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With all the windows installed and the door frames in place, I was ready to assemble the shell. The Magnolia has an interlocking design, so there’s a specific order for assembly. First I put the center partition in place on the first floor. It slides into a slot on the first floor. Then I added the front door section which also slides into a slot on the first floor: And then the second floor: The pole in the center is one I put in place to support the floor while I assembled the house. I don’t like floppy floors while I’m putting up walls. Next, I put on the center section of the front bay window. It adds additional support for the floor while I work with the rest of the bays. I’m a little bit challenged when it comes to bays. No matter how careful I am, I always end up with gaps. But I have discovered that the following process does reduce the amount of gaps for me. I install the center piece of a bay first: Then I put on the sides: After the bays were on, I installed the other wall. Now that the main walls are in place, I can work on the interior of the first floor. As I mentioned, I have challenges with gaps in the bays, so I learned from Nutti about using bamboo skewers to cover the joins. Not only does it cover any gaps, but I think it is a lovely finished look and a nice architectural finish. On some houses, I overlap the wallpaper on the interior joins of a bay, but in this house, I wanted the woodwork to really stand out and “pop” the wallpaper. So on the interior of the bays, I installed bamboo skewers cut to size and painted to match the rest of the woodwork. I think it really defines the shape of the bay in this house. While the paint was drying on the skewers, I cut basswood strips for baseboards and painted them to match. The baseboards continue thru the entire house around all the lower edges. I like that finished look in a mini house. In some houses, I use a 3/4 round moulding, but in this house, a more defined look was appropriate so I used simple basswood strips.

I call this style "Sleek Geek-Chic". Here's the finished house. The colors don't photograph well, but the main body is a medium grey-green and the trim is a light silvery-green. This house is home to a Silicon Valley bachelor and I had a lot of fun adding the décor to give the house its final touch of character. To see the finished house fully decorated and furnished, you can visit my /index.php?automodule=gallery&req=user&user=329&op=view_album&album=931">gallery. If you're considering building a Magnolia, I heartily encourage you to do so. Not only does this kit have unlimited potential for design and style, but it's very easy to build. The house is much larger than it appears in pictures. The rooms are large and airy and will accommodate larger pieces of furniture. The design of the house is very gracious and elegant. It would be an excellent house for either a first time builder or an experience builder. Deb

As I mentioned earlier, I use bamboo skewers to cover the joins of the bays. Here’s what they look like before they’re painted. And after a coat of paint. I really like the way the skewers give such a nice finish to the bays. For the modern look of this house, I wanted to use asphalt shingles, but I didn’t really want to go to all the expense of the pre-made asphalt. So I used square birch shingles instead and applied them with rough edges and just a bit of gap between each one. Shingles are the only thing that I use a hot glue gun for during building, but it does shorten the time spent on shingling considerably. After the shingles were on, I “bug wrapped” the house in plastic. I don’t think that’s a proper term for it, but to me, it looked like the house had been tented by exterminators. But for the next step, it was very, very important that everything on the house be sealed off except for the roof. With the house all sealed off, I used Fleckstone spray paint in a shade of greenish grey with white and black flecks on the roof. Voila! Instant asphalt shingles.

The last step for this house was to build and install the staircase. I liked the staircase that came with the kit, but I wanted something a little more modern that would also open up some floorspace. I did a little research online and came up with a design for a mini floating staircase. The materials were easy. All it requires is a .5x.5 strip of basswood and the stairsteps from the kit staircase. Using an xacto blade, I scored notches into the basswood and cut the edges to a slant to fit the floor and ceiling. A coat of paint and the center piece was ready to be glued in place. All that remained to do was glue on the stairs. I like the modern look that this gives the house.

Having completed the roof, my next stop was the porch. With all the pieces given a first coat of paint, I assembled the components. First came the steps. Then came the latticework. These are the three pieces for the front lattice. Glue the two lattice pieces together so that the lattice criss-crosses. Then glue the frame on and clamp it till it dries. And it’s ready to be glued in place on the porch. Follow the same process on the side and corner pieces and glue in place. To make sure the foundation is square and even, I put the house on a flat board and taped the porch down to the board while the glue dried. All that remains for the exterior is to paint and install the porch and balcony railings, and install the French doors.

