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.

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!

Just did a tiny bit of work today. First I stained the bottom of the porch (realizing a teeny tiny lip would show if the house were displayed on a glass table and someone got down on the floor and looked up at the bottom of it… okay, I’m anal!) and the porch foundation pieces.

A few hours later, after the stain had (mostly) dried, I glued the porch foundation pieces together. I think I found a mistake in the instructions. They say that the side pieces and front piece of the porch foundation should have tabs and slots that interlock, but those pieces don’t have tabs or slots. They do in the pictures on the box, but not in the kit I have. Maybe a change was made to the dies when Greenleaf retooled this kit, but the instructions were never updated. Anyway, I glued in wooden blocks for support again, because as we have learned gluing little pieces of plywood at perfect right angles is NOT my forte!

Unfortunately, I’m running out of little wooden blocks!

That’s all for the time being. I will glue the porch foundation on to the bottom of the porch before I go to work tomorrow.

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!

So, I finally took two pictures of what I’ve been up to this weekend. (And let me say that the new camera takes NICE pictures. I’m still sorry I broke the other one, but not that sorry!)

Overall, everything has been fitting together nicely. I have had to enlarge some slots with my utility knife, and there are some cracks that will need to be filled with wood filler. The bottom of the front wall just wouldn’t meet the floor no matter how hard I tried (but it did lock into place on the side walls fine). No big deal… I can always fill cracks with wood filler or cover them with decorative trim. That’s why I love dollhouses but would never want to build a real house… with dollhouses I don’t have to worry about drafts, leaks, and weight-bearing walls!

My Arthur from the front:

I put the roof on temporarily while gluing, to help keep the walls square.

The next step in the instructions is to assemble the porch foundation. It looks like it might be as precarious as the foundation back wall… may have to pull out my trusty wooden blocks again!