I got held up on the Westville because I bought a piece of plywood a few weeks ago, to make walls out of, and then didn't get a chance to cut it. We had visitors for two weekends in a row so I only just made it to the hangar with my wood yesterday. Geoff helped me cut it down to size with his radial arm saw.



So, I now have a wall for the living room (to go up against the stairs) and also for the bedroom (to block the stair hole from the room).

Here's what it looks like upstairs:



There will be another piece of wood at the back of the stair hole (Geoff cut it yesterday but it's too wide right now). This will make the stairs self-contained, just like they are in many real houses. As you can see in the second picture, I am going to add a closet door to the far end of the wall in the bedroom, and the little space behind the stairs will be the closet. My parents were visiting last weekend and pointed out that once the roof is on, it'll be hard to see the closet. So I am going to add a dormer to the bedroom roof. I was thinking of using this one, but it's for a 45-degree roof and Judith tells me the Westville's roof is 55 degrees. (I bought a protractor last week to check myself, but haven't taken it out of the bag yet!) I suppose if that dormer won't work, I can make my own out of scrap wood.

Here is the wall downstairs:




I left it sticking out of the back of the house for now, because I have to decide how far back I want it to go. I will still have a closet under the stairs, but instead of having the wall start before the end of the stairs (so some of the sloped ceiling is showing), as the original stairs and wall are, I might make this wall reach all the way to the back edge of the stairs. Once I decide, I'll draw my pencil line and take it back to the hangar to cut.

In other news, I got a big order from Miniatures.com a few weeks ago, that includes the wallpaper for my kitchen, that telephone table for the living room that you can see in the picture above, and some other odds and ends (like a really cute kitchy cookie jar). I have been thinking about furniture layout for the living room but haven't made any big purchases yet. I also bought a window box that will go on the kitchen window:



I'm still in the process of assembling kitchen cabinets. Here's what I have so far:



I've painted the doors too, but haven't put them on yet. They won't open. The doors don't open in the original kit and I don't feel like bashing to make them work. I have done two coats of paint and will probably do one more. I have only painted one kitchen chair so far, because they're kind of annoying to paint. I'm pacing myself. The paints you see in the living room picture above are for the backsplash.

Next to do: Paint the downstairs ceilings and the bay window trim. Once I've done this, I can put wallpaper up in the kitchen. When this first cabinet is done, I'll start on the kitchen appliances (the ones in the picture above are "placeholders" from another dollhouse). Once those are done, I'll know exactly how wide the stove is and can do the rest of the cabinets that go along that wall.

Compliments of fov

I put on a bit more siding today:



The living room bay isn't permanently glued in. I managed to glue the two walls to each other, without gluing them to the floor and ceiling. This way I can take it out for wallpapering. I haven't glued the narrow pieces onto any of the bays yet.

And here are the humble beginnings of my kitchen cabinets:



It turns out that the Realife kit I bought off eBay is missing some pieces. The frustrating thing is, the kit doesn't come with an itemized list of parts, so I don't know which pieces are missing. I am missing two sheets, and know which sheets they are, but don't know which pieces are supposed to be on them. I guess anything I need I'll be able to make myself from balsa. I have to pick some up anyway because the bashing I'm doing results in needing some more of certain parts than normally come in the kit, anyway. I am planning to stop by Beverly's tomorrow to buy those, along with the paint I need for the cabinets.

That's all for today... doesn't look like much, but I worked on the house for three or four hours!

Compliments of fov

I have been playing around with the Westville all week (and by "playing around," I really mean "staring at it dreaming about how it'll look when it's done..."), but today I finally took pictures and got a bit more work done.

Last week, while sitting around dreaming about how it'll look when it's done, I decided to buy a door. I always have trouble with doors because I want them to open and close, but the hinges you can buy don't look realistic. I checked the latest HBS catalog but all the Houseworks doors they offered were too tall (they would practically touch the porch roof, which just seemed like it would look funny).

