After many months of playing with the interior of the house, I’m back to work on the outside. When last we saw our hapless heroine, she had just finished staining shingles for the roof. Those are still sitting in the hangar waiting to be glued on. First I have to finish the siding and glue the roof in place.

After seeing some other, beautifully finished Fairfields, I decided to revisit my color choices. I decided to be brave and try painting my windows and front door with accent colors. (There’s a first time for everything!) Here’s my first attempt. The purple looks kind of light in the picture, but it’s actually a dusty plum color.

I happened to have a broken window so I practiced on that.

I’m also going to paint over the brown porch and foundation of the house. I want a darker green that will go nicely with the accent colors and the green of the house. My first attempt was too much like a Christmas tree, so I have to try some different paint (I’ll spare you the pictures!)

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I decided early on that the third floor of the Fairfield would be “renovated” from an attic into a family room space. I wanted them to have a TV room, an area for a computer, and maybe a ping pong table or aquarium… the kinds of “luxuries” you find in a lot of today’s houses with families. Since one of the downstairs bedrooms had been changed into a reading room, I decided the family’s teenaged daughter would have a room in the attic instead.

I really don’t like how when you’re looking at one side of the attic, you can see through the roof on the other side. So, I decided to take care of this by building a little wall between the larger and smaller sections of the attic. This gives the teenage daughter a door to slam, and takes care of that weirdness of being able to see all the way through the house.

I made the wall out of balsa and used the leftover Houseworks door that I chose not to put in the kitchen. This side faces the family room area (the living room side of the house):

This side faces the teenager’s bedroom (the kitchen side of the house):

So, the larger part of the attic will be the TV room / computer room. I bought a wide screen TV, computer, and desk from HBS. The TV is electrified. I hardwired it but left the wires long in case I change my mind about where in the room to place it.

Another angle of the TV room. I am planning to put SDK Miniatures’ family room furniture (from the July Dollhouse Miniatures magazine) in here.

The false wall makes this room a little shallow, but the desk still fits fine. The lamp is one of the discontinued Marie Toner lights I bought.

View into the teen’s bedroom. A ping ping table or pool table might look good by the chimney.

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I got started in half inch scale because I received an Avon furniture set as a gift. I bought a few more sets off eBay but was disappointed to find they were not exactly in scale. Then I stumbled across a few auctions for Popular Imports furniture sets… and my wallet has been suffering ever since! These sets are not as readily available as the Avon sets. They tend to be closer to half inch scale and have more pieces than the Avon sets (on average, around twelve). The eBay seller also sent me a 1996 brochure from Popular Imports… click here to see a scan of all the sets available in that year. I’m now on a quest to find as many of these as possible. (Please contact me if you have any available or know where I can find them!)

Here are some of my ideas for using this furniture in the Fairfield. Most of these pieces are from the Crimson Parlor set:

The piano is a Christmas ornament.

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