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Six different views on building the Westville Dollhouse

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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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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 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 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 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 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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Day 21 09-19-05

I've put my first coat of the teal back on the trim. It will need another coat. I will also use the other medium green in another area, because I liked how those two went together.I have begun putting on my exterior window trim. At least Jimmy told me it's exterior window trim ... last time he told me that on the Arthur, I ended up putting the interior window trim on the exterior and had to take it back off, LOL!Also, I've been playing around with furniture in the house, LOL, but I didn't take a
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Day 19 & 20 09-16/09-17-05

Jimmy has continued to shingle the roof, and he is almost finished. He bought a little ridge cap thingy to go over the top of the roof. I have decided to leave out the chimney. For the creases inbetween the roof lines (where you can see some blue tape), he took a piece of siding, cut it in half (long-ways), and then scored it down the middle and bent it and placed it in the creases.I have gotten stuck on the trim colors. I have just not been happy with anything that I have tried, and it has gott
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Days 17 & 18 09-14/09-15-05

Because of time constraints and my boss begging for extra time to be put in at work because of rapidly approaching deadlines, it took me two days to paint that little bit of trim! And that's only the exterior window trim! Yikes!Also, for the past two days, Jimmy has begun shingling. Because of the thin little shingles, he can only do three rows at a maximum, tape them down and let them dry. Otherwise, they want to curl up.Chloe has decided to investigate the Westville. It might be bit small for
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September 22, 2005

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
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September 20, 2005

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
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September 18, 2005

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
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September 17, 2005

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
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September 16, 2005

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
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Day 16 09-13-05

Jimmy took out the exterior window trim for me--at least he tells me it's exterior trim. I'll have to check because he has a habit of giving me the wrong thing.Anyway, first I had to sand it all, and there's a lot of little itty bitty pieces.Then I have to paint it. I'm not sure where it all goes yet, so at this point it's all being painted white (along with the tips of my fingers). Do you all realize that it takes about 2 1/2 hours just to paint one coat of paint on just that small amount of tr
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Day 15 09-11-05

I've still been working on getting the edges of the house painted, and trying to reach that near impossible angle that Jimmy created for me when he put the roof on before I was ready. It took me four different paint brushes to accomplish it, but I did get to that angle. I almost took a sponge paint brush and cut it off to paint it, because it was difficult to even just get my fingers into the area ...Compliments of LPCullen
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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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September 15, 2005

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
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September 14, 2005

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
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September 13, 2005

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
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September 12, 2005

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 <_< ). 
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Day 14 09-10-2005

I have been trying and trying and studying and studying and eyeballing the attic area of this house and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with it. After much trying, studying and eyeballing--as well as discussing it with several other people, I have decided to make it into -- an attic! It's just too small to do anything else with it, and I am afraid that I DO NOT have Judith's abilities, so bashing it was out of the question. Especially since hubby has already put the roof pieces on ...So
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Day 13 09-09-2005

Today I've been working on the wallpaper for the second floor. I originally wanted one of those rooms to be a bathroom, but decided I wanted a nursery instead--so this house's bathroom will be in the side that you can't see.Anyway, for the master bedroom, I picked up this wonderful purple bedding set, and so the master bedroom had to be purple. I am not sure if you noticed in the first floor wallpapering pictures, but I am doing a sort of textured wallpaper to the ceilings, and that is better sh
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September 11, 2005

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
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September 10, 2005

Apparently while I was scribing & staining & then labeling I completely forgot about the fact that the attic has a FLOOR.Today I finished priming everything I'm going to paint, paper or otherwise cover, I used the can of Krylon I used on my last two Buttercups; the stuff goes on thick as gel and spreads & fills like anything.I stained the stair treads & risers walnut, I have a few that missed getting masked and have been primed, on one side, so if I use them low it oughta be OK;
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