If I’m moving at a snail’s pace with the back-to-back Victorianna, it’s only because this house requires so much thinking! Once it’s put together, some spaces (like the staircase) are inaccessible, so I have to do everything I want to do there before I put the back on. But, some spaces (like the hallways that link the two sides of the house) need to be finished once both sides of the house are assembled, to avoid seams and obvious gaps where the two kits meet.

So, a lot of the time between my last post and now has been spent just trying to wrap my head around what needs to be done, in what order. Last time I closed with epoxying the piece that will allow me to alter the roof line. Here’s how it turned out. After taking it out of the jig, Geoff did some sanding to neaten up the edges where the epoxy squeezed through.

The other side, which was against a piece of wax paper, actually came out cleaner. It looks messy but the epoxy dried smooth.

Since this house is made to hang on the wall, the back piece has two holes to hang it from. In the regular plywood kit these are punch-outs so I left the pieces “punched in”, but in the birch plywood version the holes came already punched out.

To fill the hole, I found a dowel the right size.

I cut off a skinny piece, glued it in, and then sanded it flat. I would have liked to do this with the other hole but some glue had squeezed through when I glued the two back pieces together and dried there, so the dowel wouldn’t fit. On that side I used wood filler (which took several coats since the hole was really too deep for wood filler).

Now, time to defile my nice epoxyed-in piece by cutting it up! I wanted to connect the two sides of the third floor with a hall lined up above the hallways I cut downstairs, but that would have left the back piece with a big gap all the way up the middle and I was concerned about stability.

Instead, I decided to put a door farther to the left. This will be the master bedroom and the door leads to the master bath. I’ll probably make it a “Jack and Jill” bath with another door off the bathroom leading to the rest of the third floor on the other side of the house.

Geoff used the jigsaw again to cut the hole for me. I promised this would be the last one for a while.

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Before I can start assembling the back-to-back Victorianna, I had to figure out where I wanted to cut holes for additional windows, hallways, etc. I scrutinized the dry fit from every angle and drew in the holes I wanted. The first one I tackled is the first floor passthrough from one side of the house to the other, which will be next to the fireplace.

(Note: this wall is technically going to be in the center of the house, but I’m going to refer to it as the “back piece” since that’s what it’s supposed to be in the original kit and I have to call it something…)

For some reason I thought this would be easy to do with a utility knife. But even after many slices, I hadn’t broken through the plywood and my hands were starting to hurt. The birch plywood is definitely stronger than I remember luan plywood being the last time I messed around with a die cut kit.

I finally managed to get the first hole cut, figuring I could clean up the edges with a file.

Here you can see how the hole will be positioned next to the fireplace.

I placed the birch plywood back piece on top of the luan plywood back piece and traced the hole, so it would be lined up correctly.

The luan plywood was a bit easier to cut, but it also splinters more easily. Besides filing the crooked edges I will need to do some clean-up with wood filler. But here’s how it looks now that you can see all the way through.

And from the living room side.

I was grumpy from cutting holes with the utility knife so I took some time out to play with furniture. Here’s what I’m thinking for the living room.

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