May 2015: I started the Westville 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!

I completed Step C tonight, but before I get to that, here’s one picture from the Step A adventure of last night.

Not all that exciting, I know, but I inadvertantly turned the flash off on the camera, which sets it for “nighttime” and leaves the shutter open longer, which makes the pictures come out really fuzzy. This was the only halfway decent one of the batch. Oh well.

(For those of you who are curious, that upside-down box in the background is one we took from the trash area of Geoff’s old apartment before he and I moved into our house. I have never, in my life, owned “ballerina shoes,” let alone enough pairs to fill a great big box!)

So, tonight I skipped past Step B (except for the part about gluing the center partition to the first floor) and moved right on to Step C, which involved attaching the rest of the walls. They fit perfectly! I didn’t have to cut any of the tabs or slots, which is rare. I’m loving how easily this house is going together… good wood, good desgin, good instructions. Good job, Greenleaf!

Here’s the house pre-Step C (that would be post-Step A):

You can see the Houseworks casement window on the front. The lighter colored wood is some leftover trim I used to fill the gaps from the original window hole. It looks off center, but it’s actually roughly centered between the edge of the door hole and where the edge of the porch post will be. I will not add shutters to this window (no room!)And here we are at the end of Step C:

I have not glued the attic floor in yet, because I need to cut the hole for the disappearing attic stairs and to run tapewire up to the attic first.Step D involves the bay windows, but I want to wallpaper my kitchen and living room before I put those in (which, of course, requires choosing wallpaper…) Instead, I’m going to reward myself for getting the shell done so easily (as if I had anything to do with it!) by starting on my post-war kitchen.

May 2015: I started the Westville 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!

I’m too sleepy to load up pictures right now, but I’m happy to report that I got through all of Step A tonight. Which means, essentially, that I have a house! Instant gratification.

First, I enlarged the kitchen window hole to make it wide enough for the casement window I bought, and filled in the gaps at the top and bottom. (The original hole is a vertical rectangle, and the casement window is horizontal.) I also enlarged the stair hole for the Houseworks stairs I’m going to use (just took a little bit of sanding) and chopped the bit of railing that protrudes into the kitchen off the center partition wall. Then I went through Step A, following the directions (rare for me!) and used a combination of wood glue and white glue to glue the pieces on. The shell is drying right now.

As I was going through Step A, I applied a piece of tapewire across the first floor and up the right wall. I don’t know yet where I’m going to put lights, but this gives me some flexibility. I did this before putting in the second floor because once that’s in, it’s harder to get the wire from the first floor to the second floor.

Step B is building the staircase, which I’m going to skip because I’m using pre-fab stairs. I went to the dollhouse shop this weekend but they didn’t have the set I want, so I am going to have to order them. I have a 20% coupon for HBS for the beginning of August, so I’m going to order the stairs then, along with the disappearing attic stairs and the closet door. That means I can move right to Step C, which involves putting together the rest of the shell.

May 2015: I started the Westville 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!

Here’s my workspace on Day 1 of Project Westville:

As you can see, there’s not a ton of desk space. My other work table (you can’t see it in this picture) still has the Arthur on it, which isn’t quite done. So I did what any self-respecting miniaturist would do… I used the floor! (This is actually not unusual for me. I do a lot of my work on the floor, and have for years. I guess at some point I’ll have trouble getting up and down there, but for now I still can, and I take advantage of it!)

So, I got to work punching out all the pieces required for Step A. There are A LOT of them, and it turns out not all of them are going to be used in Step A. I hope I don’t lose anything (see messy workspace picture above).

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