So far, work on the Little House cabin has involved a lot of staining, then waiting for the stain to dry. On Sunday I started by staining the remaining house pieces. This might not have been necessary since I’m planning to cover everything with shingles or siding outside and skinny stick “logs” inside, but I […]
Tag: Half scale (Page 18 of 21)
The Hillside Victorian dollhouse is coming along nicely, but after six months I’m ready to work on something else—something smaller. (It’s probably got something to do with the fact that the next step on the Hillside Victorian is to paint a zillion windows… not my favorite task!) I have several half scale kits laying in […]
Yesterday I painted the countertop for the Rosedale. I created green “granite” by smearing green, beige, white, and black paint around with a toothbrush. I really liked the end result… until I put it in the house. It just didn’t look like I’d envisioned it. The green was competing with the neutral colors in the […]
Over the summer I bought a bunch of kitchen cabinet kits from Bonnie Lavish. The first set went into the Fairfield. (And they turned out pretty nice, if I do say so myself!) At the beginning of December I finally got around to starting on the Rosedale’s cabinets and appliances (also Bonnie’s kits), but I […]
After painting my Fairfield’s fireplaces, I decided they should both be the same blue color rather than one blue and one green, so I went to the dollhouse store to pick up another blank one. I wasn’t positive that the ones in the store were exactly the same as the ones I had, so I […]
For years, the Fairfield has had unpainted resin fireplace fronts propped up against the chimney. I got in the mood to decorate the house for Christmas and decided the unfinished fireplaces would never do! I started by making hearths out of a polystyrene brick sheet leftover from when I built the house (I used it […]
Last week when I saw this tutorial from Antique Daisy for making a dresser with fake drawers, it inspired me to make one for the Rosedale. I’ve been looking for a tall skinny dresser that sort of matches the bed and nightstand I’d built from kits for the bedroom. The corner where I wanted to […]
My order of Bonnie Lavish kits included a counter top and sink. The sink is made of wood—three skinny cutout pieces that are glued together to create depth, and a bottom piece with “drains” scribed into the wood. The photo below shows the sink parts after the three cutouts were glued together, but before the […]
Recently there was a conversation on the Yahoo half scale group about Bonnie Lavish’s kitchen cabinet kits. She discontinued these several years ago but said she would cut some for people on the list who were interested. Since I have two half scale kitchens to work on—the Fairfield and the Rosedale—I jumped at the offer! […]
This weekend I assembled some furniture kits for the Rosedale. I’ve also been plugging away at the interior trim, but I’ll wait until it’s done to post pictures… it’s not very interesting progress. I started with the Mission style bed from Daisy House. (I happen to have this kit in 1:12 as well, but haven’t […]
Soon after posting the pictures of the Rosedale’s wallpaper borders, I realized the blue border downstairs clashes with the blue front door. Why didn’t I put them next to each other before gluing in the border? Ah, that would have been too easy… Since I’d used up the Brodnax designs, I found some nice samples […]
Since the Rosedale’s rooms have all sorts of wonky angles (some intentional and some a result of the bash) and since I really hate cutting crown molding, I decided to use wallpaper borders instead. I’m not entirely happy with the results. It was hard to get my hands into some of the tiny corners to […]
With the exterior (mostly) finished, I turned my attention to the Rosedale’s interior details, starting with hardwood floors. I’d intended to use coffee stirrers like I did in the puzzle house but was concerned about them getting in the way of the front door, which fits right into the doorway without any extra clearance. Then […]
I wanted a corner couch for my Rosedale’s second floor TV room, and unable to find any modern sectionals in half scale, I decided to make my own. IKEA furniture tends to have clean, straight lines—perfect for miniaturists like me, who don’t have the tools or the patience to get too fancy—so I checked out […]
The Rosedale is shingled! I used Greenleaf’s diamond shaped speed strips. I needed about two and a half packages. I stained them with Cabot semi-transparent Mission Brown stain that we had a sample jar of (Geoff bought it for a house project and didn’t like it). My first step was to cut strip wood to […]
With the front door finished, I moved on to the porch door. This one is a Houseworks door and it’s a totally different style than the other door and the windows. I’d already cut the pediment off the top, which left the door frame looking kind of plain, especially compared to the fancy front door. […]
The Rosedale has an awesome front door. In fact, along with the stairs, the door is probably my favorite part of this house. Its trim is made up of several separate pieces layered on top of each other, so unlike a Houseworks door, it’s super easy to use multiple paint colors without making a big […]
I have a love / hate relationship with windows. I hate them because there are so many trim pieces to prep… but I love them because once they’re up, the house starts to really look finished. Something about dressing up those gaping holes turns the house from a mere shell into a house. I started […]
With the house assembled and stuccoed, I moved on to the fascia. (A fancy word for trim! I’m not exactly sure if this is the correct usage of the word “fascia,” but that’s what the Rosedale’s instructions call it…) I first had to decide on trim and accent colors. Since I accidentally painted the house […]
I usually use clapboard siding on my dollhouses, but stylistically that didn’t seem right for the Rosedale. In the workshops I’ve taken with The Guys from Texas, they taught a technique for using watered down wood filler to create a stucco texture. I’ve never done it on my own (let alone for an entire house!) […]
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