Forgive my reference in the title harking back to school days, but it seemed most appropriate at the moment during  this weird inbetween time of year.

So, this is what has been going on in my mini world.

The Roof that Must Move

As I want to be able to still get at the bed etc in that upper space, I’ve been trying to work out how small a shape I can get a hand holding a bed in and out of the bedroom and came up with a sort of solution.  I set about making a length of roofing to more or less fit in place.  And hopefully stay in place when required by the judicious use of bits of wood sticking out at the edges.

Still to be toned down at this point and a bit of a gap here and there but it may just do the job.  The ‘bits of wood sticking out’ are, on the left the beam sliding below the fixed roof inner edge and on the right small pieces of wooden tile laths slipped under the fixed bottom row of tiling. As long as I don’t sneeze or dance around near it, the removable section stays in place.

What now?

Am determined not to get the bits I always used to leave till last or even filled in as I went along, left till whenever, and am more or less working in an more or less orderly fashion.  And if you believe that, well …

… therefore with this hopeful fantasy in mind I’ve set about working out the lighting for the three main space before doing the extra enjoyable bit of dressing the spaces.

Plans are to use only battery lighting and make an attempt to keep it as simple as poss.  This particular build is set in a period when rush lighting and candles along with the odd wall torch if your income would run to the iron work, and, of course the central fire, were just about all you could call on after dark.  There is also the possibility of one or two hand-held lamps with a candle or dish of some other grease with wick to floating burn inside.

Am going for a general lighting and build on from there, I think, with non-working candles around the place, but we’ll see.

General lighting – going a bit stagey

So, for the kitchen/storage I’ve used a square profile banister rail to be laid on its side which, because of the shaping of the rail gives it a bit of a tip.  It needed further bits of wood strip stuck here and there to create a more usable appearance and create a relatively flat surface to use for the odd basket etc.

The light strip is used folded over a number of times, hence the shoving along the drinking straw to hold the layers together.  I’ve also trimmed a little excess off the end of the string of lights, reducing the bulb number by a few.

The drinking straw does love to roll around and is therefore held in place by a single width of a bit of trellis glued to the open edges of the bannister and painted over.

With no workroom lights on it looks very stagey.  Hope to add small light here and there at the back, but will see how it goes when the furniture etc is in place.

Upstairs

Used much the same arrangement for here but using a much smaller bannister rail and one square thickness of one of those oven chip trays that used to be found in Poundland etc.

There is, however a catch for doing this with the bedroom space.  Or rather a couple of hinderences.  That is, two roof truss supports.  The bottom of these prevent a continuous run of woodwork.

With a bit of hacking to under cut the supports at the bottom the light string alone will pass from one space to the next.  So that is what I’ve done.

Took a little while trying this out so as to be sure that it might work but so far so good.  There’s just one light bulb per ‘bead’ length more or less.  Why double sided tape?  Not sure how long these lights will last for nor sure if the battery can be accessed as feels like a sealed unit.  But for the moment they’re doing an interesting job.

Must clean up better and then move on to the Hall area perhaps, or, better still, finish the building in the storage area so it can be dressed up.

I’ve moved the house itself off the work table and spread different coloured work mats on it instead.  It gives very handy deliniated areas for sorting through what I’ve bought or made or dug out from storage for each space to be worked on. And, above all, what still needs making, altering, generally refining, or heaven forfend(!) has to be bought.