I bought another light to fix the one with the broken wire. Since I’d already finished the floor above, I needed to come up with another way to hide the wire. I had an idea to glue the ceiling paper to a piece of thin cardboard, pull the wire up through the cardboard, and then glue this to the ceiling with the wire sandwiched in between.

The bay window made it tricky to fit the cardboard into the room, so I started by gluing a piece into the bay separately.

Then I cut a rectangular piece and glued it to the back of the ceiling paper. I poked a hole for the light, pulled the wire through it, and taped the wire to the cardboard so it would come out where I wanted it to.

Here’s how it looks in place. After gluing it in I realized I wanted the cardboard slightly shorter than the ceiling paper so I could smooth the paper over the edge of the cardboard and not have it show. I used the Xacto knife to shave off a bit of the cardboard and used white glue at the edge of the ceiling paper, pressing it tightly against the ceiling to get a nice clean seam.

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About a month ago, I started working on wainscot and flooring in the rowhouse attic. I actually made good progress with it that very weekend, but then hit some unexpected snags that have only now been unraveled. Once again, electricity has proven to be my nemesis. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The stain I’m using for this house comes in a can rather than a stain pen (my preferred tool for staining small trim pieces), so when I need to stain, I try to do a bunch of stuff at once. This particular batch includes the attic windows and door, trim pieces, and the inside of the roof. (I had planned to wallpaper the inside of the roof but didn’t have enough paper, and even if I had, the paper was only 12″ square, like most scrapbook paper, so I couldn’t have papered the inside of the roof with one continuous piece. I didn’t want a visible seam staring you in the face when you flip the roof open.)

Through no fault of my own (for once), the door had some glue spots on it that prevented the stain from taking. I dry-brushed brown and black paint over these to make them less obvious.

I used a small piece of basswood in the corner to cover up where the two pieces of wainscot weren’t quite meeting.

I also added basswood against the window trim to cover up the imperfect hole I cut for the window. As you can see in the second picture, even with the added basswood it’s not quite perfect, but it’s impossible to see the window straight on and it looks fine from the vantage point you have into the room.

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