I actually did finish the Rowhouse stair room the same weekend I last posted about it, just didn’t get around to writing about it until today… Before I tackled the trim in the the stair room, I glued in the attic stairs and fixed the floor around the opening. My tasks were to cut new […]
Category: Dollhouses (Page 7 of 28)
I really intended to finish the Victorianna this year, but I’m just not feeling it right now, so I’ve turned my attention back to the Seaside Villa. The last time I posted about this house, I had painted it with Glidden Belgian Waffle, and didn’t like it. I repainted it light gray. This is a […]
Last summer I tackled the big project of re-wallpapering the stair room in the Queen Anne Rowhouse, but I never completely finished it. I realized that once the railing was glued in, I wouldn’t be able to remove the bookcases, which meant the shelves needed to be filled and the bookcases glued in before I […]
About a month ago I learned that Dollhouses, Trains, and More will be closing, and I’m pretty depressed about it. I used to live five minutes away and went in there about once a week. Even after I moved, I’ve been making the trip every few months to buy strip wood and other supplies. Their […]
Not liking how the wrapped floorboards looked on the front of the Sam & Max roombox, I bought some thin basswood strips to cover the base. I never really liked the paint color but couldn’t have stained it since the roombox is made out of MDF, so this gave me an excuse to trim out […]
With the doors finished, the time has finally come to glue the foamcore walls into Sam & Max’s office. The walls are a snug fit and I had to be careful to make sure the edges of the two side pieces were exactly flush with the bricked sides. I didn’t want the walls sliding around […]
Before I can glue in the walls in Sam & Max’s office, I needed to finish the doors. The office door has a Freelance Police logo on the window. I had a few sheets of clear sticker paper left over from when I made mini Absolut Vodka bottles and life-sized spice jar labels, so I […]
In the early episodes of Telltale’s Sam & Max games, the Freelance Police have a braided rug in their office. (After Max becomes President of the United States, it’s replaced by a rug out of the Oval Office.) As seen in this bird’s eye view screenshot, the rug has green, brown, and off-white rings. Also […]
For the hardwood floor in Sam & Max’s office, I used the same micro veneer that I have used in the past in the Victorianna and Thatched Cottage. I buy this stuff in batches off eBay. It’s basically the same as the dollhouse hardwood flooring made by Houseworks, but a lot cheaper. I used a […]
I’m waiting for some things to come in the mail before I continue with Sam & Max’s office, so I took a break from the structure to build Sam’s desk. Here’s a render from Telltale’s game that shows what it looks like. We only ever see Sam’s desk from the back, so I don’t know […]
I haven’t been able to work on Sam & Max’s office (or anything) for most of July because Geoff was putting finishing touches on my new workshop, which is now 99% finished! It’s a little bigger than my old workshop, with a level floor and real walls and a heater and a longer desk and […]
The windows and doors in the Sam & Max roombox will need to be placed in the holes before the false walls are glued in. For this reason I needed to stucco and paint the false walls outside of the roombox. (Normally I like to assemble first, then decorate.) I was concerned about the center […]
The next step in the Freelance Police roombox is to prepare the walls that will get covered up by the false walls. I used a fan-made program named Telltale Explorer to extract the texture that displays outside the office windows in Telltale’s games. I started by printing it in black and white, to see how […]
These are Sam & Max, the Freelance Police. Sam & Max are a dog and rabbity-thing who fight crime in their own special way. They’re the creations of artist Steve Purcell, and have starred in comics, video games, and a short-lived animated series. I could write much more about them — but why do that […]
As I mentioned when I made the half height windows for the back of the Seaside Villa, I bought a laser cut mullion to go in the bathroom window. The front of the house has a nice stained glass door that I bought off eBay and I thought it would be nice to make this […]
The Visalian, upon which my 1:24 scale Seaside Villa is based, was modeled after a real house in Visalia, California, that burned down in the early 1980s. After my first post about the dollhouse, I was contacted by Judy Lewin, the owner of Mill Creek Miniatures and a former Visalia resident who researched the house […]
The other day I used the word “bashed” in conversation and the person I was talking to didn’t know what I meant. In case you’re not familiar, “bash” is short for “kitbash,” which is a phrase I first read in Nutshell News back in the nineties, and I’m sure it was around before then. It […]
I’ve never attempted to use clapboard on the octagonal portions of my houses — too many small pieces to cut and corners to make neat. On the Queen Anne Rowhouse, I just painted the wood. I would have done the same with the Seaside Villa, except I needed to fill in a portion of the […]
This year the Half Scale Miniatures Group‘s annual swap had two themes — Toys and Plants. I was especially excited about the toys because I have three kids’ rooms to fill up in the Victorianna. My contribution was a stacking ring toy. I got the idea for this after stumbling across rubber jump rings on […]
In December I got an email from a woman named Sue who reads my blog. She was downsizing her mini collection and offered to sell me a half scale Seaside Villa dollhouse shell. This house used to be available from Rocky Mountain Woodcrafts, a line owned by Norm’s Dollhouse in Colorado, which shut down in […]
Emily is a freelance writer, miniaturist, and adventure game enthusiast.
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