First off, let me say that I love this house, and anyone looking at the dates of when I started and finally finished must take into consideration that the delay and long time in building was completely my own fault and had nothing to do with the level of difficulty of the house. The house itself was a very easy build and I have no excuse for the delay except for (want of a better term) "funk" I was going through this year.

In summary the basic changes to the house that were made are as follows:

1. upgraded the windows that open and close
2. used greenleaf stucco for the exterior finish
3. Used joint compound for interior "plaster" finish for the downstairs rooms
4. Used joint compound for the front porch "stone" and chimney
5. used greenleaf tiles for flooring in the downstairs rooms
6. left off the trim on the upper roofs and the shingles (mainly cause this house will be a gift for our 8 yr. old granddaughter and can be added at a later date)
7. the house is wired and it actually works LOL
8. Also left off the upper stair railings for easier play
9. All doors was pin hinged in so they open and close






Thank you again for allowing me to be a part of this team build. I apologize for the delay, but will say I will recommend this house to anyone. It went together easy and I firmly believe will hold up to the rigors of children playing with it for years to come.

I haven't posted lately because I've been working on my house. Let's see since my last post, I've added molding around the walls; using joint compound, made stones and painted them on my chimney and attached it
after using magik brick to make the interior of the fireplace. Then I decided to build a fireplace using styrofoam and real wallpaper sample as the covering. To keep it from looking so blan I went looking through my stash of stuff I have lying around "just in case" and found some cute plastic leaf shape buttons and a metallic button with a pretty design. Found some metalic copper paint and painted them. Here is final result what do you think? You can't tell from the picture but the paper has a "marble" quality to it.

Also, besides molding around the bottom of the livingroom and kitchen, I found the perfect border from some of the sample wallpaper to use as trim at the top of the living room walls
. While rambling through my stash I also ran across some silver border bought at Big Lots in the scrap book section and made a thingy (can't remember what it is called) to cover the place where the livingroom and kitchen floors meet. I also used this as a border after painting it white to use around the top of the kitchen wall I also spent some time doing some touch up paint to the ceilings, which then lead to touch up paint to the borders, which lead to touch up paint of the ceilings (are you starting to recognize a pattern here?) until it dawned on me that I would just have to live with any spots left.

Next thing was to install the completed staircase. Holly, if you read this, the gluing jig came in real handy with the railings--at least on the flat side. LOL
Following are just pics taken from different angles of the work so far.



Hopefully, within a few days I will be able to show pics of the second floor wallpapered over templates. The bathroom will be a marblely pinkish color and the bedroom has blue flowers separated with a blue strip with the bottom a grayish blue color. I used templates in oder to be able to stick them on with double sided carpet tape so the wiring can be easily fixed in the event of any problems.

The last jar of stucco will be used to decorate the 2nd floor ceilings and I am still trying to decide what type of floors I want. I think I have a perfect piece gathered from the scrap section of WallyWorld for carpetting the bedroom. Will have to wait till wallpaper is up to make sure of the colors matching.

I hope you enjoy my progress. I've had so much fun trying out new things, at least new to me, on this house.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

If you'll remember, we last left off at me having to finish the fireplace before I could begin to wallpaper. I got the bricks painted a nice brown.



And then added a bit of color. I had just spray painted this with clear to seal the acrylic paints, so it's not a good picture. I'll take a better picture later.



For the kitchen, I'm going with a red. I think it will look really pretty against the white trim. I'll have to wait for this to dry and then cut out the windows and do the other side.


Now, for the upstairs rooms, and I think I'll start with the bedroom--having already built this house once, I know that regular dollhouse wallpaper will not work--it's not tall enough!




So, I've raided my stash of real life wallpaper. I've picked a recipient for this house already, who is crazy about pink, but she doesn't know she's getting it. Actually, when I began building the house, it told me exactly what colors it wanted to be and exactly who it wanted to go to.... Anyhow, the bedroom will be this pink wallpaper. What?! Didn't you know it was easier to wallpaper difficult angles doing it upside down?



I've also begun painting the bricks on the outside fireplace/chimney, which really shows that brick pattern.