Then, last Saturday, Geoff and I had to run an errand that took us right past Shellie's Minis, a great little store that I don't get to very often. I ran in to buy the stairs I wanted for the Westville (the other dollhouse store didn't have them in stock) and while I was there, checked out the doors. Shellie had several Timberbrook doors that HBS doesn't carry and one had a criss-cross grille that seemed like it would go perfectly with the Westville's trim. I wasn't sure about the dimensions, but it was shorter than the Houseworks doors I'd been looking at in the catalog, so I bought it. Turns out it's a perfect fit! I just had to shave a tiny bit off the top of the door hole.



I also got started on the kitchen furniture. I built the table and chairs, modifying the pieces from the Realife dining room slightly. My table is a little larger and more rectangular than the one in the Nutshell News article, so I could fit four chairs. They fit perfectly in the bay window area.



I have also been doing a lot of measuring to make sure I know which cabinets will fit against which walls. Luckily I have an assembled Realife kitchen in another house, which I was able to put in this one to see how well things would fit. Looks like I can get the sink and two other cabinets under the window. I plan to have two more cabinets, the stove, and the little island with the stool underneath (as shown in the Nutshell News article) on the right-hand wall.



The Houseworks stairs fit perfectly. I have added a little bit of wall in the kitchen so the stairs don't jut into the doorway. I also added a bit of plywood to the top of the doorway so it would be consistent with the height of the kitchen door. These are taped in right now, but I'll glue them eventually.




I am planning to assemble some kitchen cabinets tomorrow. Today I went back to the instructions and assembled a bay window (started to, anyway). I have not glued the bay to the house yet because I want to paper the walls and paint the ceiling first. (I still have to attach the little side pieces, too.) I'm going to hold off on the living room bay for now because the top and bottom are already attached. I'm not exactly sure how to handle that one, yet. I should at least paint the ceiling and the trim before putting the walls up.



The next instructions were for window trim, which I'm obviously not ready for since I haven't painted anything yet. So, I moved on to siding. I'm using Houseworks siding instead of the strips that came with the kit. It's pretty easy to put on... just cut it to size and glue! I'm not going to do the part around the bays just yet, but the rest of the walls are fair game.



So, that's it for now. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have some pictures of kitchen cabinets.

Compliments of fov

I completed Step C tonight, but before I get to that, here's one picture from the Step A adventure of last night.



Not all that exciting, I know, but I inadvertantly turned the flash off on the camera, which sets it for "nighttime" and leaves the shutter open longer, which makes the pictures come out really fuzzy. This was the only halfway decent one of the batch. Oh well.

(For those of you who are curious, that upside-down box in the background is one we took from the trash area of Geoff's old apartment before he and I moved into our house. I have never, in my life, owned "ballerina shoes," let alone enough pairs to fill a great big box!)

So, tonight I skipped past Step B (except for the part about gluing the center partition to the first floor) and moved right on to Step C, which involved attaching the rest of the walls. They fit perfectly! I didn't have to cut any of the tabs or slots, which is rare. I'm loving how easily this house is going together... good wood, good desgin, good instructions. Good job, Greenleaf!

Here's the house pre-Step C (that would be post-Step A):



You can see the Houseworks casement window on the front. The lighter colored wood is some leftover trim I used to fill the gaps from the original window hole. It looks off center, but it's actually roughly centered between the edge of the door hole and where the edge of the porch post will be. I will not add shutters to this window (no room!)

And here we are at the end of Step C:



I have not glued the attic floor in yet, because I need to cut the hole for the disappearing attic stairs and to run tapewire up to the attic first.

Step D involves the bay windows, but I want to wallpaper my kitchen and living room before I put those in (which, of course, requires choosing wallpaper...) Instead, I'm going to reward myself for getting the shell done so easily (as if I had anything to do with it!) by starting on my post-war kitchen.

Compliments of fov

I'm too sleepy to load up pictures right now, but I'm happy to report that I got through all of Step A tonight. Which means, essentially, that I have a house! Instant gratification.

