Welcome to my life . . . .

This is a blog about my passion: dollhouses and miniatures. This particular blog was started to follow my miniature dream: to create a Victorian Mansion. But work on my Mansion is slow. Very slow. Sloth slow. Ice Age glacier movement slow. Why? Because I am easily distracted by other personal miniature projects (I have 50+ roomboxes and 15 dollhouses in various stages of incompletion) and because I work for a miniature shop and am often up to my elbows in miniature projects that aren't mine! So, I thought, some artists work in a particular medium (woods, watercolors, clay, oils, etc.), I work in progress . . . .

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Library Floor

After much deliberation I settled on a library floor!  Brodnax Parquet Leman's Flooring in walnut and cherry.  The only problem was that I didn't like the walnut wood against the mahogany:

More wood stains?!?!?
Although I don't want all the wood stains in the room to be exactly the same, I also don't like having a random wood thrown in there: the cherry picks up the gold in the frame and wallpaper and I liked the pattern of the cherry and walnut (as opposed to the walnut/walnut pattern on the right).  But the walnut doesn't seem to "pop" out like I wanted it to.  Even polyurethaning them didn't seem to help much:
Left are out of the bag; Right are polyurethaned
Still not impressing me.  They seem so dull.  And it doesn't tie in to anything else in the room.  I really wanted a mahogany floor, but with so much mahogany wood already in the room I didn't want to have such a dark, "match-matchy" bookcase/floor statement.  It would all blend together and be a mahogany blah.

Then my mother suggested staining the walnut pieces.  Interesting -- why did I assume I had to keep the walnut pieces exactly as they were out of the bag?!?!?  I hate when I forget to think outside the bag.  Don't tell my mother I said this, but she's a genius!
I like the walnut pieces so much better now.  They have a richness that they lacked before.  They do not match the bookcases (for which I am thankful because I didn't want everything to match), but seem to coordinate well enough that they won't look out of place.

So I spent two days staining little octagon pieces....
Day 1 and I have 1/3 of the pieces stained
Now they are all drying so I can start assembling my floors (now I just need a snow day or two so I get the time to do it)!


2 comments:

  1. Hello Lori,
    Mothers are the best. the stained walnut is gorgeous and really makes the fireplace pop. I can't wait to see the floor installed!
    Big hug
    Giac

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    1. Thank Giac! Although no matter what my final floor looks like, it still won't compare to your beautiful house! (BTW - thanks for mentioning and showing an example of Nicolas Poussin's work! I was thinking of using paintings depicting scenes in the life of Scipio Africanus like what is in The Elms in Newport, but I love the colors in Nicolas Poussin's paintings much better! I may have to research his works for the Dining Room! LOL)

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