Compliments of LPCullen

Wanted to try the Greenleaf stucco, but also wanted to try a short cut and mix the paint with the stucco--so the finish and paint would be done in one step. I think I mentioned earlier that I had bought some spray paint. Well, I tried spraying the paint into the stucco and that experiment was a bust. The paint wants to separate and not mix. Back to the drawing board--nothing ventured nothing gained. So another trip to the paint store, unfortunately without my paint sample--could've took the lid and probably made a perfect match--but didn't. Picked a color I thought was close to the Victorian Rose I like so well, NOT. Was fortunate though, this store now sells Porter Paints, but had some Benjamin Moore paint samples and I got 28 bottles for $1 a piece.

I can't remember what color the Porter Paint was that I bought, but it is much pinker than what I had bargained for, but I think DGD will love it. Mixed it with the stucco Looks a lot like Strawberry Icecream doesn't it.

I first fit in my windows to mark off the edges and then taped that portion up in order not to have the windows sticking out but able to glue them flush to the wall.
Using a 2 in. brush applied stucco to the walls.
The stucco is easy to apply, but I had a problem trying to decide if I wanted to try a design. Finally decided to softly stipple it.

For some reason I didn't take photos of my next step, which was to cover the kitchen and living room walls with joint compound. I was hoping it would give the walls a "dry-wall" look and give a smoother finish for painting. I thought painting would work for these rooms, and if the DGD wants wallpaper later we can do it then. Plus the joint compound helped cover up the tape wire. If you have never worked with joint compound, you may want to try it. It is easy to work with.

Once the rooms were covered and dry with the joint compound, they were painted. At this point I decided to try my electrical connection again to make sure no damage was done. Well, the lights quit working and no connection was being made anywhere. So here we go cutting wire to find the short. The short occurred on the 2nd story, had nothing to do with the compound or paint. So that is now fixed and it works again. Thanks Darrell, for instructions on how to test for a short and how to make new connections. Boy was I glad I did not have to take any out (except a small portion) on the first floor with the coverings.

I also painted the windows--the exterior with a cream color and the interior white. Then glued them in.

Here is where I stand right now on the house. Next step will be to put my chimney together and decide what type of fireplace I would like and putting the living room tiles on the template. After that, I will start on the second floor.



The kitchen walls are painted with Vermont slate and is darker looking in real life than the pictures show. The living room is painted with Nutmeg lightened with white.

Well, since I couldn't ever get to Charlotte to work on the house, I brought the house to Maiden. Jimmy set me up a workspace on the far wall, until I finish polyeurethaning my real life mantel and get it out of the middle of the floor of the shop.

I did have some helpers come in and chase bugs while I worked, Robbie, Ronnie and Darby.




I decided since the outside of the fireplace had a design on it, I would create a design for the inside too.




Uh oh. I guess you all know what it means when a dollhouse goes into the "upside down" position--TIME TO PRIME!!!!


So, I got the interior of the house primed.



And was about to start wallpapering the downstairs, and then I realized that I should probably finish the fireplace first and get it painted and sealed so that I don't hurt it with wallpaper paste. Believe it or not, I'm just doing a simple hearth on it.



Have to let this dry, and then I have to paint it before I can go further.


Compliments of LPCullen

After transfering my templates to the larger sheets, I proceed to stick the tiles on the card and after about four rows, sat back to admire my work. It looked so good, the rows were straight, but something seemed a little off. Then it dawned on me--I had put my tiles on the bottom of the template and not the top. Everyone of the tiles had to come off, had to reinforce the card stock (the tiles stick real well) and replace them back on the sheet. Just call me the Queen of Do Over.


I decided that even though my template for the living room is ready; I would wait to put the tiles on and go on and glue the house together, so I could start thinking about how best to wire it. Since I knew I wanted to hang lights from the ceiling for the kitchen and living room, the first thing I did was dress the ceiling. Using joint compound and an old credit card to spread with, I smeared my ceiling. Now the look I was wanting was a stipple effect--didn't turn out quite as good as I had hoped, but it will do. The joint compound was easy to work with and I think where I messed up was putting glue on first. It really doesn't need it.

Trying to decide the best place to place the junction splice took a while. Me just sitting and staring at it and picking the house up and turning it this way and that, but finally decided to have easy access and put it on the back wall.
The following pics show how the rest of the wiring was placed. BTW, if anyone does much wiring, I highly suggest buying from Earth and Tree the Connector Tool. I used this with the hollow eyelets and it saves so much time and aggrevation.






