Coming Soon...The Grand Staircase Hell Ceiling

Hello my dear friends,

I hope you are all doing well and happy. This is yet another faux post. I am working on the painted ceiling over the grand Staircase and decision making has been a long process. I will talk about it all in more detail when I post the finished work, but in the meantime here is a quick update.

I finally decided on the shape and size of the opening and cut it out with a Dremel.

The opening was dictated by the walls of the attic above. The design I chose is a vision of Hell from Antonio Verrio. It is inspired by the Hell Staircase at Burghley House. Here is a picture of a printout of the ceiling and my test piece

 

 

The test piece took about 20 minutes of work. It is a very fast trial piece with little detail. The reason for the trial piece is because I want to use a new technique. Have you ever missed a glop of paint or gesso that hardened? I decided to try and build up the figures with  Gesso before I painted them. Here is a close-up

 

The gesso is thick and does not run so I was able to outline the figures. Again, this is a quick test but I think it will work. The ceiling is a LOT of work and will not be very visible...but I know it will be there and I hope the chandelier will cast interesting shadows on the ''sculpted'' gesso figures.  And just as I was working on this, a discovery: You might remember how much I hate, loath, despise and abominate spray adhesive, well here is another reason why

 

 

 

After 2 years the spray adhesive gave way in spots and big bubbles appeared in my kitchen floor and now I am waiting for the replacement paper to arrive to start it over! Spray adhesives everywhere, beware my wrath!

 

In the meantime, here is a link to a Pinterest page I created with pictures of all the almost finished rooms of Dewell Manor. It gives you an idea of the entire house the way I see it.

 

http://pinterest.com/gdellcv2/dewell-manor-httpwwwenglishmanordollhouseblogspotc/

 

And that is my update. Sadly It might be a longish time before the next post because my mom should be operated any day now and we are in the middle of renovating our kitchen! The past few weeks have been spent shopping for sinks and faucets and countertops and this past weekend was spend disassembling our current 30 year old cabinets. Poor Ozzy is freaking out a little.



Is it just me or does the red linoleum we found under the cabinets look better then the pale one they put over it?

The cabinets we removed are being put in our workroom in the basement...

Some of the cabinets are being test fitted on the right side

...which means my work area is full of cabinet pieces and stuff we need to place back eventually

And this is my new temporary mini-work area

And that is all for this time my friends. Thank you for following the insanity I get myself into and I apologize for the ridiculous delays between posts...How dare real life get in the way of minis...the nerve!!! Well, back to disassembling...

I send you all the best and a huge hug,

Giac