The basement

I have managed to tweak a good size kitchen from the basement area.  Sharing windows out is the constraint when cutting up room spaces.  The kitchen gets two.

kitchen

The scullery is behind and returning dishes are left in the service corridor for Daisy to pick up.  

My challenge for this room will be getting the correct range. I have a few options.  I can stick with the open fire and spit arrangement.  Cheat the dates and use a lovely Pheonix kitchener which is a bit further ahead than my 1820 dates, or I could have a go at adapting it but that is a waste of money and is difficult with a cast piece.  I love the idea of collecting kitchen bits and pieces, my favourite doll's house room.

The entrance from the service corridor is at the back of the kitchen and is an archway not a doorway.  There are other doors between the smells and the family rooms so it is easier to come and go through here without a door.

There is another arch at the front leading to the servants' hall.

servants' hall

The servants' hall sits between the kitchen and the cook's room and has an arched entrance from the kitchen but a door into the cook's room.  I originally decided to have a door at the back to the service area but it made it night on impossible to furnish with three doorways leading in and out.  Sadly for my carpenter I didn't realise this until he had cut it out for me.  This is back wall part two. This should work well.  I have seen a servants hall with a built in bench across the back wall and the table in front of that plus chairs around it.  The table would be shoved back against the wall when the staff weren't eating there.  Indeed dining tables in the formal dining room were only just beginning to stay in place by 1820, they too used to be pushed against the wall.   Hopefully I can get in a few more bits and bobs such as a small sloping writing area with the bells above.

the bells

The door in the servants' hall leads into cook's room.

cook's room

Cook's room has a completely built-in cupboard right across the back wall which will shorten the room by two inches and make it better proportioned.  Besides this and her fireplace she will need a desk, a comfy chair, small table and two chairs.  Going to be a bit of a squeeze.  She did get a fire in the evening in the winter.  This is a good house to work in.

The attic

Moving upstairs we arrive in the attic rooms.

servant's rooms

All three rooms have windows and the one on the right and left will have a small fireplace, not that they are ever lit.  These rooms were once family rooms used for a nursery and visiting young people and unimportant guests.  They are no longer needed for that function and the sisters have allowed them to be used by the female staff.  Cook and the Maid have the good rooms (after all they do double up as housekeeper and lady's maid) and the centre one is shared by the housemaid and the kitchen maid.  The poor scullery maid sleeps in the servants' hall.  There is talk of putting a truckle bed in the room for her but Nancy and Ruby are 'dead set against it':  bad enough doubling up when other servants accompany visitors.

The butler and footman have rooms across the corridor.

These rooms will all be accessed from the service corridor each having a door on the back wall.

Now to see where they all work.

First floor

On the first floor we have just two rooms ...

the drawing room

This is  the nicely enlarged drawing room.  Having said that I have just given myself  even more inches to deal with!  Again it is another public room and the main one of the house and should impress at least a little.  The long back wall is the challenge here.  I am considering breaking it up with a central arched bump-out with a chaise against the wall, making a nice a deux area. 

The right hand wall maintains the symmetry  with two doors.  The back one leads to the main family landing (and stairs) and is the entrance to the room.  The door towards the front of the photo leads to the library.

Fireplaces in all rooms will be on the side walls.

the library

 The library (rather than a study) is very much a room for display, leading only from the  drawing room.  There will be good displays of books and artefacts relating to the sisters' interests.

You might just be able to see that the back wall cuts off three inches of the depth of the room making it better proportioned but, more importantly, it gives a space behind for the landing and public access to the drawing room.  The service stairs also come out on to that landing.  I thought of a jib door from the drawing room, but this house really isn't important enough for one of those.   The challenge here is floor to ceiling bookshelves.

Ground floor

Dalton House is beginning to look more like a house than a bookshelf, at last.

If you don't think you can bear a tour of ten wooden holes this is the place to leave me for four days. I thought I might show you a floor a day and explain where I am up to.

The hall

The hall is a relatively small area as it was with many of these houses the inner hall and stairs was the larger grander space.  This was a means of keeping the cold and unwanted visitors out. There will be three doors.  The one at the rear will be very slightly open to suggest it leads to the inner hall and stairs.

I am considering two corner niches to display some fossils and maybe some posh doors.

The door on the right leads to the Parlour.

This is the room most used by the sisters.  Breakfast is taken here and often their other meals when they don't have visitors.  This is where they entertain informally and sew and read and pass their evenings.

The door on the left of the hall leads to the dining room.

dining room

This will be one of the challenging rooms to decorate and furnish as it needs to be impressive but not too grand for a modest house in Lyme Regis.  Inspiration for the period comes mostly from very grand houses preserved by the National Trust (etc.) and I keep being misled by perfect Adam rooms and then mad Rococo and have to reign myself in and realise it would be like trying to make my real house look like something from a Homes and Gardens magazine.  I haven't quite got the pitch for the house yet but I hope I will have before too long.  That way I will get to sleep at night.

The kit is becoming expensive

You have seen the 'cupboard' stage of the assembly - it looks a bit like a bookshelf - and the pavement area; those are pretty much all I am keeping.  

redundant walls and floors

Indeed even within that I had three new floors cut and most of the dividing walls.  My other half cut me five new walls and has cut doorways in two others.

windows, stairs, quoins

If I can find (thirteen) better windows that will fit (eluding me right now) all these windows will be replaced.  Stacked with them are three sets of stairs which are also redundant.  The quoins look a bit flimsy but they may be OK when sanded to tidy them up and painted.  

Not seen here is the Victorian (!!!!) front door.  I really seem to have only one option and that is to use it.  Any Georgian front door arrangement I have found doesn't fit and adjusting the opening to try to make them fit is not viable.  If I can disassemble it I do have a cunning plan to make it look Georgian and to get it to stop floating in mid wall. 

To Pinterest or not to Pinterest

I suspect like a lot of people I came across Pinterest a while ago now and, again like a lot of people, spent far too much time trawling through it.  I even had a couple of short flings with it.  Happily (as far as I am concerned) I am now cured and have returned to my very own form of scrap-booking anything I am working on - a ring binder, some paper and some glue....

glue drying

I have a fairly large collection of stuff for reference on the computer which is also accessible to my iPad so I can have electronic nudges available to me wherever I am but nothing beats a good old feet up on the settee with a file full of paper.  The scrapbook is a collection of photo references - culled right down to the 'absolutely-want-something-to-look-like-this' selection.  There are also all kind of scribbled notes, plans, drawings, copied text; just about anything I know will be really useful, and it is all kept in one place.

The miracle ELF

I can not praise ELF miniatures enough.  This is my third encounter with Elizabeth and her wonderful creations and she and they are just as perfect as before.

I emailed her with an idea for a linen cupboard in the house (not even on a working day).  I said it could be much plainer and flat fronted but keep the feet.  Within the hour she sent me a drawing and asked if I wanted doors and drawers to open or not.  I opted for closed drawers with opening cupboards in case I get rich/daft enough to collect linens further down the line.

Georgian linen press

Shortly afterwards I received this with a promise to make the kit for me the next day.  

Believe me this is one busy lady but she squeezes stuff in where she can and I am so grateful.  You will be seeing more of her work as I bowl along.