DH wired in the two lights to the floor above and everything so far works.



Although, I'm not quite ready to install the stairs, I went ahead and put them together and painted them. Being very careful to mask the tabs so that the paint would not cause me any problems in fitting them in the slots.



One of the new things I want to try is using dollhouse stucco for the outside, since I had already bought some spray paint in Victorian Rose color that I love, and not really needing a quart of this color, I experimented today to see if you can spray the paint into the stucco mixture. Well, what did I say about Queen of Do Over--it will have to be done over. The spray paint doesn't seem to want to mix very well with the mixture. So back to the drawing board I will go. BTW, when deciding to vigorously shake the mixture to see if the paint will mix; make sure the top is securely on. I happen to be wearing a spotted shirt and have a more color in my hair than I've had in years. Luckily, I was outdoors near the water hose and have managed to rinse most of it off of my face.

Slow but sure, I'm making progress and I've got to say, as far as putting one together, this house has been a dream. I love the large rooms and the design.

I started out by sealing each sheet with a sanding sealer.

On my first house, the Lily, I took every little single piece out of the sheets in order given in the instructions and sanded and sanded and sanded each piece. Then DH introduced me to his palm sander and boy does that machine make short work of sanding. So the last couple of houses, I've taken the sheets out to my deck and before punching out a single piece; go over it real good with the palm sander. This doesn't eliminate sanding the sides but it does cut down on the amount of time.
Also, there are other benefits of doing it this way.

IMHO There are definite Advantages to sanding the wood before punching.

1. Saves sanding time
2. Gets me familiar with all the parts to the house
3. Gives me a chance to look over and see if any parts need putty, like in the following pictures

4. To fix any parts that needed putty it usually is dried and ready to sand by the time I do the other sheets

5. By fixing the sheet before punching, especially if the "gouged" part extends to more than one piece, it makes it easier to punch out of the sheet without any damage to the part.
6. By lying the sheets out, I also can double check whether or not a sheet is missing.

I found that sheet 7 was missing from my kit and was able to pm Dean, (MiniMan) to let him know and he responded quickly to let me know that a sheet would be sent. Since the sheet that is missing is mostly trim--or seems so from the schematic sheet--it won't hold me up.

While punching out the window casings and trim, the particular sheets did have some problem with the last layer of plywood coming off. Although, I will probably upgrade my windows, being one to save parts- I went ahead and "fixed" this problem by layering wood filler on the problem areas and sanding.

But I get ahead of myself. It is important that you label your parts while in the sheets. That way as you punch out the pieces and the sheets get emptier you will have a way of distinguishing the parts. The first couple of houses I wrote the sheet # and part in pencil right on the piece. For me this way doesn't work as well because I found out that I would sometimes sand the writing right off the surface, so now I write the Sheet # and part name on masking tape and tape it to the sheet. This way, I can just place it back on until it is glued in place.



This, to me is a very important step. Trim can look very much alike and even though you swear you can keep them straight, it can save valuable time and sanity to have it labelled so you know you are working with the right part. The time it takes to do this is more than worth the headache of wondering if you have the right or left side, the inside or outside piece.

DryFit

Dryfit = taping or clamping your house together before glueing.

Again, this is very important for the following reasons:

1. To see which tabs or slots need trimming
2. To note changes you may want to do
3. Helps in making templates of floors, windows etc.
4. If you are electrifing--to get you an idea of how easy or difficult it would be to do.
5. To see if there is going to be any gaps you may need to figure on filling
6. To mark where walls end, etc.

My oldest DGD were here this weekend and wanted to help, especially when they saw that I was "building" the house. So I had helpers.


I'll make miniaturist out of them yet. BTW the youngest one will more than likely be the beneficiary of the Magnolia--but we're keeping it a secret from her right now.

Here is the house in Dryfit.


I'm planning on using Greenleaf tiles on the kitchen and livingroom floors and since I hope to wire this house, I've made templates of the floor. I will glue the tiles to the template and then place in the house. Hopefully makes it much easier to trace any lighting problems down the line without messing up the floors.

To make the first templates, I used 8 1/2 by 11 cardstock, but tomorrow I will buy some poster paper in order for the templates to fit on one sheet.