I had hoped to be farther along with the Victorianna’s kitchen by now, but c’est la vie. I’m waiting for a Shapeways stove to come in the mail and thinking through some ideas for scratch built cabinets. In the meantime, I’ve finished the window seat that I started in September.

I bought a Lee’s Line table and two chairs to go with the window seat. Luckily they arrived before I glued anything in — the seat is much too tall! I had used 3/4″ strip wood for the base (the approximately the same height as a half scale chair), without considering that the seat itself added another 1/8″ or so.

I used a utility knife to cut down the base pieces from 3/4″ to 5/8″. It’s still slightly higher than the chair, but the bay window is tall and I didn’t want the seat to look ridiculously short.

Here’s how the shortened seat looks with the table. Better.

With a shorter base, there was now more space between the the seat and the bottom of the window trim. It looked fine, but after looking at some pictures of window seats online I got the idea to add a short back. This is a cut up skinny stick. The center piece has 45-degree edges and the other pieces have straight edges.

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I’m at the point where I could attach the Victorianna’s roof, but after spending so much time shingling the Rowhouse I just don’t have it in me to do another roof right now. So I moved on to the last room in the house: the kitchen.

I wanted to use the same tan wallpaper I used in the second floor bathroom (which has the same texture as the pink wallpaper used in the rest of the house), but I don’t have any more and it’s discontinued. Instead I papered it with a heavy off-white scrapbook paper that also has some texture to it.

It’s too difficult to slide the wallpaper up behind the archway, especially with this stiff scrapbook paper. When I did the other four bay windows, I slid the wallpaper in through the gaps in the sides. I couldn’t do that in the kitchen because I’ve already added siding to the back of the house, blocking off those gaps. Luckily I hadn’t glued in the bay window wall pieces yet. With one of the walls removed, I was able to slide the wallpaper in.

I put that wall panel back in, creased the paper at the joints, and cut out the window holes.

Then I removed the wallpaper from the opening and glued the three wall pieces together. These are only glued to each other, not to the house yet.

When the glue was dry, I was able to remove the assembly to add wallpaper and trim. This was much easier than doing it with the bay window in place (which is how I did the other four).

I added painted strip wood to the inside edges of the window holes.

Then I glued in the interior window trim, cleaned up the seams with wood filler, and touched up the paint.

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I don’t usually put dolls in my dollhouses, but I made an exception when I bought a little resin baby for the nursery.

Since then I’ve been keeping an eye out for dolls to put in the other kids’ rooms — I need a little girl (age 4-ish) and an older girl (age 12-ish). An eBay seller named karens-mini-bears makes adorable baby and kid dolls, sometimes in half scale, but they’re usually 24-hour auctions with a lot of people bidding, and I haven’t waded in.

Recently I saw this little girl on eBay, offered by seller by_lana, and I loved her on sight. The short, messy hair, the little smile, the dress — she just looked like the right doll for the little girl’s room. I hit Buy It Now and paid… and then I looked more carefully at the description. She was only 1″ tall, which would be 24 inches in half scale. I Googled “How tall is a four year old” and Google informed me that the average four year old is 40 inches tall.

I emailed the seller but she’d already sent the package. She told me not to worry, if the doll was too small she accepted returns.

The doll arrived (very quickly from the UK!) while I was working on the Robin Betterley kits. She’s small next to the dollhouse, but maybe not *too* small?

Unfortunately, yes, she’s too small. Especially when the room is strewn with toys, she looks like, well, a doll. Not like a child.

I sadly emailed the seller to tell her the doll would be too small. She refunded my money and graciously told me to keep the doll — excellent customer service, but I felt bad that I hadn’t looked at the measurements more closely before I purchased.

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