With the walls in place, it was time to install the roof supports and pieces. The first piece to go on is the back roof support. Then the side roof panel: And the interior roof panel: I ran into a bit of warping here because of the addition of the skylight, but nothing that couldn’t be handled by just taping everything that didn’t move and letting it sit overnight for the glue to cure. After those pieces had set and were secure, then I added the front and back roof pieces. These pieces are the ones that fit into the gable where I had added the allowance of wallpaper to go around the edges. If you look close in this picture, you can see where the wallpaper goes around the corner of the eves to cover the edges of the gables. The finishing touches on the second floor were to add the painted basswood strips for floorboards and around the edge of the door. You can also see where I added stained strips of skinny sticks to finish the edges of the stairwell. The final touch to finish off the edges was to put painted corner moulding on the edges of both the first floor and the second floor. And the interior is done! (except for the staircase which will be the last step)

I decided that a modern touch in the living room of this house would be a built in entertainment center/bookcase. Nothing complicated……….just a neat and cleanly lined area for the tv, stereo, books and other little things. I used one inch strips of basswood and cut them to size. Here's a pic of the sizing and planning process. (the house is laying on its side here) I painted the wood to match the woodwork. After it dried, I installed it piece by piece: And the finished result right side up: I installed the second floor walls on each side of the balcony next. And here's the house with the walls up and the first floor interior complete.

On to the windows and doors! I’m a bit fussy (well, okay, I’m totally obsessive) about organizing pieces of the house before I start building. When I remove pieces from the sheets, I label each one and stack them together in categories. I put the smaller pieces like stairs or windows into envelopes and label them. It’s a bit of overkill, but it does two things for me. For one thing, I’ve never lost a piece of trim. The main thing however, is that when I’m ready to start on a step, all the pieces I need are right there together and I don’t have to track anyone down or dig out paints for one piece that got left behind later on. Here’s my window and door pieces all laid out and ready to paint. Notice that they’re all in order so I know that each window has the same number of pieces for both interior and exterior. And here they are all painted and ready to be installed. The lighter green are the exterior and the darker green are the interior pieces. I installed the door frames first and glued together the French doors While the doors are clamped and drying, the next step was the doublehung windows. Doublehung windows can be a bit tricky the first time you do them because it’s difficult to visualize how they are constructed. It’s easy to get the hang of them once you realize that a portion of the window frame is actually the wall. Start with placing the U shaped frame piece around the window and trace off the interior edge so you have a painting guideline. Then paint that section of the wall around the window to match the frames. (don’t forget to paint the cross bar too) Next, glue the acetate window to the rectangular frame using white glue. Glue the frame to the bottom of the window, lining up the crossbar and all edges evenly. Glue on the U shaped frame around it with the opening at the bottom. Line up the edges of the U to the bottom of the frame so they are flush. Then glue on your window sill. Let the glue dry completely and turn the wall over to install the window on the other side. It’s the same process with one exception. This time, glue the rectangular frame to the TOP section of the window. And that’s how to complete a double hung window!

As I've mentioned, my style of building is to decorate as I go, so the "R&P"portion of my building includes wallpapering before I assemble the shell. With the Magnolia, I had one other step to do before beginning the wallpaper process. I had decided to install skylights in the roof in both the computer room and bedroom, so while the house was in dry fit, I marked off the places to make my cuts. I used a drill bit in my dremel to make the pilot holes in each corner of the areas marked for skylights. These holes were just large enough for the blade of my mini jigsaw to fit into and I used the jigsaw to make the straight cuts. The end result is two roof pieces that look like this: The "skylights" that I decided to use are 24 pane windows from Houseworks. They have a great finished look and were perfect for the style. First I painted the windows: While the paint was drying, I painted the exterior of the roof and wallpapered the interior sides. I'm going to pause for a quick note here about why I paint the exterior of pieces before I wallpaper the other side. When you paint and wallpaper before assembly, there's a chance of the pieces warping. By painting one side and wallpapering the other as soon as the paint has dried, I've sealed both sides of the wood and eliminated the possibility of warping. The other benefit of painting the exterior pieces before assembling is that the paint around the edges and inside window cut outs is smoothly finished before you apply the wallpaper. It gives me a nice finished look without any wet paint smudges on my wallpaper or window frames. After the house is assembled, I give the exterior another coat of paint, stucco, etc. Back to our skylights now. After the wallpaper had dried, I installed the windows with the frames on the exterior. For the interior, I used strips of basswood to make my own frames. After the skylights were installed, the roof pieces were set aside on a flat surface to wait for assembly. The other pieces of the roof were wallpapered at the same time. There is a trick to wallpapering gables prior to installation and I'll show you how that's done. When the house is in dry fit, make a note in pencil to add 1/4" to 1/3" extra wallpaper in that area. Lay your roof piece on top of the wallpaper. Trace the outline of the V shape on the paper with pencil, adding the additional space to the center. These will be the lines you use to cut the wallpaper. Paste the wallpaper onto the roof piece allowing the overlap of paper to extend to the inside of the V. When the roof is installed and the gable pieces glued on, you'll have these flaps of wallpaper that will extend over the edges of the gable joins. All you'll have to do is apply a touch of glue to the underside with your finger, then smooth them down over the edges. We'll get to that in a few more steps when we start assembling. With the tricky parts out of the way, the rest of the walls had the exterior painted and the wallpaper installed.

