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Six different views on building the Westville Dollhouse

Entries in this blog

Final Pictures

I am so in love with this house! My customer is a Dream. She is so easy to please and she has been so kind the entire ride. I posted pictures every night and she always told me how much she likes it. I was so worried at first about if I would be finished in time and would she like.....Well as of today, she still has not seen the completed pictures but I found out that this is a gift from her AND her sisters! This will be a gift for there mother's 80th Birthday and they promised to send me pi

Minis On The Edge

Minis On The Edge

Days 22 & 23 - 09-23/09-24-05

I have been working on the trim for the house still. Sometimes I wish it didn't take so long to do trim, but I like it and I like the way that it turns out and how it makes the house looks, so ... I am making very few modifications from the original design on this house, so the majority of the trim is going on it. I think the only thing I plan to leave off are the shutters on the bay windows.I've taken out the shutter trim and have sanded that down and working on that. I like to put one coat of

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Day 09 09-04-2005

Well, it took a couple days, but I have the Westville completely primed, and the interior has two coats of semi gloss white on it as its primer for the wallpaper.I now begin putting the paint on the exterior of the house, and I will use two coats of it. I am using a very pale mint green, semi-gloss, and I plan on using different shades of green as accent colors. Because this house will be one that I keep, it's going to have some color to it. As usual, I turn the house upside down to paint it. I

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10.) It’s looking like a home

If I keep this up, my little people are getting closer to a "Certificate of Occupancy"--The exterior – the chimney and the rear roof are unfinished. The porch needs columns. The balcony needs some posts connecting the railings. I am using the Greenleaf railings. For the picture, I simply taped the railings to the balcony.--The Living room windows have some green and yellow stained glass at the top but the green looks as if is behind the glass – I don’t know why. --Looking at the kitchen bay

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2.) Before building starts- Some comments

1. Supplies to be used: Aileen’s Tacky glue to glue house together, craft knife with sharp blade to cut through perforations, masking tape, paper towels and bowl of water for cleanup, pencil, level, sandpaper, electric sander, newspapers to cover work surface, cutting mat (or heavy cardboard) to protect table surface when cutting plywood, wood filler, spackle, hammer (for LIGHT tapping into place), MinWax Golden Oak stain, Mineral Spirits (the stain is not water cleanup), low-gloss, water cleanu

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The Westville Dollhouse Kit Construction Blog

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

Mini Man

Mini Man

Day 2

Today I selected the wall paper. My customer says her mother has flower wallpaper. She has blue flowers in one, forest green and she also has a yellow colored wallpaper in here house. So I looked through my big stash and came up with these I add my wallpaper as I build. To me this is the easiest way and the neatest way to add the wallpaper. I sure wish Linda lived closer to me! I added the bay windows today too and there sure are a lot of gaps here. I took out my handy dandy spackle

Minis On The Edge

Minis On The Edge

Finished

I have actually been "finished" with the Westville for more than a week, but I have been waiting for some good natural daylight to photograph it. That hasn't happened yet, so I went ahead and photographed it today. Unfortunately, the actual colors of the house are not showing up because of the lack of sunlight, so I will re-photograph it at another date, perhaps when I do the actual "tour" of the house, since this is one that I will keep.I still have some exterior and interior trim to put on (as

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October 3, 2005

I completed construction of the kit yesterday, but today I finished the last item of decoration, the stove. I marked on the back piece where the oven box would go and glued on the sides. When they were dry I painted the back between the sides & the adjacent sides ultramarine blue. I mixed black with the ultramarine and painted the rest of the foamboard stove parts with it. I had cut down some of the half-shingles to make a top and glued them to the back, and just below it I glued a

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8.) Merrily we roll along ...

The exterior-- I really don’t like the way the grey painting turned out. I am trying for a weathered grey look. I might wait until I have the roof done and all the trim (white) is done to see if the grey color looks better. If not, I will repaint. -- The chimney “form” is sturdy packing foam. It will be sprayed with Fleck-Stone in a whitish-grey flecked color.-- The second floor porch will go from the bedroom to the den (which will have exterior glass door matching the one in the bedroom).-- The

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more siding

I put on a bit more siding today: The living room bay isn't permanently glued in. I managed to glue the two walls to each other, without gluing them to the floor and ceiling. This way I can take it out for wallpapering. I haven't glued the narrow pieces onto any of the bays yet.And here are the humble beginnings of my kitchen cabinets:It turns out that the Realife kit I bought off eBay is missing some pieces. The frustrating thing is, the kit doesn't come with an itemized list of parts, so I

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7.) Kit bashing for larger house

I bought 1/8” Baltic Birch for the new sections (from Michael's).The new exterior:-- 10” added in length with a new window on ground floor front. End wall still has the bay.-- Porch will go across new section also.-- 1” removed from lower edge of front roof sections to move the edge further from porch roof.-- Full length exterior chimney on living room wallNew interiorFirst floor:-- The main floor is a completely open plan-- Commercial staircase facing rear and ending in a small hall on second f

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4.) Section N. Roof and Trim

Section N. Roof and Trim1 I will not add the trim in this step. All I want to accomplish here is a sturdy, squared house.2. There were no big problems here. I had to pull at the Center Wall at the attic to straighten the wall, but other than that, everything fit where and how it should: a perfect roof. I am using lots of masking tape to hold the roof together until the glue dries. I used a “set square” to make sure walls were vertical as I put the attic floor and the roof in place. 3. Now

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1.) The Adventure Begins

The box arrived! This is very exciting. I always love a new house.1. I opened the box and checked that all items were there and that the wood was in good shape. I put the siding and roof shingles in a separate box. I saved the window “glass’ in a folder and put it in a safe place. 2. I quickly reviewed the instructions (detailing comes later). I wanted to get the “lay of the land”.3. I then went through all the wood sheets against the schematics and marked the sheets with their number and major

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September 23, 2005

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

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September 24, 2005

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

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September 25, 2005

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

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September 26, 2005

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.

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September 27, 2005

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

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September 28, 2005

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

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September 29, 2005

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

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Day 25 09-27-05

Well, I'm still doing trim. I want to put most of the shutters on the house, except for the bay windows--I plan to leave them off there. Jimmy has taken them out, and I have sanded their edges and gotten my standard coat of "primer" on them.Jimmy has also taken out some of the balcony railings for me, and I have sanded those as well. Now, for the porch railings, I wanted to have that mostly put together before I painted it. So, Jimmy took out all my pieces and I sanded them down and he then glue

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Day 26 09-28-05

Today I've been working on painting the shutters. As I mentioned elsewhere, I really like the design of the shutters. I am using a combination of colors, and I have used the teal for the outside colors, and an olive-ish green for the interior colors.I'm also just about ready to install the interior window trim, so I went ahead and put the window panes into the interior window trim. Of course, I did it backwards, LOL! But that's OK. Compliments of LPCullen

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SEptember 30, 2005

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

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dry fitting

Calamari was right... this house is a b*tch to dry fit!But I did it anyway. I have plans to make a few modifications to the house and I want to make sure I know what I'm doing (and what needs to be cut) before I glue any walls together. I have had experiences trying to enlarge window and door holes on a house that's already assembled, and it's not easy!I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Here's my workspace on Day 1 of Project Westville:As you can see, there's not a ton of desk space. My ot

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