First, I enlarged the kitchen window hole to make it wide enough for the casement window I bought, and filled in the gaps at the top and bottom. (The original hole is a vertical rectangle, and the casement window is horizontal.) I also enlarged the stair hole for the Houseworks stairs I'm going to use (just took a little bit of sanding) and chopped the bit of railing that protrudes into the kitchen off the center partition wall. Then I went through Step A, following the directions (rare for me!) and used a combination of wood glue and white glue to glue the pieces on. The shell is drying right now.

As I was going through Step A, I applied a piece of tapewire across the first floor and up the right wall. I don't know yet where I'm going to put lights, but this gives me some flexibility. I did this before putting in the second floor because once that's in, it's harder to get the wire from the first floor to the second floor.

Step B is building the staircase, which I'm going to skip because I'm using pre-fab stairs. I went to the dollhouse shop this weekend but they didn't have the set I want, so I am going to have to order them. I have a 20% coupon for HBS for the beginning of August, so I'm going to order the stairs then, along with the disappearing attic stairs and the closet door. That means I can move right to Step C, which involves putting together the rest of the shell.

Compliments of fov

Calamari was right... this house is a b*tch to dry fit!

But I did it anyway. I have plans to make a few modifications to the house and I want to make sure I know what I'm doing (and what needs to be cut) before I glue any walls together. I have had experiences trying to enlarge window and door holes on a house that's already assembled, and it's not easy!

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Here's my workspace on Day 1 of Project Westville:



As you can see, there's not a ton of desk space. My other work table (you can't see it in this picture) still has the Arthur on it, which isn't quite done. So I did what any self-respecting miniaturist would do... I used the floor!

(This is actually not unusual for me. I do a lot of my work on the floor, and have for years. I guess at some point I'll have trouble getting up and down there, but for now I still can, and I take advantage of it!)

So, I got to work punching out all the pieces required for Step A. There are A LOT of them, and it turns out not all of them are going to be used in Step A. I hope I don't lose anything (see messy workspace picture above).

A word of caution - on the left and right walls, be really careful punching out these guys:



Punching these little triangles out leaves behind the "trim" for the bay windows. I broke two of these trim pieces. They were easy enough to glue back together (hence the masking tape), but if I'd realized they were so fragile I would have been more careful.

Although it was difficult, I did manage to dry-fit all the pieces in Step A. It's kind of hard to do because the house uses a lot of long slots that pieces have to slide into. I haven't had this experience on other houses (but I haven't built very complicated houses, either). I'm not sure if it's common on Greenleaf houses I haven't built, or if this is related to the house being designed after a life-sized "kit house." In any case, I hope I'll be able to get the pieces apart again, because I'm going to need to cut some pieces before I glue them in.



I'm not punching out the little rectangular windows in the left-hand bedroom (although one punched out by mistake as I was dry-fitting and I had to glue it back in). I want to put the daughter's bed and shelving against that wall, and the windows would be in the way. Those windows have always seemed kind of funny to me, anyway, being so low in the wall.

I'm glad to see that the Realife fridge fits perfectly in the space I'd planned to put it. This is my fridge from a different house, but it's built from the same kit I'll be using for the Westville.



I also need to enlarge the window next to the front door so a Houseworks casement window will fit in there. I know the dimensions the hole has to be, but I want to wait to receive my window from Miniatures.com before I do any cutting, just to make sure.

Another modification I plan to make is to the stairway. I don't like how on the second floor, the stairway opens up into one of the bedrooms. It's like this in a lot of dollhouses, but it seems like such an invasion of privacy! Instead, I will close off the area where the banister is supposed to be with walls. (I'm going to do this on the first floor, too, so there won't be a banister at all.) Instead of the kit stairs, I'm going to use the Houseworks simple stair kit (leaving off the banister). Even though these are Houseworks' narrowest stairs, they're about a quarter of an inch wider than the stairs in the kit, so I'll need to widen the stair hole in the second floor a little bit. And I'm going to have to make a wall (either out of spare plywood, if I have a piece big enough, or of foamcore) to go where the wall with the built-in banister is supposed to go on the first floor. I think I'll still be able to put in a closet under the stairs.

