Drawers finished, fireplace wall kit completed, starting ground floor decoration

 The drawers are finally finished, with the repairs completed to the trellis front that I had to break off to reverse the incorrect orientation.

I also gave a couple of final coats of white paint to the underside of the house, the two feet, and the underside of the porch trellis to tidy everything up underneath.

Fireplace wall kit

I spent most of this week putting together the Fireplace Wall Kit from Feffie's Cottage, as mentioned in the last post.  This is a lasercut kit that is custom designed to replace the McKinley's much cruder staircase/fireplace wall.  I found that for whatever reason, my ceiling was  1/4" shorter than the laser kit so I had to cut down the main pieces.  There were also several other pieces that didn't quite fit and needed tweaking but I have fed these back politely to the designer so that she can modify future production runs.  Overall it is quite a detailed kit with lots of drawers and two cupboards and a nicely detailed fireplace.  There is no getting around the fact that it is laser cut from plywood, so there are some sooty edges here and there, and some plywood edges showing.  But overall the effect is fairly good. The original kit, as per the stock image in the last post, comes with lasercut 2D banisters and newel post.  I replaced those with actual 3D banisters, cutting them down to be the same height and to have a little tab protruding at the base to fit into the laser cut hole in each stair step.  I also found a half-thickness newel post in my stash (no idea from where) so I laminated that to the original 2D newel post to add some dimension.  I haven't applied the top and bottom trim or glued in the handrail, I need to wait until the room is decorated and the fireplace wall installed, then I can hide any small gaps with the trim.

Starting ground floor decoration

Now that I know the dimensions of the fireplace wall and where it will go, I've started on the ground floor decoration:  flooring, wallpaper, border, skirting and cornice.  As a first step, I made patterns for the floors in both rooms and then cut those out of parquet effect decorative card.  The floor papers are still loose so I can put them safely away until the wallpapering is done.