HBMini

Thank you Karin. I'm glad you like my house. When I first started I thought it would take me 3 years. Now that 3 years has come and gone I realize it is going to take me alot more than 3 years. Good thing I never need to use my dining room for eating. This last year has been really slow building because work was so busy. I think I have gotten all the major modifications done, so once I get those pesky windows done, I will be able to move on to something more fun. I have so many ideas in my head. Hopefully they will make it into my house. Marcy

Hi I changed the direction of my Beacon Hill stairs because I wanted to have a front door that was centered in the middle of the tower section. Because I could not find a stair that I liked, I searched on-line looking for pictures of stairs that I liked. I found a web site of a company that makes stair parts. They put on-line their manual on how to build stairs. http://www.ljsmith.net/pdfs/EnglishInstallation.pdf After reading and reading I finally figured out what they were doing. So I started by drawing the stairs that I wanted on paper based on the directions in the pdf file. Then I built my stairs. It took forever. Hope this helps anyone trying to build a stair. Marcy

Here is a picture of a real second empire house with 2 towers. I love the way the main entrance tower is taller than the second tower. This is the governor's mansion in Iowa. Marcy

Hi Kathy A while back I posted some info about how I did the tower. Maybe this will help. http://www.greenleafdollhouses.com/forum/i...?showtopic=8811 I just used lots of glue, extra pieces of wood for support and a lot of very small wood screws. Marcy

I thought about everything an old house should have. Old movies and TV shows, This Old House and If These Walls Could Talk. Of course in the movies, the kids are always raising themselves up and down the dumbwaiter. My daughter was disappointed when she found out that the dumbwaiter wasn't going to be big enough for one of the dolls (OOPS I mean mini people) who live in the house. She did comment that it was big enough for one of the babies. I don't have any other major projects in mind right now. I have to fix the holes I've made. I plan on putting in an entire wall of windows in the kitchen side wall. The windows that are supposed to be there are going to go upstairs and I will make matching windows but much taller windows for downstairs. Now that the rooms on the kitchen side are bigger, I plan to put the bathroom on the third floor. The dumbwaiter in the bathroom is weird but when the house was built in the 1800s that was the maid's room, in the 1900s it was converted to a bathroom. The 2nd floor will be the hobby room. And the 1st floor is the kitchen. My period of time is 2008 but the house was built in the 1800s. So the kitchen will be new but the house and architecture of the house will be old. One problem with the dumbwaiter is that it took up space on each floor. I think this could be done easier if the dumbwaiter was attached to the outside of the house. The outside could be decorated like a chimney and the doors to the dumbwaiter could be holes in the side wall. I think I chose the hard way but the Beacon Hill's roof did not allow me to attach the dumbwaiter to the side without messing up the mansared roof on the third floor level. As it is, the entire dumbwaiter can not make it all the way to the third floor. Only the top shelf. Which is why there is 2 shelves in the dumbwaiter. I debated a long time on how to add on to the kitchen without messing up the mansard roof and without messing up the architecture of the house. Splitting it in the middle has taken a lot of work to get it stable again. But a lot of support under the house, glue and lots of small screws and it seems to be good enough. I figured if I have to, those rooms would have beams across the ceiling. Plus now I have 3 really good size rooms on the kitchen side. Marcy

I finally got my dumbwaiter working. It took a lot of sanding and fitting, and sanding and fitting, and more sanding and fitting. It probably would have been easier if my plywood pieces had not been so warped. A real dumbwaiter would have been built in pieces because it would have been 3 floors tall. I built my mini dumbwaiter as one long box built with thin plywood sides and a back. My mini dumbwaiter is designed to slide into a hole from under the house. This way, if there is a problem with the dumbwaiter in the future I can slide the whole thing out and fix the problem and slide it back into the hole. I built my dumbwaiter like the one in the article and it worked to a point. I found the wheel at the top did not get enough traction to turn the axel at the top, probably because the entire dumbwaiter car was not as heavy as a real dumbwaiter car. I originally tried screen door wheels for my wheels but found them to be too smooth. I found that Lego wheels and Lego parts from a Lego car worked much better and they kept everything nice and square. The counter weights are nuts I found at the hardware store. I changed my design from the original to be one big string loop that connects the top of the dumbwaiter car up over the top wheel, down the side, under a wheel I added to the bottom, and connects to the bottom of the dumbwaiter. My mini people will be able to pull the string up or down to move the dumbwaiter car. Another string attaches to the top of the dumbwaiter car over the axel and goes into a hole down the right side into a channel on the side where the counter weights (nuts) can slide up and down. I found the counter weights to be important. It holds the dumbwaiter car in place, otherwise it always falls to the bottom floor. They were a little touchy so I just kept adding weights until I found the counter weights were close in weight of the car. I still have to build my panels in each room to cover the dumbwaiter hole so that mini people don't fall down the hole. I will add a door on each floor to access the car. The first floor and second floor doors will be around 3 inches (3 feet) from the floor. The third floor door will have to be close to floor level because my dumbwaiter is partially in the mansard roof section of the house and because the wheels at the top take up space. Oh well. . . I guess the mini people will have to bend over. Marcy

