MaryKate

So that San Franciscan I got is definitely going to be my niece's. She came over today and while I was trying to get out everything to put up the Christmas tree, she found the kit and said, "Can I play with this dollhouse RIGHT NOW?" I opened the box to show her it was all in pieces and we would have to build it, and by the time I went out to the garage and came back with a box of lights, she had pieces laid out on the floor and was ready to start. She held up some shingles. "Look at all these! They can be books for Belle's library!" I showed her the directions and promised we will get started as soon as the semester's over (in addition to my 'part-time' museum job, I'm adjuncting at a local college for one course). We talked about what the rooms could be: Rapunzel's tower, Belle's library, Tiana's kitchen, and Clara's bedroom (from the Nutcracker, which she is currently obsessed with). When her mom came to pick her up, she showed her the kit. "Look at this dollhouse. I'm going to help Aunt Mary make her dollhouse!" I said, "It's going to be your dollhouse." Her eyes got huge. "It's going to be my dollhouse!" She fell asleep on the 3-minute drive to her house. Probably dreaming of her dollhouse-to-be.

I just this morning picked up a Duracraft San Franciscan kit (#550, which I believe is the first version of that house they made?) in a factory sealed box for $60. It was listed on Craigslist as for sale at a local thrift shop--the shop has a special Craigslist section where they sell certain "premium" items, *but* it was listed under "miniature" and not "dollhouse" or "doll house," (I always check both of those, but now I'll remember to check "miniature" as well!) which is probably why it was still available after being listed for a week. I'm not a hundred percent sure what I'm going to do with it--Victorian isn't really my style, and I'll have to think about how I want to change it up--but for that price and no shipping costs it was a no-brainer to go check and see if it was still there when they opened this morning. Last night I looked at some photos of the finished house online, and... I don't know, there was something beyond just "what a great deal" urging me to go for it. I do really like the Duracraft houses and their construction design...I'm halfway through a Heritage kit that my parents got for $18 one year and gave me for Christmas. Maybe with the SF it's the tower. My youngest niece is 3 and obsessed with both dollhouses and fairy tales, especially Rapunzel, so it may end up as a special project I do for and with her. Maybe each room is a scene from a different fairy tale? Or maybe I just kidproof it as much as I can and let her go to town with her own imagination. It's sitting in the back of my car while I'm at work, so I haven't even had a chance to open it yet. I have a long to-do list for when I get home tonight, but I may just scrap it all to open that box and investigate a little!

Hi Elsbeth/Jenn, I bought the Sam's Study kit; I'm hoping to complete it as a Christmas gift for my sister. So far I have made all the furniture, but none of the books or other accessories. The furniture itself is a breeze to make; the pieces are mostly pre-cut, pre-painted, and the directions are much clearer than I thought they'd be. I keep wondering about the scale on it, though; in some ways, it seems bigger than 1:24, but then again, I've never made anything in that scale before so what do I know?? ;) I also bought this one for myself, but I haven't started it yet.

Hi Lita, I had the same issue with the stairs in the Orchid I'm working on and I decided to eliminate them entirely. I didn't punch out the opening on the second floor, and I filled it in with wood spackle. The first floor ceiling is papered with cardstock weight paper, as Debora recommends. and the second floor will be covered with (I think; still deciding) wood planks. You'd never know it was there. Since your opening was already punched out, I think Debora's advice about gluing in a wood piece is great. Best of luck with your build!

Hi Mike, We haven't interacted here much, if at all, but please know that even those of us who are "quiet" admire your work, your sense of humor, and your tenacity in the face of this challenge. I will be thinking of you in the weeks to come and hoping for the best for you and your family.

I can't get a picture of it right now, but the Front Opening Shoppe I bought on Craigslist that's partially finished has a hinged roof, and the person who built it applied the shingles (and everything else, including window frames and a staircase, but that's another frustrating story) without painting or staining anything first. It looks almost exactly like Diane's picture. The octagonal shingles come up to where the hinges are, then the bottoms of the shingles just brush the top edges of the hinges and go on up to the top. You can see the center of the hinges, but the flat parts that secure them are covered by the shingles, and the shingles in that line overlap the same amount as all the other shingles, so it's barely noticeable. My guess is that whoever made it planned the shingling so it would work out that way. Taking a close look at the work, which is so well done, is making me rethink my original plan to get rid of the shingles and thatch the roof. Maybe I'll try to paint them to make them look like slate...

