A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I made a chimney for the Queen Anne Rowhouse. Well, most of a chimney. I’m getting ready to shingle the roof, so I finally got around to making a top part of the chimney to go with the bottom. I started by cutting two pieces […]
Tag: Half scale (Page 17 of 21)
I keep adding doodads and curlicues to the front of the Queen Anne Rowhouse. It’s like an obsession. After I added the panels and resin trim to the bay window, the house felt kind of unbalanced, with too many dark green stripes at the bottom and none at the top. I rectified this by adding […]
When we last saw the Queen Anne Rowhouse, she was wearing a big green stripe that wasn’t exactly flattering. (You know what they say about horizontal stripes…) Today I turned this into three self-contained panels. This was a simple matter of cutting a few more vertical trim pieces, and cutting the corners of the horizontal […]
While I’m waiting for my new lights to arrive, I’ve gone back to work on the front of the rowhouse. I want this to look more or less like a San Francisco painted lady, and at the beginning of this project I spent a lot of time poring over library books to get ideas for […]
Progress on the Queen Anne Rowhouse has been somewhat stymied by one disaster after another with the electricity. On October 3, I ordered eleven half scale lights from Swan House DIY for a cost of about $130. (They didn’t show up until Halloween, but that’s a story for another time.) Of these, four were Houseworks […]
For the past month I have been struggling with electrifying the Queen Anne rowhouse. I’ll write up a blog about everything that’s gone wrong (and hopefully save some others out there the heartache I’ve experienced with a certain brand of light fixtures…) but I’m so annoyed about it right now I don’t even want to […]
With the downstairs part of the porch finished, I moved on to the top. I wanted to turn this into a balcony, but with something more flamboyant than the usual newel post. This is one of those times that a dearth of half scale supplies caused me to get creative. For the posts, I bought […]
When I bought the Queen Anne rowhouse, it had pillars made out of dowels that were sort of crookedly glued onto the railings. When I pulled these off, bumpy glue spots were left behind on the railings. I sanded them but was left with not-quite-flat railings, and was concerned that the new pillars wouldn’t glue […]
I’ve been playing around with paint colors for the Queen Anne Rowhouse. I’m trying to keep the colors sort of subtle because that’s what a library book told me to do. (Apparently garish paint schemes are no longer “in” in San Francisco, and I’m not really a fan of garish anyway.) I had some Glidden […]
One of the problems I run into with a new dollhouse is that I often get hung up in a chicken-and-egg loop where I think “Well, I can’t do this until I do that, but I can’t do that until I do this other thing…” and then I end up not doing anything. This house […]
Not much to look at yet, but I have been making slow, steady progress on the Queen Anne rowhouse. The first task was siding. Usually I have sloppy edges because I know they’ll be covered with trim. Since this house has panels that open, I tried really hard to keep the edges that will be […]
After last weekend’s impulse buy, my eagerness to get started on the Queen Anne Rowhouse was thwarted by my lack of any actual plans for it. I placed some orders for doors and windows and got some books about San Francisco painted ladies from the library, but much of the week was spent thinking and […]
Many moons ago, I saw an eBay auction for a half scale Queen Anne Rowhouse kit by American Craft. This kit was from the 80s and I hadn’t seen it before. It opened on three sides and I loved the building design, which looks like the Victorians common in San Francisco. The house is similar […]
The Little House in the Big Woods cabin is pretty much finished. I added basswood over the exposed edges of the plywood. Now all that’s left to do outside is a bit more weathering, to bring the color of the shingles more in line with the rest of the house. Now I can finally do […]
I’ve started furnishing the Little House cabin. I’ve collected several Cassidy Creations kits for this house and am also planning to scratch build some of the furniture. I started with the “big bed” and trundle bed. Little House in the Big Woods has a couple of illustrations that part of the big bed’s headboard, but […]
Shingling was the last big job to do on the cabin. When I glued the skinny sticks to the inside of the roof, something got off kilter so the roof wouldn’t glue on straight. Oops. The porch roof is supposed to attach to the front of the roof at a 45-degree angle. I glued a […]
In my last blog, I pointed out that the half-round logs that came with the log cabin kit make the corners look kind of silly. My dad suggested cutting pieces to glue to the flat edges, to make a “full” log. It was a bit tricky dealing with such little pieces, but I managed and […]
With the first floor interior of my Little House cabin finished, I moved onto the exterior. The Sugar and Spice kit came with a bundle of “half timber” logs that sit flush against the side of the house. They have to be cut to size. Initially I made the mistake of cutting almost all of […]
With the floor and walls of the main room “timbered,” I decided to try aging the wood while I could still easily get my hands inside. I have some Minwax slate gray stain (water based) that I originally tried on the raw wood, but it was too light. The ebony stain was proving to be […]
In the fourth Little House book, On the Banks of Plum Creek, a big deal is made of the fact that Pa buys Ma a cookstove and she won’t have to cook on an open fire anymore. In spite of this, in Little House in the Big Woods (the book I’m basing my Little House […]
Emily is a freelance writer, miniaturist, and adventure game enthusiast.
If you have comments about this site or would like to get in touch regarding a freelance opportunity, please write to hello -at- emilymorganti.com.
