Some slight issues that arose were that some of the flats were slightly miss shapen some how, either through the use of bowed wood or slightly wonky (technical term) construction. Unfortunately not much could be down to rectify this problem, luckily we only had a couple of flats with a problem and none of them were majorly wrong. This being one of the worst...

Henry explained how to attach the flats in the simplest way to make the strongest room. Always start in the corner with two people firmly holding the flats together making sure with a spirit level that they are straight and also that they are at a right angle. After a corner is created the room can be built from there, attaching the flats to one another by screwing the two long sides together always starting at the bottom and always making sure the flats are flush together as you move up the flat.

Joining the flats

Once all the individual flats had been constructed we had to put them together to form our rooms. We had a session in the morning with Henry Jones, he showed us the basics of joining the flats. We began by laying out the correct flats around the room so they were all roughly in the right place when it came to attaching them all together.

The next stage was to attach the three panels together. Unfortunately once the hinges where attached the outer panels didn't fold round like they should have due to the baton attached just above the legs also the screen seem to lean back quite a lot due to it being rather top heavy. This was fairly quickly rectified by cutting the feet and a slight slant and also sawing the corners of the two outer batons off to allowing the outer panels to swing round more, all we had to do then was paint over the bits we'd just cut and the screen was all finished.

Once the paper mache was dry we began to paint the frame sections so as not to ruin the fabric by painting them when all the layers were stuck together. We began by trying to create a wood grain effect by due the lack of paint colour options we decided to go for a darker burnt look. We painted a dark brown colour then with a dry brush we added black high lights. Once this was dry sarah used a bronze paint to add highlights to the raised detail. She also painted the winged hourglass and used the same bronze paint to give a shimmering highlight. Finally we added french polish all over the screen to give an ornate feel, also with french polish if u add water it gives a worn almost mouldy feel which we thought would really add to the deathly feel we wanted to create in the corner. Once the polish was dry (it was very quick drying) We stuck all the layers of the screen together using evo stick a contact adhesive that I was informed is very reliable for such jobs. We left all three panels to dry over night using clamps to make sure of a solid stick. The bat wing motif was stuck in the centre of the panel using araldite and two screws through the back.

We needed to create more defined legs for the screen so I got some styrofoam blocks, 2x (300mmx600mm) at 50mm thick for £8. These would add a bit more bulk to the screen and would be easy to shape. I traced the shape of the legs on to the styrofoam blocks and cut them on the band saw. Sarah and I then used craft knives, sand paper and a mouse sander to round the legs giving them a smoothes 'leg' like shape sarah and I also decided to add dog like foot shape to the bottom of each foot as this was popular in the baroque movement. Before we attached them we added a pine baton, with a routed edge, just above were the legs would attach to give a bit more bulk and smoother transition to the rest of the screen. We then attached the legs to the MDF using PVA glue.

Adding fabric to the screen

By using the frame section of the screen to draw a template on the the solid section we could see how big the fabric needed to be. In the original design only the outer panels had fabric inlays but we had enough spare to cover the central panel too so we did as we prefered this textured finish to just a painted effect. On the sections of the screen that had the smashed hole we merely notched the fabric with the intention of pinning it around the back later.