Working on the mezzanine floor

Since my last post, I finished the stair rail.  I needed to do a bit more filling on the rough spots in the banister, where the edges of the plywood weren't very smooth, then I painted over the filler.  I also glued in the two Grandtline bedroom door frames.

You can see in this first photo a couple of issues that I then needed to fix.  First of all, the Grandtline doorframes are thicker than the plywood walls and protrude slightly.  This was easily fixed by applying the door trim next to the frame, rather than on top of it as I did on the top floor (where the foamcore was thicker).  Secondly, I obviously didn't cut the new boy's bedroom door hole quite deep enough at the bottom, and there is a gap at the foot of the frame visible in this photo.  I carefully applied some filler into the gap, which has dried white and now looks pretty unobtrusive.  Perhaps it is an old house and the floors have sunk slightly...

I painted coffee stirrers and applied them as door trim around the two doors.  For the boy's bedroom, I had to cut the trim to fit around the stair railing.

By placing the frames this way around, the doors will open outwards from the rooms which is unusual.  But this puts the best side of the frames on view when you look in at the bedrooms, and hides the coffee stirrer frames inside the mezzanine.  I have glued the door handles onto the doors, but will not fit the doors until I am finished with the trim on the mezzanine floor, in case I need to access through the doorways.

The next big job is to create windowframes for the gothic windows from Grandtline, which don't come with interior frames.  There was a great suggestion from a reader who said she just buys extra frames, cuts out the middles and uses them as interior frames.  Sadly it would be cost prohibitive to do that here in the UK where it's all imported, so I needed to make my own.

I traced around a window onto thin card, and carefully cut out six frames. It was quite hard to cut evenly, and there were several rejects.

I cut some plain small stick to make windowsills.


Then I gave all six a spray on both sides with sealer.









Soon I will no longer be able to put off cutting cornice and skirting, which I am rather dreading.  Cornicing in particular I find tricky to miter into corners neatly.  I understand how to do it, and have done loads of it, just find that it is always a bit of trial and error as walls are never completely flat, corners are never exactly 90 degrees, plus there is always a 50/50 chance I will cut the miter the wrong way.  Sigh...