Just a note in case anyone else builds this house and stumbles across this thread looking for advice: For the most part, the directions are clear and the diagrams help a great deal. However, there's an error in the diagram for the base, where you glue on all that strip wood to lift the bottom of the house off the display board. It's on the diagram on page 2 labeled "BASE (underside of Cottage)." The written directions tell you to glue T4 Joist Trim pieces on the addition and T5 Joist Trim pieces to the porch, but the diagram labels the pieces on the addition as T5 and the porch as T4. THE WRITTEN DIRECTIONS ARE CORRECT. It can get confusing, but take it step by step and pre-fit all the joists and you'll be okay. Feel free to ask here or message me if you run into frustrations!

So on Tuesday I had one of *those* days. I had taken a mental health day (because of the vagaries of my job, I have to work every weekend this summer) and I wanted to work on minis. Gluing and painting and staining and making stuff is very therapeutic for me. I'd also planned to cut out some life-size pajamas that I'm sewing for my niece and nephew. By 10:30 AM: ~ I'd been up and downstairs and out to the garage at least 7 times trying to find everything I needed for a couple of "simple" projects (and this is after I'd stained/painted/sanded/prepped parts for the mini furniture the night before so I'd be all ready to go, argh). ~ I'd broken a piece of the mini chest I was trying to make. ~ I'd realized I cannot find the box where I'd packed my pins and needles (all my other sewing supplies are unpacked, but not the pins and needles). ~ I had reached a full stop on the mini sofa I'm re-upholstering because I couldn't find needles to tuft the back. ~ I realized the matte finishing spray must be with the pins and needles or in some other unearthed box entirely, and thus reached full stop on the Dragonfly corkboard kit I had decided was the one foolproof thing I could do. Now, I could have run to JoAnn's for the pins, needles, and matte spray, and eventually I did. But traffic is a bear because of a huge air show going on this week in Oshkosh, and I just didn't have it in me to deal with it that day. And I was afraid if I tried I'd end up in a wreck in one of our infamous roundabouts. So I chucked it all and took a nap. Later in the day I did manage to work on the "piers" on the underside of my LaserTech Beach House, and custom cutting and mitering each piece turned into a slow (I'm still only about half done) but soothing process. In the past two days, though, the fruits of a weekend shopping spree have come home to roost. On my kitchen table currently are a Realife Country Living Room Kit, which I'm going to mess around with a bit (most of the furniture will probably go in the beach house or into the witches' house); a kit from Amazon called "My Miniature Library" that makes 30 mini books--eventually many of those will go in the bookstore/coffee shop I'm making from a Duracraft Heritage kit; and one of those half-scale kits from China. It's called "Sam's Study," but I think it's supposed to be a corner of a bookstore. I'm going to make it and give it to my sister, who's an English professor, for Christmas. I opened up the kit and it's just delightful--little pre-cut, pre-painted wood pieces, teeny books to cut out and fold together, hardware, even an LED light fixture. I'm seriously in love and I'm tempted to swipe everything else of the table and start right now. I also ordered one of those kits for myself; it's a modern "apartment"--but it has a swimming pool so it's not the kind of apartment I could ever have afforded in my apartment days!! It won't arrive for another few weeks, but I have more than enough to keep me busy until it does. I've been taking pics and I'll post some later. It's always a pain trying to get my phone and my computer to coordinate, but that might be what I do while I wait for glue to dry on something or other. I hope to make more progress on the beach house pier posts tonight, too.

