Ballroom (Ceiling) Dancing

Getting the Mansion's ballroom ceiling painted has been quite a dance and an effort in patience.  The house is upside down so that when I glue the ceiling panels in I won't have to clamp them in place (I'll let gravity do the heavy work for me :) ).  Plus the ceiling panels could lay flat on the ceiling in between the times I had available for painting them (i.e. they didn't take up space on my dining room table when I wasn't painting them).  I used Unique Miniature ceilings (needed 3 of them to fill the giant ballroom ceiling space)!

Cut the panels to fit

Painted everything a light ivory

Realized when I was cutting the ceiling panels that the ballroom will have crown molding.  And crown molding won't fit up against the ceiling since the medallions make a drastically uneven surface.  So I had to install a filler piece of stripwood for the crown molding to sit on once it's installed.

Burgundy painted stripwood for the future crown molding - it will go all around the room, even the stairway opening.

Started with the burgundy accent paint on the ceiling (view looking in the window)

Just ivory and burgundy, looking a little plain...

Added some light blue!

There's blue there, honest!

Tiny swirls of blue on the corners and blue diamond points in the burgundy inset

Beige accents (can you see my fingernail? That's roughly the size of these medallions I'm painting!)

View looking in from the window....

3 colors (burgundy, blue, and beige) in addition to the base light ivory

Time to add green!

Looking good, but still needs that last touch of color!

The design is not only small, but in several places the tiny details in the design were not fully imprinted/cast so in some areas the design details are simply what I painted to give the illusion the design is there.

There's the gold!

Ceiling was finally sort-of finished!

After weeks and weeks of repeated attempts to paint neatly, followed by repeatedly going back to touch up paint as I didn't paint as neatly as I wanted all the time, it only needed one more final review (in which I discovered 2 medallions I had forgotten to paint the green sun rays on one side, an entire row I forgot to paint the green circles, 2 swirly bits I missed with the blue paint, and a few gold half circles in the center of the medallion I had not painted).  Out of 100 medallion designs I am not going to beat myself up for having missed these...at least, I won't beat myself up as much about it anymore (it's been a few days since I discovered and painted/fixed them).

All done and with stripwood crown molding spacers/fillers in place

I have not glued it down yet - there is a gap near the back wall that I need to fill in with plaster and paint light ivory to blend in with the ceiling and I think some of the crown molding stripwood fillers need to be trimmed slightly...But it's almost done!  So close!  And once it's glued in, the house can be flipped right side up again and the exterior finished!

With sample of crown molding in place

Using 2 pieces of crown to create a larger crown molding

Future vision of ballroom (ceiling part with furniture, flowers, flooring, and wallpaper):

Crown molding wasn't painted the exact shade of burgundy I decided upon but this was my brief "put it together to see if it all works" staging.

In the meantime, my beautiful curtains (made by Designs by Janet) arrived and although I was very intimidated and nervous I would mess them up, I did finally get them glued into place in the lady's sitting room and bedroom!

Curtains in sitting room bay window

Right side of sitting room (opposite the curtains)

Whole view of sitting room (although I had removed the wing chair and forgot to return it for the overall photo).  Like my note reminding myself to not glue in the door trim (or else I'll accidentally glue the door in which will make wallpapering the next room very difficult)?

However, when I went to glue in the bedroom curtain, I realized that the bedpost will hit against the curtain and if I move the bed over a bit it crowds the rest of the furniture in the room.  So the bedroom needed to be rearranged...

Trying to fit the curtain with bed in the corner (old furniture arrangement)

After rearranging:

I like this arrangement better than what I had before!

Not liking the walnut window pane trims being seen with the rest of the room.

I believe the Lady's bedroom needs some ecru sheers on the window too -- I don't like seeing the gold window trim and walnut stain window parts.  So ecru sheers are being purchased soon....and I have to find a new spot of the rug (currently under the bed mostly) so it's seen more.

But Mansion is getting some love right now.  As are some other projects!  I'm hoping to do an update, once a week or twice a month (depending on how busy I get), regarding other projects I have going on this year!  Hope everyone had a fabulous New Year!  2019 is going to be a very productive mini year (I hope)! LOL