Jump to content

Tako

Gold Member
  • Posts

    147
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Blog Entries posted by Tako

  1. Tako
    I undid all the taping on my bay window after I got home from classes today and took a picture. I'm going to need to touch things up a bit in places, but I don't think it looks, too bad, does it?

    I'm going to have to paint the interior of the cabinet at some point too, because it just looks bad for it to be unfinished in there, even if it is just where the occupant will probably keep her potatoes and turnips

    Anyway here's a picture!



    I figure that I probably ought to see if I can find a scrapbooking paper that I like well enough during the 6 for 96 cent scrapbook paper sale that JoAnn has going on right now. I've decided that half my problem was that none of the stuff that I like even a bit, is old enough looking for me, and then I realized that I can just tea stain it, duh! So, I'm hoping to be able to spend less than $6 for the majority of what I still need to finish the cottage.
  2. Tako
    I always end up never doing much work on Sundays, except possibly some grocery shopping, and never for any religious reasons (as people always tend to assume!). I go to classes full time Monday through Thursday, work on school work and commission work Friday and Saturday, and so Sunday is my day to rest and not do anything.

    However, today I actually did what I said I was going to! I glued the cabinet door front on the window seat of the bay window, and glued the window section onto the house. I'm really happy without how well the pin hinged doors work. One side is a bit sticky and could have used some extra sanding, but the other side works smoother than anything so when the unruly side gets stuck I can just help it out from the inside through the smooth-operating door

    I'd have pictures, but the section is currently heavily taped to the rest of the house, so maybe pictures tomorrow.

    Next decision: If I use one of the 50% off coupons from JoAnn, or the 40% coupon from Michaels, and pick it up in the unfinished wood section, could I possible consider splurging on stain for the window trim and shingles? I want to stain the window peices before I go about gluing them all together, and I want to assemble the windows and trim before I go about putting the egg carton stone on, so I don't have to worry about the stone accidentally getting in the way of the trim!
  3. Tako
    Sooo, even with all my care yesterday because of my previous mistakes, I still made more of them. Not too terribly huge, but tabs ended up in the wrong places. I ended up with slots that had no tabs to fill them and tabs that had no slots to fit into. House fit together just fine, but now I have tabs to whittle and sand off and slots to fill and sand. I could have fixed it, but I was NOT taking the blasted thing apart for a second time, and gluing it together for a third.

    So much for getting this blasted house put together and mostly finished before my break from school was over! :wub:

    Possibly will edit this post with some pictures this evening, though I'm not sure -why-
  4. Tako
    Finding time between school and everything else in my life to actually work on my poor neglected Buttercup is just getting harder as end of semester stress piles on, and I have to start wondering (read as stressing!) about all the finer details of moving entirely across the country. I don't even know if I've gotten in to the University I'm trying to transfer to or not, and won't until May!

    I've also had to face that I absolutely cannot spend anything on the cottage until after I find a job (which seems to be impossible ;) ) and until after I'm certain I have enough put aside for the move. I have a $20 bill in my wallet right now and that's pretty much my spending money until I find a job, which could be quite a while.

    Not being able to spend got me to be a bit creative when working on the bay window. I have the pieces primed and sanded and hanging out on my desk for a couple of weeks now, and I've been trying to figure out what color I was going to paint the window seat cabinet pieces (I ended up going with a dark chocolate brown). I decided to pin hinge the doors on the window seat the cottage inhabitant could have some extra storage. I needed handles on the doors though, so I could open them and decided that I wanted large round knobs rather than messing with anything else. I didn't have any small wooden spheres, but I did have wooden beads. What, however, to do about the holes? Stuff them with wooden toothpicks of course. They acted as nice handles while I was painting too. Snipped one side close, painted, and then snipped the other side close and wood glued them to the doors. Also, I don't have enough flat headed sewing pins to go hiding them all away in my doors, so I used jewelry head pins and it turned out really well. I even managed to not stab myself while making the holes to set them in

    Now the bay window is all glued together and taped to dry, all except for the piece with the doors in it. I'll probably glue that on, and glue it in to the house tomorrow (or not, I always say I'll do something on Sunday, and never do...).
  5. Tako
    I glued the front of the house on the other day, but haven't done any more work on it. I've been under the weather with my health issues plus what I suspect might be a flu bug. However, I did get around to taking some pictures of the things that have gone wrong, how I've mended them, and of the house in general, and they're all hanging out in my Buttercup Build Gallery!
  6. Tako
    So, I was super excited yesterday to have my main structure glued together and drying. Completely ecstatic in fact. With the same amount of enthusiasm I got ready to assemble the front of the house today. I turned the house right side up set it on it base and was please to find that, other than it rocking a touch on its base (something easily fixed by dampening and weighting the wood while it dries to undo the warping of the floor piece) that it seemed to be sturdily holding together.

    I soon began to be very, very displeased that I did such a sturdy job of gluing because, the longer I looked at it, the more I realized that something was off...a couple somethings in fact.

