encouraging, comments on my work.  It's truly appreciated.  I also want to welcome Tatiana as my third follower, and to Ray as my fourth, I am truly honoured. :) Thank you to all for taking the time to follow my blog.

Now that I have completed the basement, I am ready to start the main house.

I would, ideally, love to have a house that 'worked', as in the stairs connected to floors and rooms.  But as it is, I have decided that I am greedier for rooms to decorate!

I wanted to have a small set of stairs in the Entrance Hall going to a landing and giving the illusion that there are more rooms and other stairs to the back of my manor.  So, the stairs/hallways that would have gone up through the house, will now be rooms, and the 'working stairs' will be way at the back of the building.....in my mind anyway:)

When my daughter first saw the hall, I saw her looking around the little wall I erected, and said it makes you curious to know what else was beyond....yes...mission accomplished (with her anyway :))

 

 

My Entrance Hall.  It's very hard to take a picture because of the placement of the mirror.  Face on, all you can see is me, and we don't want that! 

 

 

 If you remember back to the first little hall in the basement, I covered it with marble tiles stuck onto card.  Well, I liked it so much that I did it again here.  I just had enough black tiles for this, not one left over!  It was meant to be :)  I wallpapered the ceiling in a white embossed paper because I had to fill in and cover up the hole that was for the stairwell.  I also had to fill in the holes in the sides of the walls where the landing for the stairs would have slotted into.  The wallpaper on the wall here was a soft rose/beige colour, English Rose by Mini Graphics, and is different to the main part of the hall; again, hoping to give the illusion that there is more beyond!

A close-up of part of the ceiling paper.

 

 

The ceiling of the ground floor/floor of the first floor getting the stairwell filled in with a sandwich of foamboard and cardboard, all well glued together and then glued in place.  I have so say, at this point I realised that if I wanted to do a good job on the ceilings, I was going to have to do them now, before the piece went into the house!  I can only imagine the difficulty in painting them in situ!

 

I chopped up the stairs that came with the house and attached one of the landings to the remaining three steps after I tiled them with the same marble as the hall.

 

My splats for the hall were painted an old gold.

I had a lovely paper punch I used.  I took the discarded shapes, and for each of the three steps, I glued three pieces on top of each other for a bit of thickness and painted them the same old gold as the splats and then glued them to the side of my stairs. 

 

Quite pretty...

 

Things look a bit wonky...but I got that sorted out!

I inserted the stairs, supported the landing around the back and put up the false wall.  I have the little doorway in the back with the key in the door and a triple candle light on the back wall.  I used my dremel for the first time here, and didn't have it going fast enough because the wallpaper started to smoke and I thought the whole place would go up in flames!  My hubby laughed in his manly, knowing way and said I was going too slow to drill the hole right through, but fast enough to light a fire.  I'd be handy on a desert island eh? :)  Luckily, the small smoke stain was covered by the light fitting, phew!

 

 

Awkward.  I used a different paper for the front part of the hall, it is Villa Fleta from Les Chinoiseries.  I think the two wallpapers and flooring work well together, but doesn't look too overpowering or confusing.  I hope....

I bought a plaster door surround from Sue Cook but used it instead at the top of my stairs, and I think it looks well.

 

I really didn't want to use the stairs that come with the kit, but had no other choice, so I decided to bling up the newel post a little with a filigree.

 

I tried making a handrail by painting a skewer gold and topping it off with a piece of marquetry, but it just didn't look right.  I'm sure I'll find a use for it somewhere! So, I just cut a handrail down to size that came with my house.

I cut off the bottom prongs of my splats and then attached them to a piece of wood for stability.

There's that old gold paint again!

The view of the stairs from what will be the Sitting Room.

 

Not looking too bad at all...wait a minute, where's the skirting board :)

 

 A view from what will be the Dining Room ....with double doors!  I have this room started, so I can finish the Hall, if that makes sense :)
 I may put in a larger chandelier, I don't know yet, I'll live with this one for a while, then we'll see.... 
 

Not a great picture, but I wanted to show the key in the door.

Absolutely nothing to do with my hall, but let me introduce you to my best friend, the long nose grip pliers, and my newest bestest friend, the wire stripper for teeny tiny fine lighting wires.  Just brilliant.

Little gloves, just lovely.
 

A picture I reduced of my daughter number one, Siobhán.

A statue from Sue Cook, looks well here, I think.

 

So there we have the Entrace Hall.  I am delighted with it, I hope you can imagine that up those few steps and through the door lies the rest of Fox Manor.

 

This is just an idea of the floorplan of Fox Manor.  As you can see the rooms above the entrance hall are now going to be a small gent's study and the lady's dressing room - and not the stairway as it is supposed to be. The attic floor, I am not completely settled on yet, the bathroom and nanny's room may get swapped around - it depends on how my furniture fits in...yes everything's been bought long ago :)

Even though I am losing the stairway, I will still try to give the impression of hallways and doors leading somewhere else to the back of the Manor.

Thank you all once again for looking and I hope you enjoyed the making of my Entrance Hall.

All the best,

Vivian