The Westville Dollhouse Kit Construction Blog

I had to perform a partial amputation on the verge over the porch balcony, it wouldn't fit like in the picture.This morning I bricked the chimney.  It needs drybrushing, which I'll do later.I stained the scalloped shingles with the cherry stain & laid down a course of them, and so far I really like the color.  Something I'm trying different this time is to run a strip of aluminum foil "flashing" down the roof seam under the shingles. I also rehung the front bay shingles nearest the porch, they had canted apart slightly at the top.complements of havanaholly

Today I've been working on painting the shutters. As I mentioned elsewhere, I really like the design of the shutters. I am using a combination of colors, and I have used the teal for the outside colors, and an olive-ish green for the interior colors. I'm also just about ready to install the interior window trim, so I went ahead and put the window panes into the interior window trim. Of course, I did it backwards, LOL! But that's OK. Compliments of LPCullen

Well, I'm still doing trim. I want to put most of the shutters on the house, except for the bay windows--I plan to leave them off there. Jimmy has taken them out, and I have sanded their edges and gotten my standard coat of "primer" on them.Jimmy has also taken out some of the balcony railings for me, and I have sanded those as well. Now, for the porch railings, I wanted to have that mostly put together before I painted it. So, Jimmy took out all my pieces and I sanded them down and he then glued them together.  Well, I wasn't too happy with the way that the posts themselves looked--it sort of looked like a bunch of pieces of wood put together instead of porch posts. So, I talked Jimmy into putting some wood putty on the porch posts themselves--not the railings, just the posts--and then he sanded it down and made it smooth so it looks like a porch post. This picture shows some of the shutters, and also the porch rails and posts. It's not a good picture, but if you look closely, you can see where the posts were wood puttied. Compliments of LPCullen

I installed the "faucet" & "taps" on the bathtub first thing.

Then I dry-fit the roof and newspapered the attic portion.  I also painted the bathroom portion over the left wall, but painted the corner where the other side of the left attic roof joins the front of the roof over the porch in situ .  I'm going to leave the bedroom portion white & call it part of the ceiling.
I assembled & painted the chimney, and will begin to brick it later.
I cut down the Gillette razor pack and primed it with clear nail enamel.  I also cut my grills from a plastic fruitbasket and painted them for the stove I'll build later.  I had fun removing the surround from an old wristwatch for an oven door.  It will be state-of-the-art, I couldn't get the watchglass to come out  

I painted the roof trim pieces.  I do NOT look forward to the verge/ bargeboards, the plywood has already begun to delaminiate for me  
I've installed the roof, this one fit the best so far   .  As soon as I finish the chimney I'll mark my shingling lines & prep the shingles.  I'm still leaning toward a cherry stain.

complements of havanaholly

Today I finished the interior trim.  The red trim really looks good in the kitchen and the bedroom colors seem to go together.  The bathroom is sort of monochromatic, but once I get the fixtures in there it may look better. I have one more complaint about the assembly.  If, when I was originally building & installing the stairs I had known how the banister posts/ newels went I would have done them first thing in case there were cosmetic problems that could be corrected with spackle/ wood putty.  Installing them at the end, so to speak, involves contortions of hands from the back of the house to assemble something at the far end of the dividing walls.  Not fun.  Of course, I would have done the stairwall strip differently, too     Amongst my many little "treasure" boxes are a couple full of what I call "found" objects (non-miniaturists might call them "garbage" or "trash") from which I selected items to make the bathroom fixtures.The lavatory is made from a single-serving whipped butter tub, three earring backs (like the kitchen sink) and scraps of foamboard & wall covering.The bathtub started out the clear acrylic "blister" from packaging that I painted white on the "wrong" side, with the aforementioned earring backs and a foamboard scraps surround covered with masking tape and painted the trim color.The commode is made from a wee wooden egg cup I found in one of the countless thriftshops we fisited on our trip this summer, the seat & lid are card covered with a wood-grain contact vinyl with a metal bead "hinge".  The tank is a single-serving jelly packet with the flusher made from a jewelry finding & a bead.The wastepaper basket was once a single-serving coffee lightener container (duh). I have removed the roof/ gable pieces and I shall prep them tomorrow after I install the bathroom fixtures.  I'm still thinking about what to color the shingles & how.complements of havanaholly

I have been working on the trim for the house still. Sometimes I wish it didn't take so long to do trim, but I like it and I like the way that it turns out and how it makes the house looks, so ... I am making very few modifications from the original design on this house, so the majority of the trim is going on it. I think the only thing I plan to leave off are the shutters on the bay windows.I've taken out the shutter trim and have sanded that down and working on that. I like to put one coat of white semi-gloss on anything that I paint before I put the actual color on it because I like the way that it makes the actual color turn out. I really like the way that the shutters look on this house! Jimmy has taken out my porch pieces and I have sanded them. He has begun putting the pieces together to build the porch trim, because I think it will be easier to paint that way. While Jimmy was playing with the porch pieces, and while I was waiting for the paint to dry on the trim, I took the house outside to the front porch to stain the roof shingles. Because I still like an oil based stain better than a water base stain, I take the house outside to do that part so that it doesn't smell up the RW house, LOL! I have decided to go with the same color as the floors, which is Minwax Golden Pecan. I put one coat on the shingles and then considered doing another coat, but truthfully I like the lighter "blondish" color and the contrast against the darker wood "floors". And now I must tell you my funny! Of course Jimmy and I, as well as various other members of our family, are quite used to seeing dollhouses in various stages of construction, but we forget sometimes that other people are not. The Westville is nearing its completion and is a very pretty house. So, anyway, we obviously had the Westville sitting on the table outside waiting for the stain to dry, and people were driving by and they kept slowing down. Then I saw a couple cars that had already went up the hill coming back down the hill and slowing down again in front of my house, and I was thinking what in the world are these people doing? It took me a few minutes to realize that they were eyeballing the Westville!Compliments of LPCullen