When I first began planning the Magnolia, I had a vision of it as a Civil War era theater. I think the balconies and wide bay areas were what put that idea into my head and I was pretty certain that was going to be my plan. Oh, how these houses change our minds for us! Once the Magnolia arrived and I started putting it into dry fit, it took on a whole new concept. I played with the idea of it being an Aspen-type ski lodge and to be honest, if I build another one, that's probably the direction it will take. But this house firmly told me that it wanted to be the ultra modern home of a Silicon Valley bachelor. "But", I argued, "You're of a more victorian or traditional styling. How are we going to give you a modern look?" The Magnolia replied, "Just look at these wide open rooms and the French doors opening out to balconies. If you put in a couple of skylights in the roof, paint me in light, modern colors, give me some interesting floor treatments, build in an entertainment center and give me a cantilevered floating staircase, I'll be very modern and chic." I've never denied a house what it wanted and this didn't seem the time to start, so the Magnolia began its journey in a conversion to a modern SoCal house. During the planning stages, I put the house into dry fit and used a pencil to mark out where the skylights would go and spent a lot of time with wood scraps designing a floating staircase that would work with the floorplan. Once those decisions were made, the house came back apart and the building started. My building style is to decorate as I build, so the walls, floors and windows are finished before I even assemble the shell. I start with the floors. The first floor is a hardwood easily accomplished by staining the kit floor with Honey Pine stain. I have a fetish for high gloss on floors so after the stain dries, it gets a series of poly varnish/sand/varnish/sand/varnish. It takes about three days to complete the process, but the time and effort are well worth it for the end result of deep glossy floors. In the miniature scale, that deep shine gives a lot of realism. The second floor is a combination of vinyl tile in the computer room and a parquet floor in the bedroom. While the house was in dry fit, I used a pencil to draw a line on either side of the dividing wall between the two rooms so I knew where to leave a slight gap between the vinyl and parquet. That little gap ensures that the wall would set down flush with the floor and not cause gaps when the roof went on. I gave the floor a coat of stain to seal the wood, then flipped it over and put on the ceiling paper. When the floor is stained on the top side, it will reduce the chance of the wood warping from the moisture in the wallpaper glue on the other side. After I had the wallpaper on. I covered it with waxed paper and weighted it with books to ensure it would dry flat. After the glue had dried, I began tiling the floors. Using the pencil marks as guidelines, I installed the vinyl tiles in the computer room first. The tiles are from the Greenleaf store and are not only easy to work with, but affordable too. They're a peel and stick tile in one inch squares. I used just a drop of glue on the bottom of each tile for a little more security. After I had the tiles in place, I moved on to the bedroom. For this room, I used the Greenleaf birch tiles. They're also one inch square and very easy to work with. They can be cut to any size or shape using an EZ cutter, or even a sharp pair of scissors. I've used these tiles for complex and ornate parquet floors, but for this room, I did a simple alternating grain pattern and gave it a coat of honey pine stain after the glue had dried. In this picture, you can see where the gap between the rooms is located for the wall. I used a skinny stick to make the threshold between the two rooms. I'll be using more skinny sticks later on for thresholds for both French doors as well as for framing around the stairwell. I waited overnight for the glue to completely cure and then used poly varnish on both the wood and the vinyl tiles. The vinyl takes poly varnish surprisingly well and gives a high gloss to the tile floors.