After my huge struggle to get the rowhouse attic wallpapered, I was disheartened when I returned to the house a few weeks later to find that the glue had discolored my white paper. I’m not sure why this happened but am willing to blame it on the fact that I printed my own wallpaper… it’s […]
Category: Dollhouses (Page 19 of 27)
A couple of weeks ago I saw something odd on eBay and, well, I had to have it. It’s a half scale cottage (I think named the Gull Bay) that seems to have come from a 1980s class taught by Jackie Kerr Deiber. The shell is already sided and assembled and it came with everything […]
I just participated in my first mini swap, which combines the fun of getting chain letters in the mail (remember those?) with the fun of scoring a bunch of free minis. The swap was done by the Yahoo Half Scale group and there were 46(!) participants, meaning we each had to provide 46 of an […]
Work has stalled on the Queen Anne Rowhouse lately. The electricity’s still driving me crazy as I slowly install the Houseworks lights that I bought to replace the Cir-Kit lights that broke my heart. Two weeks ago I got one into the attic but the second attic fixture was broken. Not sure what the problem […]
I knew all along that getting stairs into the Queen Anne rowhouse would be a challenge. The stair holes were positioned in a place that wouldn’t fit a regular straight staircase. The original kit may have come with stairs that turned a corner, and apparently Houseworks used to sell stairs like these because I’ve seen […]
Haven’t had much time for mini-ing lately, but this week I finished a petitpoint carpet and a few weeks ago Geoff helped me cut some wood to make ceilings and knee walls for the rowhouse’s attic rooms, so here’s a hodgepodge of pictures for all of my restless readers. The Queen Anne rowhouse has two […]
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I made a chimney for the Queen Anne Rowhouse. Well, most of a chimney. I’m getting ready to shingle the roof, so I finally got around to making a top part of the chimney to go with the bottom. I started by cutting two pieces […]
I keep adding doodads and curlicues to the front of the Queen Anne Rowhouse. It’s like an obsession. After I added the panels and resin trim to the bay window, the house felt kind of unbalanced, with too many dark green stripes at the bottom and none at the top. I rectified this by adding […]
When we last saw the Queen Anne Rowhouse, she was wearing a big green stripe that wasn’t exactly flattering. (You know what they say about horizontal stripes…) Today I turned this into three self-contained panels. This was a simple matter of cutting a few more vertical trim pieces, and cutting the corners of the horizontal […]
While I’m waiting for my new lights to arrive, I’ve gone back to work on the front of the rowhouse. I want this to look more or less like a San Francisco painted lady, and at the beginning of this project I spent a lot of time poring over library books to get ideas for […]
Progress on the Queen Anne Rowhouse has been somewhat stymied by one disaster after another with the electricity. On October 3, I ordered eleven half scale lights from Swan House DIY for a cost of about $130. (They didn’t show up until Halloween, but that’s a story for another time.) Of these, four were Houseworks […]
Now and then, the Dollar Tree has furniture that’s roughly 1:12 scale. (Except for beds, which for some reason are closer to half scale.) It usually comes in an ugly red finish, but recently they started carrying raw wood furniture too. I picked up a few pieces today: two dressers and a sideboard. For something […]
For the past month I have been struggling with electrifying the Queen Anne rowhouse. I’ll write up a blog about everything that’s gone wrong (and hopefully save some others out there the heartache I’ve experienced with a certain brand of light fixtures…) but I’m so annoyed about it right now I don’t even want to […]
With the downstairs part of the porch finished, I moved on to the top. I wanted to turn this into a balcony, but with something more flamboyant than the usual newel post. This is one of those times that a dearth of half scale supplies caused me to get creative. For the posts, I bought […]
When I bought the Queen Anne rowhouse, it had pillars made out of dowels that were sort of crookedly glued onto the railings. When I pulled these off, bumpy glue spots were left behind on the railings. I sanded them but was left with not-quite-flat railings, and was concerned that the new pillars wouldn’t glue […]
I’ve been playing around with paint colors for the Queen Anne Rowhouse. I’m trying to keep the colors sort of subtle because that’s what a library book told me to do. (Apparently garish paint schemes are no longer “in” in San Francisco, and I’m not really a fan of garish anyway.) I had some Glidden […]
One of the problems I run into with a new dollhouse is that I often get hung up in a chicken-and-egg loop where I think “Well, I can’t do this until I do that, but I can’t do that until I do this other thing…” and then I end up not doing anything. This house […]
Not much to look at yet, but I have been making slow, steady progress on the Queen Anne rowhouse. The first task was siding. Usually I have sloppy edges because I know they’ll be covered with trim. Since this house has panels that open, I tried really hard to keep the edges that will be […]
After last weekend’s impulse buy, my eagerness to get started on the Queen Anne Rowhouse was thwarted by my lack of any actual plans for it. I placed some orders for doors and windows and got some books about San Francisco painted ladies from the library, but much of the week was spent thinking and […]
Many moons ago, I saw an eBay auction for a half scale Queen Anne Rowhouse kit by American Craft. This kit was from the 80s and I hadn’t seen it before. It opened on three sides and I loved the building design, which looks like the Victorians common in San Francisco. The house is similar […]
Emily is a freelance writer, miniaturist, and adventure game enthusiast.
If you have comments about this site or would like to get in touch regarding a freelance opportunity, please write to hello -at- emilymorganti.com.