I think little Jack is cute too. The Jack Russell dog is by the German toy company Schleich. They say the dogs are 1:12 size. http://www.schleich-s.de/cms_schleich/shop...mp;okat=98& I also have some of their other dogs, the Golden Retriever, the Golden Retriever puppy, the West Highland Terrier and "Farm Dog". Most of their animals are not to scale. The cats are too big but the dogs are perfect. Marcy

A major kit bash came about when I decided the kitchen needed to be bigger. So I split the kitchen side of my beacon hill in the middle. I then added 3 inches to all the floors. Since I plan to take the bay out of the kitchen side wall, the kitchen will be only 1.5 inches bigger but the 2nd floor and 3rd floor rooms will be wider by 3 inches. I will have to move the windows in the front of the house over to the center of the space. I plan to put the 3 kitchen windows from the kit on the 2nd floor and build 3 matching but taller windows for the kitchen. In the right corner, I am building a dumbwaiter that will go from the 1st floor to the 2nd floor up to the 3rd floor. I found in an old magazine, drawings for the repair of a simple dumbwaiter so I am going to build my dumbwaiter from these drawings. The pulleys for the dumbwaiter I think I can do with screen door parts. I've already cut my holes in each floor. I plan to build the dumbwaiter as one tall separate piece and then slide the whole piece in the holes from under the house. This way if I ever have to fix a problem with the dumbwaiter, I can just slide the whole piece out and fix it then slide it back in again. I have posted some pictures in my gallery. I will post more pictures as the remodel progresses.

I was watching HGTV show, If Walls Could Talk and saw a house in Mattapoisett, MA that looked like a Beacon Hill. I've searched all around and finally found a picture. Don't you think it looks like the Beacon Hill???

Hi Caite When I was building my tower I decided to add a small room. Doing it while building made it easier because I could add extra support before I added the roofing. I forgot to take pictures but maybe I can explain what I did. I put the 4 interlocking inner walls together (blue lines), then I added long pieces of wood into the corner of each intersection (yellow). These pieces of wood went from the floor of the tower section as far up as I could go. I then put a lot of screws (red lines) from the inner walls into the pieces of wood. At that point I cut away the sides (green X). Then on the sides where I cut away the walls I added skinny sticks up against the mansard roof. All this seemed to keep the tower structurally sound. If you don't cut away the sides you will get a room that is only 4 inches square. If you cut away the sides you can get a little more space that is hidden in the mansard roof section. Marcy

Hi Michelle In my bays I cut the wall piece off that hangs over the bay. Now my bays go all the way to the ceiling. I will have to figure out how to cut crown moulding at some weird angle to go into the bay. Because the wall piece seems to hold the second floor, before I cut the wall piece off, I added extra support. I added a piece of wood on the outside of the house, above the flat part of the bay roof. Then I put a couple of screws through the bay ceiling up into wood and a couple of screws from the second floor bedroom wall through the wall into the wood. The extra piece of wood does not show because it is covered by the bay roof. This held it all together before I cut the wall section above the bay. Now my bays are floor to ceiling height. Marcy

I added some more pictures of my bookcase/stairs. I don't know if I can explain how I built it but maybe you can figure it out from the pictures. The build process went through many modifications as I built it.

Hi Rosalind Yes I did design my bookcase/staircase. I got to the step in the directions for building the tower when I realized how much space there was in the tower and decided that my house people needed that space but they also needed a way to get to the tower. I had a bunch of designs and finally decided this was going to be the easiest to build. I think what led me to this idea was the fact that I was thinking about using that space in the bedroom next to the bump out and try to build a stair there. The problem was it is only 1.5 inches wide and the hatch would have opened onto the roof instead of the tower and the edge of the tower roof was going to get in the way. I still have so many plans for this idea. I am working on a coffer ceiling for this space which will sit right on on top of the bookcase. The hatch to the tower will not be seen this way. Also I want to add some string that will attach to the bookcase and go up the wall into the tower and attach to the hatch. Then when you open the bookcase the hatch will open. And when the people close the hatch the bookcase should close. It think they will also need some way of getting a cup of coffee to the tower, maybe a dumb waiter. My tower room will be a place for a cushy chair, some books and a table for my coffee and cookies. Marcy