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 over here and backdate them. Sorry for any weirdness that results!
Again, didn’t have any time to work on the house during the week. Now that it’s the weekend I’m hoping to get a bunch done. Didn’t get off to a good start though. The last work I did was on Tuesday, when I glued the left and right parts of the front roof onto the house. (I deviated from the directions a little… they say to put the second floor partition in first, but since I didn’t punch out the hole for the stairs, I didn’t have a slot to put the partition into. Gluing the roof pieces on provided some stability for the second floor partition.)
Last night (Friday) I glued in the second floor partition. Since I didn’t punch out the hole for the stairs, this meant I didn’t have a slot for the partition to fit into. So, I cut off the tab with my utility knife. Of course, this meant I was up against the same problem as with the foundation… gluing a very thin piece of plywood onto the floor. Then I made a little mistake. I glued the partition in backwards, so the sloped part was up against the wall rather than facing out. There’s no excuse for this… I just didn’t read the directions carefully. Last night as I was falling asleep it occurred to me that the sloped part should be facing out so it would butt up against the roof…
So, the first thing I did this morning was wiggle the partition out so I could glue it in again. The glue set nicely and it took a little work with the utility knife to get the wall out, but nothing got broken and it was relatively painless. Now it’s gluing in again… the right way this time!
I put the roof on the back temporarily, to help weight down the partition while the glue sets. Always knew Shakespeare would come in handy one of these days! [Note: I’m still making that Shakespeare joke ten years later. Har, har.]
When that has glued, I plan to move right to gluing on the gable roof pieces. The instructions say to glue on the back roof first, but I’m going to skip that for now. I want to wallpaper inside before I glue that part on.
Emily is a freelance writer, miniaturist, and adventure game enthusiast.
Leaving out the stairs was a good move. I remember my dismay at finding that the front door wouldn’t open fully because the stairs were in the way. It was the first dollhouse I built so it was a long time ago but I really wanted a staircase (I love stairs because ordinary houses in Australia generally were bungalows when I was growing up, though my aging knees are glad I don’t have to cope with them every day now). Having one really does cut down on the space in the living room though.