The Titanic story adventure world.
While waiting for builders and artists, I found my 2nd house, not as old as the 1860 Becfola but exactly where I wanted a house overlooking the Harland and Wolff shipyard.
The house had been empty for many years, a widowed lady had been moved into a old peoples home, and so the government sold the house.
This time the house had to be a Titanic theme.
I think it is the surroundings that tell us what to do, there was a small rose garden beside the house, and a rose stainless window in the door, so the house was named Rose, finally to become “Rose” The Titanic story adventure world.
Again absolutely everything needed to be done to this house, in the end everything was removed and we started from scratch, new heating, new electric, new floors.
I wanted to see if I could follow the story of the Titanic ship, so after some months I found a local pinter Ian Lowry and decided to hand paint every centimetre of this house ceilings, walls, floors all hand painted. This painting process took 14 months to complete.
My idea was to start with the outside of the house, paint it Black and white as the colour of the Titanic ship, with an iron railing as from a cruise liner of the time.
From the front door the story starts.
On 2 April 1912, thousands lined Belfast Lough to proudly watch Titanic - 'the new wonder of the world' - set off for Southampton from where she would make her fateful maiden voyage across the wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean to New York.
So I agreed with Ian to create this moment at the entrance, the stairs and the landing, with a massive Titanic ship painting on the wall with 1000,s of people in Belfast coming to see the ship.
Again I made an iron railing for the stairs with a wooden handrail, and a white staircase to keep in the style off the ship.
I think the Titanic is remembered as much for the rich and poor, the glamour, hopes and dreams, so I decided to create the bedrooms of “Hope” for the future, dreams of happiness, a new life in the USA.
The 3rd class bedroom we created a New York scene with skyscrapers, and a worker from Belfast who was dreaming of building these skyscrapers, so we have the single bed as if it is hanging from the scaffolding.
The second class bed room we created a scene of a young couple falling in love in the Mourne mountains, then in the middle of the room we made a 3 meter long Titanic ship bed, behind the bed we have the same couple sitting at the back of the ship kissing, and of the right wall we have their dreams of having a happy family in USA, then the rest of the room was completed as if the ship is sailing to USA.
For the main bedroom, the Honeymoon suite we have Rose and her dancing scene inspired by the movie, the bed is a super king size as if it is floating on the sea after the ice had cut through the hull of the ship.
The bathroom was made in a Victorian style with the high toilet and chain, again with paintings of seagulls and blue skies and a couple kissing on the inside of the door.
We arrive down stairs to the main room, the sinking of the Titanic, first the entire living room and kitchen were hand painted then a full size lifeboat was built beside the Titanic ship that filled the wall.
My idea was to let the guests “live” the moment of the sinking off the ship, to make this even more real, we got ambient sound of waves, wind, sea birds, to complete the experience.
I then decided to change the garden into a new room, the “Kissing on the deck of the Titanic” room, again hand painted with couples standing by the railings and kissing when they were leaving Ireland for their journey to a new life.
Again a sound design was placed here and a hot tub with small Titanic's.
Click here to view more information on Rose.