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 […]
Category: Dollhouses (Page 7 of 28)
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 […]
Once upon a time the Victorianna had a pretty peach bathroom. This was the first room I finished (four years ago!) and I was really happy with it. The tiles were from Elf Miniatures and I loved the color. Fast forward a year. About six months after moving into our new house in San Francisco, […]
I’ve received a lot of comments from readers of my blog thanking me for documenting my mistakes. I never really set out to do that — I guess I just make a lot of mistakes! This is going to be one of those posts. As of my last post, the Victorianna’s scratch-built kitchen was almost […]
So I said in my last post that this would be the grande finale for the Victorianna’s kitchen. It’s not — I still have to finish the stove, and I might have torn up the hardwood floor for no good reason. (Oops.) I’ll leave you in suspense about that until it’s fixed, but for now, […]
When I first started working on the Victorianna — four years ago! — I bought a pack of Grandt Line windows planning to use one in the kitchen. It wasn’t as deep as the plywood wall + siding. I always figured I could do something with strip wood to make up the extra space. Well, […]
In my real life kitchen, I picked out the countertop first and then spent a crazy amount of time finding backsplash tiles that would go well with it. I ended up with tiles in the same color family as the countertop, but a few shades lighter. I wanted to do something similar in the Victorianna […]
After completing the kitchen cabinets, I turned my attention to the backsplash. It’s not easy to find realistic tile to scale in 1:24. I was really tempted to print something out, but after the problems I’ve had with printies fading, I didn’t want to tempt fate. So I started thinking about how I could use […]
Tragedy struck my $1 Horace Jones sink. I’d left it in the countertop (not glued in) and I picked up the cabinet and tipped it slightly to look at something and the sink fell out and hit the floor. Before this happened, I’d actually thought to myself that I shouldn’t leave the sink in the […]
Emily is a freelance writer, miniaturist, and adventure game enthusiast.
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