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Greetings from Nova Scotia


BeeGee56

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Hi folks. Life-long scale modeller here. I do mostly plastics but I'm about to start on my fourth 1/12 scale house.
Looking forward to introducing my partner to the hobby!

Best,
BG

 

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Welcome to the forum, Bruce. What houses have you built, and what house are you about to build? We love eye candy here. You can open albums in the photo Gallery when you have made five posts. We're waiting. :) 

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  • 3 months later...

Update: Construction has finally begun!

I neglected to mention in my earlier post that I'm building a Greenleaf Westville kit. It's taken me a while to get going on it. All that die-cut plywood and the rather sparsely-illustrated assembly instructions is a bit intimidating.

The biggest problem I've encountered so far is preserving the small details of the decorative trim around the windows and eaves of the house when removing these parts from the sheets. I hit upon the solution of applying a drop of CA glue (aka Krazy Glue) to the edges of the round bits of trim after removing them. This holds the layers of plywood together.

This isn't my first build, although I haven't built a dollhouse in years. A tool I find indispensable is a 1/8" square warding file. It fits the slots in the plywood almost exactly. I use it to square off the ends of the assembly slots and tabs to make the thing go together easier.

It's like riding a bicycle: it all comes back.

Now to get five posts on this forum so I can put up a few pictures :)

Best,

BG

 

 

 

 

Edited by BeeGee56
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Bruce, I don't know if it will help you at this point but the forum's building team built & bogged the Westville: http://www.greenleafdollhouses.com/forum/?app=blog&module=blogs&controller=view&id=10  I would build another one for myself in a heartbeat; that's the kit a coworker saw in the trunk of my car and instantly asked me to build it for her.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2017-11-18, 7:55:17, havanaholly said:

Bruce, I don't know if it will help you at this point but the forum's building team built & bogged the Westville: http://www.greenleafdollhouses.com/forum/?app=blog&module=blogs&controller=view&id=10  I would build another one for myself in a heartbeat; that's the kit a coworker saw in the trunk of my car and instantly asked me to build it for her.

Thanks Holly, that helped tremendously. Here's a couple of pix of progress to date. The staircase is just being test-fitted.  Rather than sand the stair treads and risers to a uniform width prior to assembly, I put the staircase together and then sanded it to width as a unit using a belt sander before attaching it to the staircase wall. This house is being built mostly with Weldbond glue so the build is frequently interrupted for drying time.

I'm most interested to see how others have handled the staircase. I plan to paint the centre partition wall and the staircase wall before finally installing the stairs.

Plastic modellers often use the expression "SFTB" to describe a build done "straight from the box" without modifications of any sort, and that's what I'm attempting with this one.

Best,

BG 

0-DSC_7699-1.JPG

0-DSC_7698-1.JPG

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Welcome BG. I also am new to the forum. I have never built a dollhouse.  My question for you is, did the upper floor come stained like that sftb?  I love seeing the finished product from our members but I find I learn more from the progress pics. Keep em coming. 

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17 minutes ago, Keifer said:

Welcome BG. I also am new to the forum. I have never built a dollhouse.  My question for you is, did the upper floor come stained like that sftb?  I love seeing the finished product from our members but I find I learn more from the progress pics. Keep em coming. 

Keith, I scribe the "boards" and stain my floors (and prime and finish the ceilings on the other side) before I use the first drop of glue.

Bruce, I dry fit the shell to adjust the tabs & slots and to get a general idea of the overall look.  Because my coworker wanted it that way I also built the kit STFB.  I had read somewhere to take the siding up to the door and window openings and install the frames on top.  The Westville taught me never to do that again; now I lay the frames on the openings and trace around them and butt the siding strips to the trace line.  

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Keith: I used a Minwax product that's a combination of stain and polyurethane varnish, on my floors. I used two coats with a light sanding with an orbital sander, in between. The second and attic floors form the ceilings for the floors beneath them, so I painted their undersides with two coats of flat white ceiling paint.

I thought about scribing the floors to represent plank flooring, but as my skills are more "folk art" than "scale model", went for the unadorned finish.

One area where I deviated from "straight from the box" was the first floor under the bottom of the staircase. It's a big floor and it seemed like it wanted a little more support in the middle so I boxed in the area under the staircase with some plywood scraps that I sanded to the same width as the foundation wall across the back of the house.

Holly: Thanks for the tip about siding. I'm definitely doing mine that way.

Joanne: I use a Dremel tool a lot, too. A cylindrical stone about 3/16" in diameter works pretty well for widening slots.

Best,

BG

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Love my Dremel well actually I stole it from hubby. He gladly gave it up as he hasn't used it much .

I don't seem to be able to do anything STFB. I have a tendency to leave off a lot of the trim (but I'm saving everything for a fantasy fairy house ) , change the door , and especially change some windows.  I seem to leave out or change the window in the kitchen area because so far the windows get in the way of the kitchen appliances / Kitchen layout .

I am working on the Westville too. BUT it doesn't really look like one. I had a lot of trouble with the stairs. Bruce I like the way you made your staircase I will keep that in mind on my next build.

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