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Just a very small update on the Beacon Hill, unfortunately my restoration work has been taking most of my time and left very little oportunity to work on my hobbies, but I do hope to catch up later this year. The construction pieces are mostly sorted and prepared, but I'd rather work on the assembly when I have time to regularly check on it. In the meantime I've worked on this set of chairs and table for the dinning room, bought them separately in raw wood but I think the design ended up matching quite well. Here's a little furniture test for the Beacon Hill parlour area, I'm happy the modifications gave me all this extra room to play around with furniture but still I wish I had a bit extra space haha. The sideboard and cabinet are from the Bespaq Armorial set, I have some assorted pieces I use as "displays" for my collection of miniature porcelain and glass inside my large cabinets. These two suit the room nicely I think, and unlike other pieces I've tried the sideboard actually fits inside the bay window. I haven't changed the decorations inside the cabinet which is full of Reutter miniatures, I'll rearange everything after the house is finished. The decorations on the table were displayed with a diferent set, I've picked the green dishes and a matching carpet because I'm thinking of decorating this room with a "green" theme. You may recognize the silver pieces, they are from artists Peter Acquisto and Dmitry Shevchenko, I've noticed Dmitry recently posted on this forum and I must say I've been a fan of his work for some time. I specially love his cuttlery sets, so detailed and delicate, and the 5 arm candelabra is probably one of my favorite pieces from his collection. Recently I've bought these green mini wax candles from clare bell which go really nice with the candelabra, I'll definitely get more for other candle holders they smell so nice too! The sofa set is a work from the talented Jill Diane I had in my mini art collection. I wasn't planning on using them in a dollhouse setting, but I really like the green fabric and delicate decorations so I'm feeling a bit tempted to move them here, it adds to the "french" vibe of this house hehe. Not sure about the paintings, I might need a mirror for the fireplace but I want to add a bit of decor on the pannels. I will also need green curtains for the windows, either short ones or falling all the way to the floor. I hope you enjoy this mini preview, I really miss working on my Beacon Hill. Sadly large houses take almost as much time as real size furniture, and I've had plenty of that to work on latelly *sigh*. I should have picked a smaller project at this time, but I will eventually get back to work in this house. Hope you all had wonderful holidays, I'll try to catch up with the updates I've missed and wish you an excellent new year full of mini wonders

Here she is so far, about 2 months in. My new bestie!! (notice that table, $38 at a thrift store! Painted white and it will be the perfect stand!)

The progress on the exterior so far. I had a few days off so I tried to get as much work done on the structure as possible, I'm happy it's finally starting to look like a house I'm currently working on the rest of the windows, because I'm using diferent colors it takes a really long time as I have to paint the trims before assembling. When I'm done I'll wallpapper the rest of the house, add the windows and remaining sinding, and then resume work on the interiors. The dormer windows.... are a real headache to put together. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do it so that I can get a smooth curve, seams really hard to acomplish that with the window in place. I haven't glued the roof of the tower, I'll probably leave it like that to be easier to work. I haven't done any modification to this roof, I like it the way it is, I think I will have fun decorating it as the ceiling for the third floor hall.

I wanted to test the color I had picked for the siding, I was undecided between this dark magenta or dark plum. I thought the plum might have looked too dark for what I had in mind, but seeing this color in direct light it's a lot brighter than I expected. Thoughts? This is the color scheme I got inspiration from.

I've finished the 1st floor stairs and wired the corridor lights. The pedistal was tricky but I'm glad I managed to hide the wires under the floor. I've stained the baseboards, but I'm still thinking I might try the wainscot panels later. I really like the look of this room, I've picked the wallpapper for the corridor upstairs in green + red colors, I think it will go well with this look. I have glued the tower front wall in so now I can finally start building the third floor and ceiling, lots of work ahead but at least 1 floor is done!

A small change to this room, I added a ceiling rose to the center because after adding the chandelier I kept feeling it was missing something. I've also trimed the doorway interior, so I'm nearly done with this floor and hopefully I'll get started on the exterior soon

Sorry for the bad quality and poor light conditions. I am almost done with the corridor, need to finish decorating the stairs and add the last rail by the starting steps. The baseboards haven't been glued yet, I was thinking about doing wainscot here but I'm afraid it might make the room look too dark. The ceiling pannels are stained basswood, I assembled them the same way I did with the wall pannels. There is a hole at the mid center to add a chandelier, I will be wiring the lights soon and hopefuly then I'll manage to get a better picture of the details. The pedistal lamp is from artist Jim Pounder, I think it's perfect for the entrance hall and will help light up the area.

I never did get around to posting the pictures of my finished Beacon Hill. I saw yesterday where someone had searched the gallery since their next build was going to be this, and noticed not many finished Beacon Hill's. That prompted me to finally post my pictures. This is the first doll house I ever built, and I learned so much from building this house. I still would like to do some more landscaping on it. I am now just learning to make flowers and plants, so maybe in the future I will post an updated picture of the landscaping.

This room is a pain to photograph, poor natural light and not a lot of space availiable to move the house around at the moment... the light fixtures don't help much in this case but at least they are working lol. I'll try to get some decent shots when I move on to the hallway... so many components to glue and paint and so little time ;__; For the panels I tried to go for a color that would look nice with any color furniture, both walnut and mahogany constrast nicely with the walls. Second Empire houses often played with constrast; for this house I'm going with light french inspired ceilings paired with light floors, and darker colors on walls. I wasn't very fond of the interior window trims for the bay windows, they looked a bit 'chunky' and odd so I tried something diferent. You can see all that light coming from the doorway because I haven't attached the front tower wall... yet.... there's a lot of work to do there. I'm testing the lenght of the chain on the chandelier, not sure if this is too short... I should probably try a table under it. All my light fixtures are Heidi Ott, they look really nice and realistic, probably the best I found in this price range but most of my wiring and strips are houseworks. The plugs have diferent sizes here in EU, some brands aren't very reliable stocking basic wiring supplies and too often incompatible with other suppliers :/ Now I'm thinking if I should wallpapper the second floor already or wait until I glue the front wall... I have to paint a lot of components for the ceilling in the hallway, would be nice to have diferent areas to work in between.

I used scrapbook paper for marble-looking floor.

I finished the exterior! I put bricks around the porch foundation but I ran out. Not sure if I will do the rest of the foundation with more bricks or just leave it. I'm kind of anxious to do more on the interior at this point. LOL!

Close-up of porch with a doll I purchased on Etsy from a lady in the UK. She named her Doris Dittany. She is just adorable, I think anyway.

Left side and front exterior view of exterior as of October 31, 2017

Front view of exterior as of October 31, 2017

Close-u[ first floor foyer

I to make a stucco type wall with air dry clay. I also stained some match stix wood pieces for the look of the old-fashioned lath and plaster walls. I may still do the rest of this room with the same technique, although you may notice the other walls have a different finish (wallpaper and stained stucco to muddy it up.

A look at the three interior floors. Used the same cardboard technique described in the chimney photo on the foyer floor.

Here are the assembled wall pannels, after the stain is applied they'll have to lay down flat with weight on top for about 2-3 days until completly dry. I'm including this shot in case anyone is interested in trying something like this, I didn't use a lot of materials as you can see but they still look pretty realistic after put together. It's all basswood so they'll get a stain treatment, you can see a test sample for the color I used on a small piece of wood. Also included the stains I use, the bottle is the premixed stain (water based) and in the jar a mix with satin varnish finish. I apply them with a paintbrush and let it dry for over a day so the color will be evenly spread after absorbed by the wood, then another day or 2 to let the top varnish dry. I use the same method for the stairs, windows, doors etc.