I’ve started putting together a half-scale “puzzle house” by Creatology. Michael’s started carrying these kits in the spring and apparently stopped carrying them at some point over the summer, because they’ve become impossible to find. When they had them, the kits sold for $7.99—and of course, I never go to Michael’s without a 40% coupon in hand—so I got the kit for about five bucks. Finally opened it up a week or two ago. The folks over at the Greenleaf forum have been singing this little kit’s praises for months now, but I have to admit I wasn’t expecting much for so little money.

When I cracked open the kit, the first thing I noticed was that the wood is pretty good quality. The kit includes a laughably small piece of sandpaper but the wood is so smooth you don’t really even need it. Color me impressed. This house looks a lot like the Greenleaf Arthur and I got it in my head that it’ll be a cute little cottage with siding and upgraded windows. I had the siding and windows in my stash already, but did splurge on a door with a rounded top (which cost twice as much as the house itself…)

The walls with window and door upgrades. I used a utility knife to enlarge most of the holes, and Geoff helped me make a new hole for the bay window with the Dremel.

Since the kit is supposed to be a puzzle, it can be fit together with only the pieces included and no glue. If you put it together according to the directions there are a lot of knobby connector pieces sticking out that ruin the illusion of it being an actual house. I decided to toss the instructions entirely and put it together my own way. It’s a really simple design, so not too hard to figure out. I dry fit first to get an idea of what went where, and what order I should glue down the pieces.

The porch doesn’t have any kind of support under it, which is weird. I’ll probably add a border of basswood all the way around to create a bottom for the porch, and add stability.

I had these windows left over from another project I never ended up doing. The first floor sides were not supposed to have windows but I thought the bay window would look nice.

This is a really simple house inside, which is good, because in theory it won’t take me ages to finish! The floors look warped in this picture but it’s just because everything’s hastily thrown together for the dry fit.

Next I cut siding for the sides and front of the house. I’m using the Houseworks clapboard siding, which is pretty easy to prepare and always ends up looking nice and neat. I put it aside for now—I’ll glue the house together before attaching it—but I find it’s easier to cut siding before the pieces have been glued.

I had to enlarge a few of the slots in the first floor so the front wall would fit into it better. Then I glued the front and two side walls to the first floor and will let it sit overnight.

Gotta love paint cans! The second floor is not being glued, I just put it in there to add stability.

I’m trying to decide if I should wallpaper the downstairs rooms before gluing in the second floor. The part of me that hates to wallpaper says, “Yes! It’ll be so much easier!” But I have a bad habit of getting carried away with the what-ifs (“If I’m going to wallpaper, shouldn’t I first decide exactly what furniture is going to go in this room?”), and I’d really like to try to build this house quickly. I have lots of in-progress houses and probably shouldn’t have even started on this one, but it seemed like such a quick build, I couldn’t resist.

I’ll post more pics when I have some. Also, I recently took a bunch of pictures of furniture in my Fairfield… nowhere near the final product, but they’re here if you want to take a look.