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Hello Everyone! I have always wanted to build dollhouses but never knew where to start and found this forum for help and encouragement. I just purchased my first kit- Washington 2.0 which I thought might be good for a beginner like myself. Since I'm crazy into Christmas and "A Christmas Story" is one of my favorite movies, I've decided to ATTEMPT to turn this into a model of Ralphie's house. Wish me luck !!

Hello ! I've always had a fascination with miniatures and dollhouses but was unsure how to get started. I finally purchased the Washington 2.0 in hopes of transforming It into my own version of "A Christmas Story" house. I have absolutely no clue on how to get started besides reading the instructions and was wondering if there is an informative how-to book on the dollhouse hobby. I did find " A Beginners' Guide to the Dolls' House Hobby: Revised and Expanded Edition" but there were mixed reviews. I just want the basics like tools, which glues are best, helpful hints for beginners. I realize that's what this whole site is for but I'd like to read something before I begin. Excited but nervous. I can tell this is going to be addicting

Five years ago I started working on a Washington 2.0 with my goddaughter, Mollie, who was then eleven years old. We both lost interest. The half-finished house started hollering at me this week. Over time it attracted a lot of Hallowe'en items. Obviously it wants to be a haunted house! It has already undergone a major transformation. See more in my gallery and my blogspot blog.

Haven't worked much in the past few days, but there is a little progress to share. The siding is finished and painted. The irregularities below the upper floor windows will be hidden by the porch roof. The shutters are glued in place, and some of the interior window and door frames also glued. Not sure how or why, but some of the interior window frames are a bit wide and show through the window when you look from the outside. Not sure how this will be addressed. They're made of balsa wood, so it's possible I could use a delicate touch with a very sharp X-exacto knife to pare them down, but ... I didn't make interior frames for the bay window. Have decided not to install the acrylic panels. The window is hidden a bit by the porch. I don't think anyone will notice that there is no glass in the windows. I glued the kitchen door in place before I put the window in and am thinking to leave it open, too. I used fabric to hinge the two doors. This is the first time I've done it this way. Easy and effective. I recommend it. I did the front door first and was so caught up with the ease that I went ahead and did the kitchen door immediately, not thinking that it really wasn't finished. ... ... ...

It has been nearly a month since Mollie and I got the basic construction done. The holidays and life in general intervened, but I've been working at siding for the past week or so. Siding is not my favorite sport, I've decided, but I certainly do like the way it looks so far. The Greenleaf siding that comes with the 2.0 kit doesn't look like much in sheets, but with a lick of sandpaper (emery board, actually), it finished up beautifully. You'll notice from the photos that tape is an essential part of the siding process. The dampness from the glue makes the strip warp, so a firm hand and lots of tape are needed to keep it all flat. Once the glue dries, the siding is beautifully smooth and even. Note the slight space in the siding below the upstairs window boxes. That's where the porch roof will slide into place. The outside corners will be covered with a piece of 90-degree quarter inch molding painted the same color as the siding -- light blue. ... ...

Mollie is my 10-year-old goddaughter. We're building the Washington 2.0. Mollie has visions of it being an old time farmhouse but with modern conveniences, which include a horse or two in the yard. Here's Mollie, hard at work sanding and hamming it up for the camera while showing off the dry fit. ... Mollie hung in there during the sanding and priming with gesso, and finally we were able to glue the main structure together. It was glued before I read the instruction about the lock pieces that become the base for the window boxes. I can cheerfully report that if you cut off the small end of the piece, the part that goes into the floor, you can glue all the pieces in and no one will be the wiser. The building components are well engineered. Although some of the boards were well warped after we finished priming them, all of them pulled back into shape when the house was assembled. The fit is so close, that we could get away without baseboards or crown moldings -- no gaps! ... We decided to decorate while we could still flip the house around easily. The living room (bottom left) is painted a lovely Jamaican blue. The other three rooms --kitchen (bottom right), nursery (upper left), and master bedroom (upper right) all have scrapbook paper on the walls. The kitchen also sports scrapbook paper for a lovely faux linoleum floor. The living room floor and kitchen wainscoting is paper coated with matte finish Modge Podge. The nursery floor is scrapbook paper. The master bedroom floor is paint sponged over paint and coated with matte finish Modge Podge. ... Mollie's attention began to fade when we got to the trimmings, but she managed to sand and paint her share. The chimney is painted with acrylics with a multi-colored sponged finish. The siding will be light blue, the window and porch trim white. Porch floor gray. Shutters will be the same green as the lattice under the porch, with light blue diamonds. The roof will be black. (The roof section is built and painted but not shingled. I neglected to get a photo of it.) Here's something that surprised me: there is no trim provided for the insides of the windows and the front and kitchen doors, and none for the two internal doors. I'm making some out of 1/16-inch balsa I happened to have on hand. Without it, the acrylic window "glass" would be glued onto the inside wall. (Unless I missed something in the directions, but I've been through them a few times and don't see how else it could be done. I'm going to glue the acetate to the window frames I made, then glue them on the inside, so the acetate will be sandwiched between the outside and inside mullions. ...