rbytsdy's Blog

Had to share this pic that my sister-in-law took, when she took down my little nieces' houses from their dresser-top perches for a dollhouse play-day!

Bet you don't see this everyday!

I got the San Fran in the mail and had to take several extra days to get the Willowcrest in the mail also due to just feeling too sick to work very hard on it! But it finally got packed up also (had to patch together two garment boxes to box it in), despite me continuing to find little patches that needed extra paint or an extra piece of trim, and tracking tells me that it showed up at its destination today, so that is good.

A view of the front doors:



The curtains that I made for the bedroom, one of the last things I put in this house:



I used my 1/4" plywood with quarter-round for a base again; gluing on the quarter-round with wood glue helped straighten out the base which wanted to curl up. Next time, though, I might think a little more about the base size, vis-a-vis shipping rates and how they depend on perimeter measurements...! Once I had the house glued onto the base, then I glued on vertical skinny sticks all around the house base (sort of like bead board) to give it some interest, and painted it off-black. Then I glued paperclay onto the yard, with thicker rolls along the house base, and stuck in all my shrubberies with extra glue to brace them. I glued decorative stones onto the "flower bed" part also. Then I painted over the "flower bed" part with a brown dirty wash, and painted the grass part with a grey-green blend. Then I painted glue onto the grass part and sprinkled a good coat of grass powder. I stole some mushrooms and a bird house from my last Spring Fling, as well as the turtle from the Spring Fling before that...!

Boy-oh-boy, time is getting away from me. Well I have been piddling around with both the Willowcrest and the San Fran, because I want to get them in the mail for Christmas; I finished routing the lighting in the Willowcrest, including a lightbulb in the bathroom closet (this is before I glued in the piece that encloses the closet):



I also finished up the kitchen, using my paint-sand mixture leftover from the Buttercup. I am very disappointed in the tiny-yellow-checked cloth; I was very tickled when I found it at Joann's and didn't look closely enough when I was buying it, because this is NOT 100%-cotton...! I tried four different kinds of Aileen's tacky, and quick-grab barely manages to tack the cloth to itself. It fought me every step of the way. Very disappointing, but a lesson-learned to always check the fine print...



Also finally got around to buying some more quarter-round and assembled my base; glued the house on and have been affixing porch trim pieces. Also here is what the attic room looks like so far; need to trim up the stairwell but I have been having trouble telling apart my trim for the Willowcrest and for the San Fran and have been mixing them up because the off-white paint colors are so similar...! (So I think I accidentally stole Willowcrest stairwell trim pieces for the San Fran.)



So now the San Fran: I finally figured out what to do about all the wiring that was billowing out the back; I drilled some holes in the MDF of the back base and stuffed everything in under the house. Very much neater now. There is a slot that you can put your finger in to switch on the power strip.



I went back and forth about the green room curtains-- I had prepared the long olive-green drape pieces about a year ago, but in arranging them from the pelmet with spray starch, they wrinkled up really easily. (Had the same problem with this cloth in the Westville parlor drape assemblies-- it's really thin cloth.) So I made some runners to hide the wrinklies and add some visual interest-- I think I need to tack those upper runners down a bit so they don't stick out so much.



The living room is one of my favorite rooms in this house-- partly because I spent so much time and stained wood on it...!



I am waffling about the window treatments in the rest of the house. If I get too crazy with them, it'll hide my "stained-glass" that I spent SO much time on, not to mention it'll be difficult to run the window sashes up and down (the lower ones do move- they're not fixed in place). What to do, what to do...

Well while I ponder on that, I will get busy finishing the base of the San Fran, and the shingling on the Willowcrest. Have got to get that shingling over with already.

...that I did indeed drag out the San Fran and finish shingling: my Minwax golden pecan (oil-based) is almost gone now, but I think the shingles have some nice "pop" to them now.



You'll notice that I didn't cut the shingles to an angle to fit the tower slope; those shingles were not amenable to angle-cutting (they pretty much fell apart when I tried), so I decided to trim strategically there.

I have been wainscoting the Willowcrest rooms also, while waiting for me to get around to getting some suitable quarter-round so I can finish the baseplate:





That is a finely corrugated paper (Michael's) in the blue room; I have alot of white trim made up for it.

I had been working on window treatments for the Willowcrest 2nd floor bedroom a few weeks ago (in the first pic you can see how I was dremeling out a channel in the floor to run the wire under the carpet)--




--but the color just didn't seem right for the wallpaper. I figured I needed something more wine-y. So I used the curtains in the Buttercup where I think they do alot better:





You can also see that I have been gardening a bit-- still needs some grass sprinkles and a couple flower pots. This little house is just about done! I took some pics w/o flash which, though yellow-y, give a better impression of the true colors.