Since I'm going to have walls instead of railings around the stair hole on the second floor, I'll be left with a little alcove next to the stairs, that's part of the right-hand bedroom. I've decided to make it into a closet. I might use some of Joann Swanson's ideas in the picture I scanned for the inside, but will probably use this door instead of doing the door like she did. I measured the space and I think it'll fit perfectly.

I would also like to add disappearing attic stairs, which will require cutting a hole in the attic floor. I have a set of these in my first dollhouse and they're a nice touch, without taking up a ton of room. I haven't thought much about the Westville attic yet, but I think it'll be a real attic, with exposed studs and lots of junk collecting dust.

So, that's as far as I'll go today. I am leaving the house dry-fit for now and will hopefully get to the dollhouse store this weekend to buy the stairs. My Miniatures.com order should be here by then, too. Once I have made the modifications to the kitchen window and the stair hole, I'll feel more confident about gluing these pieces together.

Compliments of fov

I'm not quite ready to start building my Westville yet, but ever since Calamari posted those links to other people's Westvilles I have been brainstorming what I want to do with my own. I have always loved this house for its realism... it really does seem to belong to Anytown, USA! Last year I bought some Nutshell News back issues off eBay and stumbled across a couple of great projects for 1950s-style furniture. Somehow I got it in my head that the furniture would look great in the Westville... if I ever got around to building it. Well, there's no time like the present!

I have decided to forgo my usual requirement of having a bathroom in the house (eek!) and will do the Westville with a kitchen, a living room, and two bedrooms.

For the kitchen, I'm planning to try a project that kitbashes two Realife furniture kits (the Heritage Kitchen and Heritage Dining Room) into a beautifully gaudy post-war kitchen. This is a three-part article by Chris Dukeman that ran in the October, November, and December 1990 issues of Nutshell News. The Realife kits aren't sold anymore but I found some pretty easily on eBay.








The Westville's kitchen is significantly smaller than the roombox Chris Dukeman built, and because of the bay window I'll have to do a bit of rearranging. I really can't start on this furniture until I have the Westville shell put together and know how much space I have. I already have a rough idea in my head of what the room will look like -- the table and chairs will go where the bay window is, the sink and a cabinet or two will go on the wall with the window (by the front door), and the stove and other cabinets will go along the wall where the stairs are. I will probably build the hutch but put it in the living room, instead of the kitchen. I'm hoping the fridge will fit on the other side of the bay window (closest to the open back of the house) but I'm going to have to measure it to be sure. So, even though the kitchen and dining room kits are softly calling my name, I've put them aside for now...

To give you a sense of how much kitbashing will be involved with this kitchen project, here are pictures from the boxes of the kits:



In one of the bedrooms, I'm going to use a lot of the ideas that Joann Swanson wrote about in her Do-It-Yourself article in the October 1990 issue of Nutshell News. The article is called "Built-In Beauty," and Joann reproduced a 1950s bedroom for a teenaged girl, based on a picture in a magazine ad (shown in the first picture below).




And here's one more of Joann's projects that I may try to incorporate into the other (master) bedroom. It's another one based on an old advertisement, from the July 1990 issue of Nutshell News.




This and the "Built-In Beauty" are the only two projects based on old magazine ads that I've been able to find, but I don't have all the issues from this time period. This was right before Joann started her "On the Mall" series (which went on for about two years) but I'm wondering if she may have done any other magazine ad projects in other 1990 issues or in the late 80s. If anyone knows of other 1950s-style projects in back issues of NN, please let me know the dates so I can try to track them down!

I have some ideas for the furniture I'll put in the master bedroom, but I may have to scratch build it based on old magazine pictures. I have a couple of ideas for the living room, too, but nothing concrete yet!

So - this is where I'm headed. But before I can even start thinking about these projects, I have to get the house built. Easier said than done!

Compliments of fov