Every time I’ve sat down at the Mansard Victorian lately, I’ve stared at it for about fifteen minutes and then got up and walked away. I have done a little more with the electricity following my last post — I was waiting to post about it until I was a little further along — but I decided might as well post it now since I feel my attention drifting, and sometimes that can last for years. (Ack, don’t jinx it!)

When I left off, I’d made a bump-out for the kitchen and planned to run the wire for the light under ceiling paper glued to a piece of cardboard. The cardboard would also allow me to add a ceiling light to the main part of the room without drilling through the floor (see this post for an example). Both wires would stretch into the stairwell, where I would plug them in the same way as the foyer lights.

I planned to use a brass ceiling fixture that I’d painted green. The problem is, the wire on this fixture is too short to reach the stairs.

I thought about soldering it to a longer wire, but the wire is super delicate and I was concerned about the connection breaking down and being inaccessible under the ceiling paper and cardboard. (Hey, it’s happened before…) Having a connection go bad once I’m unable to reach it is exactly what I’m trying to avoid by using a power strip in this house.

The other problem is that the cardboard would make the ceiling a tad lower than the rest of the ceilings on the first floor. Since you see all the rooms at once with this house, I didn’t want that.

So I vetoed the cardboard ceiling, flipped the house over, and glued the paper directly to the kitchen ceiling. The blank stripe is where the wall between the kitchen and foyer will be glued in.

Now, how to drill into the ceiling when there’s only five inches of space between the floor and the ceiling? The drill wouldn’t fit. Years ago I solved this problem in the Queen Anne Rowhouse by using a very long drill bit and going in through the base of the house. I couldn’t find it with the rest of the drill bits so I asked Geoff to get it out for me.

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I’m adding a bump-out to the Mansard Victorian’s kitchen. It will be similar to this one on the Queen Anne Rowhouse, but with a Lawbre French Canopy for a Mansard-style roof.

I previously cut a hole in the kitchen wall. (Well, Geoff cut it, but I told him where!) The Cassidy Creations sink will sit inside the bump-out.

I built a frame for the addition out of strip wood. This is another Cassidy Creations sink (from the studio in the Artist’s Cottage) that I set inside to figure out window placement.

Here’s one window option. This is a Majestic Mansions Atherton window that I bought because it has the same mullions as the Gothic windows I’m using on the rest of the house, but it’s way too big. I thought I could cut the bottom off to make it shorter, but it just didn’t feel right. (This is also a pricey window to cut up!)

Here’s another window out of my stash. This is two Grandt line single windows pieced together. It came with the Debbie Young Craftsman vignette, but I didn’t use it there. It’s better than the last one, but it still doesn’t clear the top of the sink.

I started looking at Houseworks windows, and almost went with an 8-light window turned sideways. But the proportions didn’t feel right — it looks like a vertical window turned horizontally — and no other windows on this house are divided into panes like this.

I continued pawing through my stash until I found this Palladian window that I’d removed the top from to make door trim for the Victorianna. The Palladian window is slightly wider than the standard windows, so it looks better turned on its side.

I popped off the sill and shaved off the side trim with a utility knife, then sanded it flat on the disc sander. Then I measured 1/8″ out from the window and drew pencil lines.

I glued on trim over the pencil lines. This is the thin trim that comes with older Houseworks doors; it’s about 3/16″ wide. The Houseworks window/door casing you can buy separately is 1/4″ wide, which seemed too chunky.

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When I mentioned that my next task in the Mansard Victorian would be to add lights, both Geoff and my dad said, “I thought you were never electrifying a dollhouse again?” It’s true, I’ve said this many times. Miniature lights (especially 1:24 scale!) are delicate and finicky and expensive and something always goes wrong.

But the Mansard Victorian is deep and only has windows on the front panel, which makes for shadowy rooms. It also has a flat back that will be up against the wall, which gives me an easy place to hide cords and plugs. And maybe I’m kind of a masochist? Whatever the reasons, I’m electrifying this dollhouse. God help me.

My first time electrifying a half scale dollhouse was with the Fairfield, and I splurged on a bunch of pricey Lighting Bug fixtures that don’t have removable bulbs.

Before too long, one of the bedroom ceiling fixtures stopped working. I had wired these directly to the tape wire, which was now covered up by the flooring of the room above. Whether the bulb burned out or the connection to the tape wire went bad, the only way to fix it would be to tear up the finished room.

I never did fix that light, but this experience (and others) made me paranoid about 1) installing lights with non-replaceable bulbs, and 2) installing lights in a way that the connection can’t be checked/fixed later. With the Mansard Victorian, I want to be able to easily jiggle the connections or replace bulbs, if needed.

(Side note: the Fairfield was the first half scale kit I built, and I cringe to look at it now. Look at those awful bricks on the chimney! Frankly, tearing up this room to fix the light wouldn’t be the end of the world. But that’s not the point.)

Plugging lights into outlets is more reliable than connecting lights to tape wire, but then the outlets and plugs need to be hidden. The cupboard staircase I’m using in the Mansard Victorian gives me an opportunity to stash sockets inside the cupboard. I’ll put a couple in here and plug (most of) the first floor lights into these.

In the Queen Anne Rowhouse, I hung a cranberry lamp in the stairwell. I loved it, but had to sacrifice it when I redid the staircase rooms. (That was another time when I had to get creative with electricity because I couldn’t easily fix what was broken. Why do I keep electrifying dollhouses?!)

I envisioned using the same type of light in the Mansard Victorian staircase, but when I held it in there, it looked like you’d bump your head on it going up the stairs.

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