May 2015: I started the Arthur as part of a Greenleaf community build in 2005, and at the time we blogged our progress on the Greenleaf forum. After a few site upgrades the old community blog has become hard to link to and I’m redoing my website anyway, so I decided to move those posts […]
Category: Dollhouses (Page 26 of 27)
May 2015: I started the Arthur as part of a Greenleaf community build in 2005, and at the time we blogged our progress on the Greenleaf forum. After a few site upgrades the old community blog has become hard to link to and I’m redoing my website anyway, so I decided to move those posts […]
A while ago, I picked up some wooden coffee stirrers to make hardwood floors for the Fairfield. For some reason, now seemed like a good time to do it! First I stained the coffee stirrers with Minwax Golden Oak. This brought out the grain and even some knots, so they really do look like scale […]
I ran into a problem wallpapering the bedroom. First time around, there was a bubble and when I tried to fix it I ruined the paper along the back wall. Then I couldn’t get additional sheets of paper and had to wait to order more. They’ve been discontinued so getting them was not easy. THEN […]
One of the neat things about redoing a house that is already assembled is that I can get to the decorating much sooner. I have been planning out the rooms and where the furniture will go as I’m also working on wallpaper, electricity, and the exterior of the house. Here’s what I have in the […]
I’d put the roof on before to see how it looked, but now that the siding is in I was able to glue it down. As expected, it didn’t fit like it was supposed to. That’s where balsa strips and wood filler come in handy! It’s looking like a real house! I glued little pieces […]
I just looked at the dates on the last McKinley pictures I uploaded to the site… it’s been over six months! I have not been working on it much. But the rooms have been coming together, slowly but surely, and the electricity is done. Also, the kitchen cabinets are mostly assembled. I decided to leave […]
After many months of playing with the interior of the house, I’m back to work on the outside. When last we saw our hapless heroine, she had just finished staining shingles for the roof. Those are still sitting in the hangar waiting to be glued on. First I have to finish the siding and glue […]
I decided early on that the third floor of the Fairfield would be “renovated” from an attic into a family room space. I wanted them to have a TV room, an area for a computer, and maybe a ping pong table or aquarium… the kinds of “luxuries” you find in a lot of today’s houses […]
I got started in half inch scale because I received an Avon furniture set as a gift. I bought a few more sets off eBay but was disappointed to find they were not exactly in scale. Then I stumbled across a few auctions for Popular Imports furniture sets… and my wallet has been suffering ever […]
I had been intending to buy some kind of pedestal table for the McKinley’s kitchen, but recently came up with an idea to make my own. I paid a few dollars at Goodwill for a butterfly windchime from Pier 1 (still in the box). It had a round, flat glass top and seven glass butterflies […]
I started building the Fairfield after receiving a set of Avon Victorian Memories kitchen furniture as a gift (most of which I’m not actually using in the house!) Since this is my first half scale endeavor, I’m furnishing the Fairfield from scratch. I still have a lot of furniture to buy / make, but here […]
I did not intend to electrify the Fairfield. I figured with a house half the size of what I was used to, and for which it would be harder to find fixtures, it just wasn’t worth it. Then I saw someone else’s Fairfield lit up and changed my mind! I had already assembled most of […]
One of the things I decided to do with the McKinley is to make as many of the furnishings as possible. I felt if the house is going to be displayed (on the wall, as intended, or more realistically on a shelf because we have flimsy plaster walls), it makes sense that it should be […]
The next step after taking down the wallpaper was to wire the house for electricity. In the Orchid, I put tapewire on the floors above where I wanted lights, and attached the wires through tiny holes. This worked well so I decided to do the same in the McKinley. Since the back of this house […]
On Memorial Day weekend, I spent a lot of time crouched on the floor by the McKinley, pulling down wallpaper and trim. Good thing I have long fingernails! Some of the trim came off in tact and some broke into a thousand pieces. I can get replacement trim from Greenleaf but I may first try […]
This was a TOTALLY unplanned purchase. I had been going along my merry way on the Fairfield, having a great time working in half scale, planning out all the other half scale houses I’d build next. I went so far as to buy back issues of Nutshell News that contained half scale house and furniture […]
I’m nowhere near putting the windows and doors in this thing… but HBS had a 50% off sale on April 1st, and I used my coupon to buy the “upgrade kit” for the Fairfield. It includes 11 windows, 4 interior doors, and 1 exterior door (all Houseworks pieces). How they’ll look. The windows are thicker […]
With the stairs done, I was ready to move on to Step 4. I was surprised to see that this step was assembling the shell! On the Orchid, assembling the shell didn’t come until much later in the project. I punched out many, many pieces, and got to work on sanding them. One piece split […]
This is actually not my very first dollhouse, but it’s the first one I took seriously. My parents bought it for me for Christmas around 1990, from a local toystore. It’s not quite to scale and was apparently meant to be more sturdy than pretty. This made it a great house to mess around with […]
Emily is a freelance writer, miniaturist, and adventure game enthusiast.
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