Today I finished the windows for the livingroom.  Because of the window seat I had to perform surgery on the interior bay window frames.  The interior bay windows are awkward to install and I had to do one of them twice.
I "hung" the wall cabinet in the bathroom.  After three tries it's still not straight, and all three times it was perfectly straight when I taped it in place; DH says it's just as well, perfection makes the gods angry   ; I told him I wasn't trying to make it perfect, just hang straight!  Maybe once the lavatory is set up below it it won't look so bad, or I'll be readier to try again...

I taped the layers of the front door together to sand it to fit & the rubber jaw pads of my vice messed up the paint!  I sanded both the surfaces again & repainted them and then installed the acetate, the doorknobs and the chamois hinges and glued the door together.  I had little door keys with the exterior knob so I nailed one of them to the interior door trim.  I shall install it tomorrow, once the glue is dry.


complements of havanaholly

Oho, I just thought the punchout decorations for the porch were fiddly!  The porch balcony railing is tinier & therefore fiddlier; fortunately for the recipient & my few remaining shreds of sanity the plywood behaved itself and everything popped out that was supposed to, & nothing popped off that wasn't supposed to, and I didn't bash anything to splinters with my hammer.The balcony rails are all glued together, painted & installed along with the last two bits of corner molding.  I really, really like the balcony railings, especially those above the bay windows.  Personally I think they would look just as good on the porch balcony, too.Since I painted the porch & balcony parts white I went ahead & removed & prepped those pieces of interior trim that will also be painted white, such as the livingroom & interior door trim & door surround, also the shutter backs.  I have glued the porch window shutters together & shall install them tomorrow to see how they look. complements of havanaholly

Today I removed & prepped the porch pieces and happily the plywood stayed intact.  As there is beaucoup fiddly trim on these it's a very good thing.  I really like the design of the porch for this house, with the front & back posts to give dimension to them.  I had already primed these pieces on the sheets, so I gave everything a good sanding and glued the post & trim pieces together for the front & sides of the porch.
Then I painted one side of the porch pieces and whilst they dried I gave the attic window walls another coat of white paint.
After the first side of the porch pieces were dry I painted the other sides, and when they were dry I assembled the porch.  Ooo.
The only fitting problem I encountered was on the left side, where I had to pry a bit to get the left side sort of between the front of the porch and the front corner trim, because the corner trim was over the edges of the siding; so there's a wee bit of skewing.
I then used freebie "shopper" newspaper ads to paper the attic window walls, because the type is fairly tiny.  When I get to it I shall have to dry-fit the roof & mark the parts that constitute the rest of the attic walls, as they shall also need to be painted white & papered in "shopper" ads.

I'm considering following the instructions and doing the rest of the exterior (the balconies & shutters, I'm omitting some of the trim because of the contrast of the royal blue & white is pretty overwhelming) before I install the interior trim, since I'll need to hang the front door when I install the interior trim & I'm saving that for last.

complements of havanaholly

I measured about 2/3 of an individual serving yogurt cup of white interior latex paint into a clean, empty glass jar with a lid and then added royal blue until I got a light blue and I painted the first course of siding with it.  When it dried it looked snow-white, so I added what I thought was nearly half again as much blue as the original amount of white and when I got to a bilious bluish-white I quit and put a coat on the left wall before I went to bed last night.
This morning the wall was a lovely light blue, so I painted a second coat on the left wall and a first coat on all the others.
Whilst the paint dried I took my pieces of Michael's hutch bottom and painted the outsides red to match the kitchen trim.  I painted the knobs on the doors white.  I found a tiny plastic box that half was clear and half was white, so I clipped the hinges & clasp off the white half and it became my kitchen sink.  I then reassembled the bottom with the doors, cutting a piece out of the strip of wood that had held the doors so the "sink" would fit and glued the two halves one on each side to hold the doors.  Next I made  cutout for the sink in the top and covered the remaining top with the same contact vinyl I used on the floor.  I made a backsplash from the really skinny craft sticks.  I used a knob-type earring back for the tap and two "butterfly"-type earring backs for faucets.  I then painted the pieces of the hutch top the dark yellow-gold I'm trimming the bathroom & bedroom in.  I masked the doors and painted their knobs with some glitter-gold nail enamel; they pop!

I save plastic mesh the way some people save pennies, and I found a bit in a crayon-yellow; so the doors have mesh backs.  I also found some heart-shaped paper lace doilies and trimmed a bit off one edge and glued it to the edge of the shelf.

By this time the paint was dry, so on went the second coat and then I began to apply the exterior trim to the left wall.

This was about the time the friend whose DH is giving her this house for her birthday came by to check that this is indeed what she wants, and she seemed quite pleased.
I presently have all the exterior trim on except the door surround, which can go on in a bit, when the piece of trim next to it is dry enough to remove the clamps.  I'm VERY glad I put on the siding before the trim!

I also put a second coat of white paint on the attic walls so I can paper them with Thrifty Nickel pages.  Then I can start on the interior trim.


complements of havanaholly