If it turns out half as pretty as your Orchid, or the formerly Yellow House, it will be wonderful! I love the idea of letting some things be imperfect; it'll feel like a house with a real history. And everyone I know who owns a house more than a couple decades old is always complaining about all the projects they "should" complete. Why should the inhabitants of your Heritage be any different? :)

Hi Marilyn! One thing I've done to create "lead lines" in glass is to use strips of drafter's tape, which are available as thin as 1/16" at the craft stores. For my Orchid, I carefully put strips of the black tape on wax paper and colored over them with a metallic silver sharpie, letting some of the black show through. I gave it a few minutes to dry, then was able to apply the tape right onto my windows (I recut them from plexiglass from a cheap frame, since the kit was old and the acetate had yellowed). I coated them with clear nail polish, which I stippled in the "panes" of the glass to make it look like old mottled glass. It took some patience to apply the tape lines straight, but I really like how it turned out. I don't have any pictures of the windows up yet, but I'll try to post some once I get around to opening that box (I 'only' moved five months ago :).

I have a rare day completely free, so I went down to Rose's Dollhouses in Milwaukee. Did some damage, had so much fun. That place is an experience! It's also just so much better to see things in 3-D instead of trying to order online. If anyone's in the area, I can highly recommend a trip. If there's something mini-related you're looking for, they probably have it. I had many moments of seeing things I'd only seen in online pictures up close and for real, and it was delightful. If nothing else, it's worth the trip (and the stairs!) just to see all the completed dollhouses. After seeing the size of some houses and thinking about what I already have, I may be leaning toward 1/2" scale at some point in the future. Right now I'm going to unpack my goodies and decide what I want to play with first!

I just wanted to thank you for the link to the source of your tiles. I'm going to try some in at least one of my projects, possibly more! And your work is incredible. I am so impressed with the detail.

Thank you! Of course, I realized after I'd placed the order that I need a few little hardware bits, but I think I might try another source for those just to get something different. But yeah, shipping--I generally like Alibris and ABE for books because you can get out of print stuff and used books at reasonable copies, but sometimes the shipping is more than the books.

I don't know about other laser cut kits (like the ones from Greenleaf), but for this one everything is pre-cut, even the window frames. I ended up trying out the paint on the bottom of the base, and thanks to that test run I shifted gears completely and painted the exterior walls a pale green and the interior cream. I'll paint most of the trim the same cream, and I'm going to add shutters so those will be cream as well. Since I last posted, I've assembled the walls of the main house and have started working on the ceiling/roof. Should be able to glue on the beams later today once the stain dries.

I just spent some mad money on an order from miniatures.com (they have their 25% off sale this week, so yay!). Some of it is intended for my current build, some of it is just random stuff that I liked, aka retail therapy. My (1:1 scale) house in Omaha finally (seriously, it has been a 3.5 month ordeal) closed Monday and I needed to celebrate somehow. Furniture, kits, accessories. I'll use it all somehow!

Oh, that poor baby! You have a challenge ahead, but I love the Heritage and I bet you can make something great with it. It really does look like the beginnings of a decaying, possibly haunted house somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. I have a half-built Heritage that I'm puzzling over--I want to make some changes to my original plan, but that's going to require some creative repainting if I can't disassemble some of the things I've already done. And the stairs...oy, what a space waster, and right in the line of sight of that room. Please keep us in the loop as you work on this one. Can't wait to see what you do with it!

Re: Cutting: I've never worked with gator board, but with foam core (which I've used for a 1/4" scale house and other craft projects), I had no problem cutting it with a craft or utility knife. I sometimes have to go over the line to cut more than once to get a clean, steady cut, but I haven't had issues with making exactly the cuts I want using those simple tools.

While I generally love the laser cut-ness of this kit (everything fits! NO SANDING!!!), I am up against the first "problem": no scrap wood to try out the painting process. The walls are MDF. I've worked with it before, but it was a barn project for my nephew, so I wanted nice, solid red and whites. All it took was a couple coats of sample paints from the hardware store and it was good to go. But here, I was hoping to create a weathered, beachy look. I'll need to do some layering and I really want to try a couple different ideas (mostly gleaned from Pat Thomas's articles in back issues of Nutshell News/Dollhouse Miniatures). I have plenty of wood scraps of other kinds that I could use to experiment, but MDF doesn't take paint like any other wood, and it's already fairly dark, so I'm wondering if I can use that to my advantage. I think I'm going to have to try stuff out on the underside of the base. It's the only surface that won't show!

Good points, thank you! Some of the ends along the gables I mitred; others ended up a little too long. I waited until the glue dried, flipped the piece over, and trimmed it flush with the angle.