well as I was taking photos of my done Westville when I saw that I need to put 3 pairs of shutters on....but of course. <_<
oh well for all practicle purposes I am done with the build on this house.
all that is left is the decorating. which I will do at a later time.
ok some finnishing thoughts.
this is a good beginner house.
the kit goes together well. the instructions are easily followed...the exception to this is the porch. although I did manage to ge
The Westville Dollhouse Kit is a country favorite around Greenleaf. You will find this blog useful for tips a decorating ideas as build your Westville Dollhouse.
The Best way to navigate this blog is to select a members name from the category are to the left. That will sort all the blog entries so that you will be looking at one persons progress as the move through their construction of the Westville Dollhouse.
Please Keep in mind that blogs are in reverse chronological order, so you we re
Today, I woke up with butterflies in my stomach! I can't beleive this house is almost completed! I have to add clay to the base, flowers, and grass & trees and have it done TODAY!! :angry:
I am so worried about accomplishing this. This house MUST ship Monday which means it has to be at the Pack N Mail place Tomorrow!
Well I started with the grass lawn and added it in some places. I then added paper clay because it takes a while to dry. I sculpted stone in the back foundation and fed t
I completed Step C tonight, but before I get to that, here's one picture from the Step A adventure of last night.Not all that exciting, I know, but I inadvertantly turned the flash off on the camera, which sets it for "nighttime" and leaves the shutter open longer, which makes the pictures come out really fuzzy. This was the only halfway decent one of the batch. Oh well.(For those of you who are curious, that upside-down box in the background is one we took from the trash area of Geoff's old a
I finished scribing the "floorboards" and punching the nailholes and stained them maple. They look nice. While the stain was still tacky I put on a coat of lacquer & when it's all dry I'll "sand" it with a brown paper bag to see how I like it.Next I sat down with the schematic sheet and the roll of masking tape and marked each piece. Tedious? Absolutely, but I found some things to make notes about and to familiarize myself with the parts & where they are.First, I noticed that the roo
At last! I opened the box and took inventory and put all the plywood sheets into numerical order so I can find them without having to look all over for the numbers.I began reading over the instructions, I'll have to do the first read in increments. Meanwhile I studied the schematics and the photos to decide on rooms.A friend claimed this one before I ever got the box opened and has let me know some of the details she wants, so this will be the first house I have ever built to anyone's specs bu
I had to perform a partial amputation on the verge over the porch balcony, it wouldn't fit like in the picture.This morning I bricked the chimney. It needs drybrushing, which I'll do later.I stained the scalloped shingles with the cherry stain & laid down a course of them, and so far I really like the color. Something I'm trying different this time is to run a strip of aluminum foil "flashing" down the roof seam under the shingles.I also rehung the front bay shingles nearest the porch, the
I installed the "faucet" & "taps" on the bathtub first thing.
Then I dry-fit the roof and newspapered the attic portion. I also painted the bathroom portion over the left wall, but painted the corner where the other side of the left attic roof joins the front of the roof over the porch in situ . I'm going to leave the bedroom portion white & call it part of the ceiling.
I assembled & painted the chimney, and will begin to brick it later.
I cut down the Gill
Today I finished the interior trim. The red trim really looks good in the kitchen and the bedroom colors seem to go together. The bathroom is sort of monochromatic, but once I get the fixtures in there it may look better. I have one more complaint about the assembly. If, when I was originally building & installing the stairs I had known how the banister posts/ newels went I would have done them first thing in case there were cosmetic problems that could be corrected with spackle/ wood put
Today I finished the windows for the livingroom. Because of the window seat I had to perform surgery on the interior bay window frames. The interior bay windows are awkward to install and I had to do one of them twice.
I "hung" the wall cabinet in the bathroom. After three tries it's still not straight, and all three times it was perfectly straight when I taped it in place; DH says it's just as well, perfection makes the gods angry <_< ; I told him I wasn't trying to make it perf
Oho, I just thought the punchout decorations for the porch were fiddly! The porch balcony railing is tinier & therefore fiddlier; fortunately for the recipient & my few remaining shreds of sanity the plywood behaved itself and everything popped out that was supposed to, & nothing popped off that wasn't supposed to, and I didn't bash anything to splinters with my hammer.The balcony rails are all glued together, painted & installed along with the last two bits of corner molding.
Today I removed & prepped the porch pieces and happily the plywood stayed intact. As there is beaucoup fiddly trim on these it's a very good thing. I really like the design of the porch for this house, with the front & back posts to give dimension to them. I had already primed these pieces on the sheets, so I gave everything a good sanding and glued the post & trim pieces together for the front & sides of the porch.