I worked on the Willowcrest front door also-- front doors have always been difficult for me which is why they tend to get put off until towards the end, but I do enjoy them once they're installed! You might be able to make out in the Buttercup above that I kind of cheated with the door hinges-- real doors don't have the hinge part on the door frame parallel to the wall face-- but I couldn't cheat for the Willowcrest because there is no getting into that foyer space to do much of anything. So I had to install them something like the correct way, which means dremeling out little insets on the frame and the door pieces for the hinge parts to sit. I installed all the nails, doors and frames, which involved a fair amount of contortion and a few different kinds of plier (basically, whatever worked for a particular angle I was in!), and I am happy to say that the doors open and close now (though they won't close together- there's a trick to it!).



I still need to touch up the edges there. I also finished the bay draperies in the parlor-- I made an angled pelmet to fit the angle of the bay, with runners to cover the angle splits in the pelmet, and more of caseymini's tassels.




Now that I have gotten my wine-colored fabric (made an "emergency" trip to Joann's the other weekend!), I can concentrate on those bedroom draperies-- still thinking about the design, though...

I spent a bit of time making tassels from caseymini's tutorial and finally got two of the parlor drapery sets installed--




...and finally got around to picking up some coarse-grit sandpaper. I had in my head that it was 60-grit, and when I compare this to what is on top the bays, the paper on the bays is 40-grit. Oh well.



I think I'll work on some trim in the 2nd floor bedroom before I tackle those parlor bay window draperies...

Well I've got the pelmets and the swags, but the jabots may have decided to hop on another design-- this one just didn't take that direction! (I pretty much end up free-styling the window treatments-- what looks good in my head may not actually work out for me in practice...)

I spent some time doing even more paint touchups on the window trim, then figured out that I had forgotten to stop and pick up more 60-grit sandpaper to do up the porch roof-- didn't feel like running up to the hardware store, so skipped that for now. Maybe I'll remember next week... Also figured out that I don't think I want to affix the porch steps until I get my 1/4-inch plywood base, so skipping that for now also until I get over to Lowe's.

So I wandered inside again, and stained up a bunch of trim for the parlor and bedroom. I am toodling along, sizing every piece separately to fit in place, shaving off bits here and there with my dremel... I also picked out a fabric and laid out a bunch of drapes on skewers with spray starch so I can put together my window treatments. Still haven't decided for sure but thinking some sort of swag-jabot combination with a pelmet.

I had been prepping the attic, papering and installing the interior window frames, but nothing could move forward until I installed the interior chimney piece, and I couldn't do THAT until the flooring was finished!




I have a couple pics w/o flash so one can see how the colors really compare to one another. The flooring is 1/2"-wide planks of 1/16"-thick basswood, on a card template, stained with Minwax (oil-based) golden pecan; I am starting to run out so I need to get some more of that stain-- I like how bright and cheery it looks, and I think it compliments the blue well. I'll seal the floor in place after it's had a chance to cure some more (though I didn't use a whole lot of tacky glue to put it down-- I learned my lesson on that San Fran floor)...

Now I can put in the barrel roof pieces-- in this kit, they are very thin wood veneer pieces on cardboard. One of the sections on each piece had dried and chipped away, so I cut those sections out and replaced them with a section from what appeared to be an extra, short piece; I held the sections together with masking tape on the back and that seemed to work fine.



I glued the mansard roof support pieces in, using liberal amounts of wood glue:



I dry-fit the mansard roof pieces themselves, which are also thin wood veneer on a cardboard base (though not scored into sections as were the barrel pieces)-- they seem to fit quite loosely. I checked the instructions again, and the mansard roof pieces are to be fit between the "Main Roof Cornice" (check!) and the "Mansard Cornice Trim" (check!). So apparently I haven't forgotten anything, and they just fit loosely. I can see even from the dry-fit that there will need to be some trimming because between the side and front roof pieces, there is some extra sticking out... Also it looks like the front roof pieces may not fit nicely against the barrels, so I might have to think about some curvy trim to cover any gaps there...



I traced the roof pieces onto brown paper, which I'll use for my shingle templates; I'll let those roof supports cure and work on my exterior window frames and porch subassemblies for a while...

Haven't made a whole lot of progress-- worked on the parlor floor though, and here it is in dry-fit (I'll put sealer on it after it's glued in place):



I put balsa strips over those printed-on mullions in the interior window frames; I'm thinking of using my Gallery Glass paints to make some "panes" look like stained glass, but need to decide which ones:



I'm thinking about the toile in the attic. It too looks pretty overpowering in this photo but not as much in real-life (and the blues compliment each other more):