    That hole I had so carefully measured and meticulously cut for the ladder to the second floor? I somehow put it in the wrong place. That apprehension I had felt the entire time I was cutting it was because I was being incredibly stupid and cutting it along the open edge of the second floor piece, not the back edge/the edge on the same side as the door. The good news there is that I kept the piece I cut out, and that I was planning on covering the floor and the ceiling anyway. It was really just a matter of gluing the cut out rectangle back in. I'll have to fill in and sand a little bit and just cover it up.

    Second thing...that lovely opening for the bay window that is supposed to be on the left as you're looking at the open back, and that I very much intended to be on the left as I was assembling it. Well, it somehow ended up on the right...

    So, I spent the morning trying to get my house apart, snapping that little bit under the bay window, cutting and sanding away dried wood glue, fixing that little bit under the bay window, patching my hole in the second floor, remeasuring and recutting a hole in the second floor (very carefully place this time!!!!) and regluing the house.

    Maybe if the glue has dried enough this evening and I feel up to it I'll attempt assembly of the front of the cottage. I guess it's a good thing that this project was planned as something that would be covered up and not really be changed ever again to begin with...because at the rate I'm messing things up, it won't ever be able to be anything else...
  7. Tako
    No pictures yet, it's not -that- much progress, but at least it's no longer just sheets of primed and sanded wood lying about!

    I went up to the Sonoma Coast to Bodega Bay and Jenner yesterday, it would have been a lot more fun if weather.com hadn't lied about the weather and if it hadn't involved so much time crammed in the back seat of a car. Bad knees, bad hips and a bad back + cramped back seat = bad news. Also, it was early enough in the season that none of the access stairs or anything had been repaired by park services after all the storms we've been having, so access to the beach wasn't great, or wasn't there at all. It was nice to get away though!

    That, however, was why I didn't get to work on the house yesterday.

    In any case, there are currently two walls and two floor pieces laying on the right wall on my desk in my room. I ended up propping up the walls with jewelry boxes because they were heavy enough to not be moved by unruly leaning floor pieces and had square corners, so that they wouldn't push anything out of square. Getting everything even remotely into square was a pain in the backside! It took me about 10 minutes to actually get it together and then another 20 minutes of fine tuning and nudging and taping things with masking tape and weighing things down with books and so on to get things what seems to be square.

    I couldn't find a single one of my right triangles so I used a fresh 1/4 inch thick ruler from the box of promotional rulers my dad inherited from an old job. The corners of them are nice and square and with them being 1/4" thick it's pretty easy to use them as a judge of how square a corner is.

    On my plate for tomorrow is gluing the front of the house on it and letting that sit to dry while I prep the next parts on the list. I don't know how much of that I will get done though, because there is a slight possibility I'm getting drug off to see Horton Hears a Who (exciting! ). If I do get to that point though, I will probably take pictures, just because it's exciting to me to see it taking shape!
  8. Tako
    ...or at least decisions were made.

    So, I decided to put a stone chimney/fireplace up the center of the right wall (the right wall if you're looking at the open back.) Today I sanded the pieces that popped out of the windows for the right side down a little, put glue around the edges, and pounded them back into their holes with the heel of my hand. Gessoed them and sanded them. They match up as solid walls well enough now to be egg-carton stoned over, and a chimney will be built on the inside of the wall on that side, to line up with where I'm moving the chimney on the roof too.

    Also, I cut the hole for the ladder up to the second floor, sanded it out and it looks pretty good. I might try actually putting it together tomorrow.
  9. Tako
    As a lot of you probably know, I just got my first mini kit and am beyond excited to be starting my Buttercup cottage. I'm doing it in a fairytale and very slightly Tudor-esque style.

    Spent almost five hours priming and sanding the cottage walls and and floors on Friday. I got a little bit of a sunburn (first doll house injury!?) because I took advantage of the nice weather and watched birds wile waiting for layers of gesso to dry. Yup, you heard me, gesso. The stuff us crazy artists prime canvases with. I have a TON of it, and no wall/wood primer, so I just used what I have with really great results!

    I'm so glad I'm not planning to have any of the original wood showing, because it's frustratingly poor quality, different tones etc. Understandable to a certain extent in a kit, but frustrating all the same from a company that seems to pride itself so much on quality. However, I'd been warned about the kit wood quality by other miniers, so I'd kind of been expecting to have to do a lot of prep work before I could start assembly.

    I needed wood filler Saturday, but dad's had all dried up, so had pretty much everything else in the garage that was a comparable product . So rather than spend money on some when I needed a microscopic amount I made my own with sawdust (well, sandpaper and a scrap of wood) and wood glue. Had problems when sanding it smooth though, so I'm just settling for a relatively filled spot on one of the outer walls since I'm covering them in egg carton stone anyway. (Great tutorial: http://www.miniland.ca/EggClass1.htm)

    I Was having real issues trying to decide where to put a hole for the ladder up to the second floor. I'm pretty sure I've decided that it's going on the left side in the back corner. I did some scale sketching and I think it will all fit well, so I'm going to go ahead and take the plunge and measure out and cut the square hole for it tomorrow possibly.
×
×
  • Create New...