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Egg carton quoins

January 7, 2023 / / 4 Comments

Now that I’ve added 1/2″ of depth to the front of the Mansard Victorian to accommodate the side addition (shown here and here), I need to finish the front edges of those pieces before starting on the inside of the house… which means I need to decide how the house will be finished.

My original idea was to model this house after the real house that the dollhouse is based on, with dark stone and quoins at the corners.

I’m a fan of egg carton stone, but I’ve mostly used it for foundations. It seems bulky for an entire house, compared to the stone on the inspiration house, which is flat and subtle. I also didn’t want my house to be as dark as the original.

As I always do when I’m trying to get ideas for stuff like this, I spent several hours on google looking inspiration. I searched for phrases like “gothic stone house” and “Victorian stone house” and “mansard stone house” and looked at dozens (hundreds?) of pictures.

I can’t remember exactly what search term pulled this one up, but I immediately knew I had a winner.

This is the Emanuel Kahn mansion in Salt Lake City, Utah (more pictures here). The house is now a bed & breakfast with some crazy rooms!

This house caught my eye for several reasons. The egg carton facade won’t be as bulky with bricks as it would with larger stones. The bay window placement is similar (although mine doesn’t have a roof), and the top bay window on this house seems to be a balcony converted into windows, just like mine will be.

The windows coincidentally have the same mullions as the windows I’m using, and the trim under the roof is reminiscent of the trim I picked out to go under my roof.

The Emanuel Kahn house doesn’t have quoins, but its stone trim gives an idea of how quoins will look next to the bricks. And the orangey color of the bricks will go well with the light green paint I’m using inside the house, inspired by these Bauder-Pine furniture pieces.

So now I had to figure out how to make quoins. This front-opening dollhouse originally had two hinged panels, but I removed the hinges and glued the panels together to create one big panel that stands up by itself. The quoins will work better this way, since I don’t have to worry about them interfering with hinges, but they still need to straddle the removable corner.

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Mansard Victorian — more bulking

January 2, 2023 / / 3 Comments

To accommodate the addition I’m adding to the side of the Mansard Victorian, I had to add 1/2″ of depth to the house. I started by gluing 1/2″ strip wood to the front edges of the house and top edge of the front panel, as described here.

The front panel now sits 1/2″ out from the front of the house, creating a space between the top of the panel and the bottom of the roof. It looks odd since it’s no longer flush with the front panel, and needs some kind of trim to make it seem more deliberate.

This space is 11/16″ tall — slightly too small for 3/4″ molding and slightly bigger than 5/8″ molding — and that height isn’t consistent across the front of the house due to the top of the bay window being not quite level.

Rather than try to cut a piece of wood to fit exactly, I glued on two smaller pieces of strip wood at the top and bottom of the space that needs to be filled. This allowed me to position the bottom piece so it ends right above of the front panel, even though it’s not quite straight. I’ll glue decorative trim on top of these.

The wood wraps around the sides of the house, and the decorative trim will too.

I spent a long time looking for molding that could fit in that space and finally landed on this 5/8″ laser trim by Alessio Miniatures. I ordered it from Earth & Tree and they accidentally sent me the wainscot version of the same trim, which is much bigger!

(Their customer service was great. They sent me the replacement trim along with a prepaid UPS label to return the wainscot pieces.)

Here’s how it will look on the house. I’ll center it on the strip wood pieces, and the paint the 1/32″ crack above and below the trim to match. The design kind of gets lost in the shadow, so I might add another layer of strip wood first, to bump the trim out farther. But I’ll worry about this later, once I’m farther along with the exterior.

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Petite Properties cupboard stairs

December 4, 2022 / / 6 Comments

The Mansard Victorian shell didn’t come with a hole for stairs. I’m not opposed to leaving the stairs out of a dollhouse, but for this one I decided to add a false staircase. I might have gotten the idea from the Bauder Pine Colonial, which has a hidden staircase that runs up behind the fireplace.

(The Colonial pictured belongs to Cathy Miller-Vaughan of Bauder Pine.)

I think this fireplace was available as a Cassidy Creations kit, but if so it must have been rare — I’ve only seen it once, and I’m not sure if I’m remembering correctly. I built the Cassidy Creations Federal fireplace wall planning to hide a staircase behind it, but that fireplace turned out to be too tall for this house.

When I started arranging furniture to figure out how to divide up the rooms, I grabbed a Petite Properties cupboard staircase kit out of my stash. I bought this years ago knowing I would someday have the perfect use for it. When it comes to minis, I play the long game!

The kit is made from cardstock, with treads made from MDF or chipboard. The cupboard door is scored and swings inward.

I’m going to hide electrical outlets inside the cupboard, and it will be easier to access those if the door swings out. Plus, I wasn’t sure how convincing a painted cardstock door would look. I decided to cut off the cardstock door and make a new one out of wood. I sized it so it rests against the inner trim pieces, which will prevent it from swinging into the hole.

This is made from a piece of scored wood that came with the Craftsman vignette kit for no apparent reason. The scored wood was used for the porch, but my piece had an extra piece — the universe giving me exactly what I needed. (Thanks, universe!)

The staircase unit is about 5/8″ too short.

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