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 […]
Category: Dollhouses (Page 20 of 28)
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 […]
The Little House in the Big Woods cabin is pretty much finished. I added basswood over the exposed edges of the plywood. Now all that’s left to do outside is a bit more weathering, to bring the color of the shingles more in line with the rest of the house. Now I can finally do […]
I’ve started furnishing the Little House cabin. I’ve collected several Cassidy Creations kits for this house and am also planning to scratch build some of the furniture. I started with the “big bed” and trundle bed. Little House in the Big Woods has a couple of illustrations that part of the big bed’s headboard, but […]
Shingling was the last big job to do on the cabin. When I glued the skinny sticks to the inside of the roof, something got off kilter so the roof wouldn’t glue on straight. Oops. The porch roof is supposed to attach to the front of the roof at a 45-degree angle. I glued a […]
In my last blog, I pointed out that the half-round logs that came with the log cabin kit make the corners look kind of silly. My dad suggested cutting pieces to glue to the flat edges, to make a “full” log. It was a bit tricky dealing with such little pieces, but I managed and […]
With the first floor interior of my Little House cabin finished, I moved onto the exterior. The Sugar and Spice kit came with a bundle of “half timber” logs that sit flush against the side of the house. They have to be cut to size. Initially I made the mistake of cutting almost all of […]
With the floor and walls of the main room “timbered,” I decided to try aging the wood while I could still easily get my hands inside. I have some Minwax slate gray stain (water based) that I originally tried on the raw wood, but it was too light. The ebony stain was proving to be […]
In the fourth Little House book, On the Banks of Plum Creek, a big deal is made of the fact that Pa buys Ma a cookstove and she won’t have to cook on an open fire anymore. In spite of this, in Little House in the Big Woods (the book I’m basing my Little House […]
So far, work on the Little House cabin has involved a lot of staining, then waiting for the stain to dry. On Sunday I started by staining the remaining house pieces. This might not have been necessary since I’m planning to cover everything with shingles or siding outside and skinny stick “logs” inside, but I […]
The Hillside Victorian dollhouse is coming along nicely, but after six months I’m ready to work on something else—something smaller. (It’s probably got something to do with the fact that the next step on the Hillside Victorian is to paint a zillion windows… not my favorite task!) I have several half scale kits laying in […]
My Cypress and Fog roombox has been sitting, partially furnished, for a long time. This week I built some Mission furniture kits that I’ve accumulated for this house. The sideboard is a Daisy House kit, and it’s not quite Mission style, but close enough. I guess I could have added spindles to the sides to […]
The last time I worked on the Hillside Victorian’s deck, I wasn’t sure about the color I’d painted it. I also didn’t like how the flagstones ended abruptly at the stairs. I decided to continue the flagstones onto the stairway (like in the inspiration photo I found online) and to paint the deck another color. […]
After building the deck for the Hillside Victorian, I wasn’t sure how to finish it. I thought it should match the hot tub, but didn’t want too much brown to detract from the color scheme of the rest of the house (especially since there’s no brown or stained wood anywhere else). So, I turned to […]
After completing the Hillside Victorian’s hot tub, I turned my attention to the deck. I’m using an old kit from Betty’s Wooden Miniatures. The dollhouse store had it marked down from $50 to $30 because they weren’t sure if all the pieces were there. Since I was planning to bash the hot tub into the […]
Since my Hillside Victorian came with a French door added to the first floor, I decided to put in a deck. The room just inside that door is the master bedroom so I thought a private deck with hot tub would be nice. My local dollhouse shop used to stock a Betty’s Wooden Miniatures deck […]
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