Today I finished putting together the structure (minus the roof) and applied all the siding. Wasted a ton of blue painter’s tape, but with good results!

Thank god for paint cans and those little pinchy things…

Lo and behold, I have a little house!

It seems weird to me that part of the main roof peeps out from under the dormer roof at the bottom. I’m planning to shave off those corners. The roof will be shingled with leftovers from my Fairfield.

While the siding glue was drying, I applied some wood filler to the front base (but not the back yet). I’m going to use the drum sander attachment on the Dremel to round off the porch corners… at the moment they’re dangerously pointy!

Tomorrow I’m going to start painting. The roof isn’t glued on yet; first I want to paint the undersides of the eaves, which I’ll do at the same time I’m painting the house. I’m planning to use “Belgian Waffle,” a creamy/peachy color I got free from Glidden when they were doing a promotion over the summer. Haven’t cracked it open yet so I’m not positive what it’ll look like, but here’s the paint chip (if the internet is to be believed). I’m not sure what color the trim will be… maybe light blue.

I went back and forth on whether to include the porch roof, and have decided to include it. Since my siding covered up the slots the roof was supposed to fit into, I’m planning to glue some 45-degree triangular blocks to the back of the roof and side of the house, to hold it in place. It’s an untested method but I think it’ll work.

Here’s sort of how it’ll look. But centered on the door, and without my hand attached to it.

While the glue was drying I went through my bin of kits and pulled out a few Cassidy Creations pieces that I want to build for this house: a china cabinet and kitchen table for the kitchen, and possibly this armoire for the bedroom. (Not sure about that one – it may be too tall to fit against any of the walls, due to the slanted roof.)

I’m thinking this house will be somewhat old timey, with a 1930’s range and fridge. I’d really like to find some Shaker style ladder back chairs to go in the kitchen and did a little looking around online, but so far haven’t found what I want. For the bedroom, I’m thinking of the cottage bed. I haven’t had any great ideas for the living room yet, or the smaller upstairs room. I’m not sure if I want it to be a bathroom… seems like a waste of a room (how original can you make a bathroom?)

Coming next time… paint!

I’m loving how easy this house is to put together!

This morning I poked around at Michael’s and Dollhouses, Trains, and More, looking for scrapbook paper or wallpaper for the inside of the cottage. Nothing caught my eye and I decided to move forward with assembly and worry about the inside later. I have some ideas for furnishings already but it’s not stuff I already own, so there’s no rush.

At Michael’s I picked up a bottle of Gesso. I haven’t used it before but people on the Greenleaf forum recommended priming my windows and door with it so the paint will look the same on both (my windows are plastic and the door is wood, and I worried that the two different finishes would cause problems come painting time). While I was there I peeked in the craft department, as usual, and saw a ton of Creatology puzzles but no houses. Are wooden replicas of dinosaurs, skeletons, helicopters, and the Eifel Tower really popular enough to keep stocking them, but not the houses? I don’t get it.

I wanted some 7/16″ basswood for the base of the house, but the closest I could find was 3/8″. I also picked up some 1/4″ square basswood to use as porch posts, and half scale porch spindles. I’m pretty sure I already have railings tucked away somewhere.

Since the 3/8″ basswood was a little too short to fill the gap under the porch the way I wanted, I improvised by first gluing some (slightly thicker than 1/16″) trim from the kit that I’m not planning to use to the bottom of the porch and at the back of the floor.

This is the trim marked “A” and “C” in the kit, if you thinking of trying this yourself.

While that was drying, I cut the basswood to size, then glued that on over the trim.

The basswood I used is 3/8″ square, which makes for a nice sturdy base. I didn’t go all the way around with it – just used it in places where you could see a gap.

The basswood plus trim was a bit taller than what I needed, leaving a slight gap where the sides were no longer sitting flush on the table, but I used the mouse sander and some plain old sandpaper to even it out. (Alternatively I could have used siding to cover up the slight gap at the bottom sides but since I already cut my siding last night, that wasn’t an option.) I still need to apply some wood filler, to even out the seams where the different pieces of wood meet, but I think it’ll look real nice when it’s done… much classier than the original design that had an open space under the porch and the floor.

When that was done, I cut the rest of the siding for the front of the house and did a bit of sanding around the window holes to make sure everything will fit well. Then I glued in the divider between the two first floor rooms, and the second floor. The house is currently being squashed under paint cans, much like last night…

Tomorrow I should be able to get the rest of the assembly finished, glue on my siding, and maybe even start painting. I repeat, I love this easy little house!

I’ve started putting together a half-scale “puzzle house” by Creatology. Michael’s started carrying these kits in the spring and apparently stopped carrying them at some point over the summer, because they’ve become impossible to find. When they had them, the kits sold for $7.99—and of course, I never go to Michael’s without a 40% coupon in hand—so I got the kit for about five bucks. Finally opened it up a week or two ago. The folks over at the Greenleaf forum have been singing this little kit’s praises for months now, but I have to admit I wasn’t expecting much for so little money.

When I cracked open the kit, the first thing I noticed was that the wood is pretty good quality. The kit includes a laughably small piece of sandpaper but the wood is so smooth you don’t really even need it. Color me impressed. This house looks a lot like the Greenleaf Arthur and I got it in my head that it’ll be a cute little cottage with siding and upgraded windows. I had the siding and windows in my stash already, but did splurge on a door with a rounded top (which cost twice as much as the house itself…)

The walls with window and door upgrades. I used a utility knife to enlarge most of the holes, and Geoff helped me make a new hole for the bay window with the Dremel.

Since the kit is supposed to be a puzzle, it can be fit together with only the pieces included and no glue. If you put it together according to the directions there are a lot of knobby connector pieces sticking out that ruin the illusion of it being an actual house. I decided to toss the instructions entirely and put it together my own way. It’s a really simple design, so not too hard to figure out. I dry fit first to get an idea of what went where, and what order I should glue down the pieces.

The porch doesn’t have any kind of support under it, which is weird. I’ll probably add a border of basswood all the way around to create a bottom for the porch, and add stability.

I had these windows left over from another project I never ended up doing. The first floor sides were not supposed to have windows but I thought the bay window would look nice.

This is a really simple house inside, which is good, because in theory it won’t take me ages to finish! The floors look warped in this picture but it’s just because everything’s hastily thrown together for the dry fit.

Next I cut siding for the sides and front of the house. I’m using the Houseworks clapboard siding, which is pretty easy to prepare and always ends up looking nice and neat. I put it aside for now—I’ll glue the house together before attaching it—but I find it’s easier to cut siding before the pieces have been glued.

I had to enlarge a few of the slots in the first floor so the front wall would fit into it better. Then I glued the front and two side walls to the first floor and will let it sit overnight.

Gotta love paint cans! The second floor is not being glued, I just put it in there to add stability.

I’m trying to decide if I should wallpaper the downstairs rooms before gluing in the second floor. The part of me that hates to wallpaper says, “Yes! It’ll be so much easier!” But I have a bad habit of getting carried away with the what-ifs (“If I’m going to wallpaper, shouldn’t I first decide exactly what furniture is going to go in this room?”), and I’d really like to try to build this house quickly. I have lots of in-progress houses and probably shouldn’t have even started on this one, but it seemed like such a quick build, I couldn’t resist.

I’ll post more pics when I have some. Also, I recently took a bunch of pictures of furniture in my Fairfield… nowhere near the final product, but they’re here if you want to take a look.