Then I painted one side of the porch pieces and whilst
I measured about 2/3 of an individual serving yogurt cup of white interior latex paint into a clean, empty glass jar with a lid and then added royal blue until I got a light blue and I painted the first course of siding with it. When it dried it looked snow-white, so I added what I thought was nearly half again as much blue as the original amount of white and when I got to a bilious bluish-white I quit and put a coat on the left wall before I went to bed last night.
This morning the wall
I find siding to be a lot like shingling, very relaxing.
I am finishing up the back partial walls at this time. It is really easy using the EZ Cutter, the roof slope appears to be a 60 degree angle.
I had to make foundation trim for the back partial walls. There is a side of a plywood sheet that is the correct width and was perfect, I cut one for each side and put two coats of royal blue on them and glued them so the right & left wall foundations trim pieces butte
For the past two and a half days I've been fighting the "good fight" with the trim pieces, especially the *#%%**##!! trim for the shutters. Sealing the wood first DOES NOT HELP! My suggestion to the good do-bes at Greenleaf is to try to use the really good plywood that appears in the newer kits for the dies that include any trim with right angled elements and punchouts, because more than one of the total 18 shutter trim pieces had layers shatter & go flying off all over the floor. Because
Yesterday was errands & an evening canoe & kayak club meeting in Tallahassee & this morning was mentoring in the HOSTS (Help One Student To Succeed) program at our largest elementary school. In between I've been painting all the exterior trim even though I'm going to side before installing corner & window trim. Why paint the trim now? Because I'm going to use the royal blue trim color to tint a good bit of white paint to get the shade of light blue that will "match" the dark b
I painted the bays and foundation white, also the door.
I removed & sanded all the exterior window & door trim and sanded it and assembled the double window top trim and hoods for the non-bay windows. Next I gave all the trim & windowsills two coats of royal blue paint.
I found a few more discrepancies between piece names in the instructions vs. what's on the schematic sheet, someone with a bit of time might want to go through them and coordinate.
I glued th
This morning I started out by wallpapering the bedroom (above the livingroom, where the front door is) and was reminded once more why I loathe dollhouse wallpaper; it stretches and ripples far worse than its 1:1 counterpart. And tear when trimming!
I made a bathroom privacy wall so any little person coming upstairs wouldn't immediately find himself in the bathroom with who-knows-what going on. I cut two pieces of foamboard 8" high and one piece the width of the staircase opening f
I glued kitchen paper on the closet top.
While the glue dried I installed the back of the closet with its shelves. The closet back is a piece of foamboard and the shelves are two tongueblade-width and two popsiclestick-width craftstick pieces with the very narrow craftsticks cut for shelf supports.
When the glue dried I installed the closet top. I took it out, pulled off the carefully trimmed paper and applied a new piece with some "lap". When I reapplied the closet top it looked
I spent some of the morning picking up itsy bits of sandpaper off of the floor when the pan I had the leftovers in spilled; then I spent the rest of the morning cutting out more of them. I glued the first course of "bricks" across the bottom edge of the front opening and then up & down from there. Going around the corners was interesting. After that "bricking" the back was easy-peasy.
Cutting the tiny bits of sandpaper stressed the arthritis in my hands, so for breaks I Installed th
I painted the closet wall trim red and installed the doorknob on the closet door.
I papered the staircase wall and applied the trim after finishing giving it two coats of the red paint.
I then painted the banister portion of both sides of the center partition white. When it was dry I painted the lower fourth of the livingroom wall hunter green. When that was dry I applied a wallpaper border mural to that wall.
I then papered the other side of the center partition to ma
I remembered all the prior contortions of assembling stairs in the dark days before I got my gluing jig as I set up to do the stair assembly in the jig.
First I stacked the treads & risers into sets of six and put them in the vise and sanded them so that all four edges of each one were smooth, even & all the same size, TA-DA! I glued the risers on and then the treads. Then I gave the steps a final coat of walnut stain.
While the staircase was drying I took som
I finished removing & prepping the rest of the pieces listed for Part A and realized I had to decorate the second floor ceiling (flip side of the attic floor).
There were also some slots to be removed and I was ready to begin. While there's a lot more of the slot-sliding to fit this one together, the slots slide really swell without having to hammer them into place (well, the first floor needed just the tiniest tap to convince it to go where it was supposed to <_< ).
I finished staining & sealing.With the instructions in hand I began with Part A, Step 1 to R&P the parts needed for Part A; as I removed each piece from its respective plywood sheet I checked it off the instruction sheet list with a pencil, prepped it by sanding the edges (much splinterier than the Arthur or Glencroft, guys) and replacing the occasional bit of ply that went flying (this batch is a bit on the brittle side); I had to fill a spot with wood putty because the missing piece ha
