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Christmas in March

I’m working on the Cassidy Creations Federal fireplace wall, a very complex kit that has taken three weekends so far and *might* be done tomorrow… but might not. I know, I know, you’re on the edge of your seat! Here’s a quick post to tide you over.

Last week I bought a lot of half scale items on eBay and they arrived today. These pieces belonged to the seller’s mother, who had intended to build a house in a roll-top bread box. I should mention that I already own at least half of these pieces, but you know how it is with half scale… scarcity drives us to hoard! (That is what it drives “us” to do, right…? Not just me?!) And there were a few special pieces in the lot that made it worthwhile.

The four-poster bed, trestle table with benches, wooden cabinet, and rocking chair are Shenandoah. The other bed and the blanket chest are assembled Cassidy Creations kits.

This picture shows the pieces that drove me to buy this lot. The dry sink and icebox are made by Bill & Leona Goldsberry. The pie safe is the same as this one currently available from Bauder Pine. The signature on the bottom looks like GaGodfrey. I’d love to know the artist’s full name, if anyone knows.

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A brief history of Bauder-Pine (and a new dollhouse!)

Warning: long post incoming!

I recently bought this 1:24 scale Bauder-Pine shell off eBay. I think this house was simply known as the Victorian, but I’m dubbing it the Mansard Victorian. I’d seen this house once before when someone posted about it on the Greenleaf forum.

The side additions are not attached, and I’m going to leave them off. It’s a roomy house even without them. The partitions aren’t glued in, so I can decide how to place them.

I have some fancy resin windows that will work perfectly with a little modification.


I’m always on the lookout for unusual half scale houses, and that’s doubly true of anything made by Bauder-Pine, which was the go-to company for half scale in the eighties and nineties. The company was a partnership between Pat Bauder and Frank Moroz. Frank is no longer in the miniature business, and Pat died of cancer in 2007.

The Mansard Victorian was featured on the cover of Nutshell News in September 1986. The one pictured was owned by Phyllis Tucker.

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Turret House – just a little progress report

Work has stalled on the Turret House since I last posted about it in October. That’s partly because we had a ginormous storm at the end of October and my workshop flooded. I didn’t take a “before” picture (since I was frantically moving things out of the way before they got wet), but here’s the “after”…

(This picture isn’t nearly as dramatic as it was with water all over the floor!)

Thankfully the flood wasn’t caused by a leak, but by water that blew in underneath the door. The floor isn’t level and it’s lower on the side Rosy’s standing on, so the water pooled on that side. A few cardboard boxes that were stashed under the wooden workbench got damaged, but I was able to get the contents out of the boxes before what was inside was ruined.

I quickly moved everything that was on that side of the room to the dry side, which required “putting away” a lot of what I had in progress for the Turret House. “Putting away” is in quotes because I just tossed it all in boxes or stashed it on the desk and everything in progress that had been “carefully organized” (again in quotes!) was now in places where it shouldn’t have been, and hard to find later.

Long story short, this disrupted my flow on the Turret House and I’m only dipping my toes back in now. (Metaphorically, not literally! Geoff installed a storm door, which seems to have solved the water problem.)

The other reason I got distracted from the Turret House is that I started working on my items for the annual half scale swap. But I can’t show those off until March or so, so pretend I didn’t say anything about swaps.

Anyway, as of last weekend I’m back to work on the Turret House, and although I haven’t made major progress, it’s been such a long time since I posted that I figured I might as well. First up, the foundation.

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