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 […]
Category: Dollhouses (Page 27 of 28)
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 […]
One downside to having a house with an “interesting” shape (square and open on two sides, as opposed to rectangular and open on only one) is that it’s hard to visualize the layout. The pictures in the instructions only show certain angles. So, it took me a very long time to figure out where the […]
The first difference between the Fairfield and the Orchid: the directions are WAY more comprehensive. The Fairfield’s instructions are organized into about 20 chunks with {gasp} pictures to go along with them. The second difference is that this house is a lot more complicated. It has many, many, many pieces. And it’s a cube with […]
I’ve finally started on the landscaping. Geoff cut a board for me and I lined it with Noch grass that I bought from HBS. Next I’ll be adding bushes, flowers, and trees… oh, the possibilities! The yard. I might put a tree back here. Close-up of the birdbath my mom made me for Christmas.
I made a roombox for my parents for Christmas. The box itself came from The Miniature Scene, a relatively new store in Campbell. It was a little small for 1 inch scale, but worked out okay for my purposes. This is the first roombox I’ve made in recent years, and I had fun with it. […]
In early 2003 I bought a bunch of Shenendoah kits (now owned by Houseworks) in order to make a kitchen island like one I saw in a 1997 issue of Dollhouse Miniatures. After almost a year of cluttering up my own kitchen in varying stages of put-togetherness, they have finally been finished! Here they are, […]
The living room, like the rest of the house, originally had white walls. But after a few months I decided I wanted to jazz it up a little bit. I wanted a modern look and couldn’t find any wallpaper I liked, so I started looking at scrapbooking paper. I finally found this green paper I […]
The bedroom was the first room I decorated when I finished the house, and nothing’s really changed since then. I am planning to put some trim up on the seams of the wall joints. I’m also going to make a Chrysnbon rocking chair for this room. Lo and behold, the bathroom has been papered! After […]
The semi-finished house, in its new home on a shelf in my kitchen: Now that I brought the house home, I’m having a lot of fun with the decorating… The first thing I did was finish the bed. I made the mattress, bedspread, and pilows. The pillow with the pattern was a Janet Granger kit. […]
Geoff was over with his digital camera so I had him take a few pictures of the conservatory. The cabinets and appliances are mostly assembled. An eating surface will be built into the island, where the chairs are. Update, August 25: Finally, the dormer has been attached! With a ton of glue and a bit […]
My orders from Dollshouse.com and HBS arrived. I ordered some furniture, as well as the lights. So, the time had come to tackle the electricity. I’m glad Geoff was there… he knew exactly what he was doing! Looks simple, huh? Near the stair hole, it’s attached to the piece of tapewire that’s running under the […]
I did some work this month (not much), but was rather lazy about keeping track. The good news is, the end is truly in sight. Anyway, here’s a summary. Stairs: Painted the underside white, polyurethaned the stairs and banister pieces, then attempted to read the assembly directions. I have to say, I was really disappointed […]
So, it became painfully clear that the stairs that came with my Orchid kit just weren’t going to cut it. I tried to make them work. I sanded the pieces so they’d look nice. And once I sanded them they wouldn’t fit together properly. The solution? I bought these. And they look a thousand times […]
I got a lot of work done on the kitchen cabinets last week. Pictures to come soon, I hope. I also bought a clawfoot bathtub to replace the triangular one I decided wouldn’t work. It has a neat little silver plug on a chain. It was marked down $10 because the plug was disconnected from […]
I finally put the house and conservatory together to see how they’d look. I’m pretty happy! Sure, they’re two completely different styles, but this is the case for a lot of older houses that get additions… right? (Humor me!) Turns out the conservatory barely clears the overhang of the house roof. I’m painting the outside […]
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