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Westville – brainstorming

May 2015: I started the Westville as part of a Greenleaf community build in 2005, and at the time we blogged our progress on the Greenleaf forum. After a few site upgrades the old community blog has become hard to link to and I’m redoing my website anyway, so I decided to move those posts over here and backdate them. Sorry for any weirdness that results!


I’m not quite ready to start building my Westville yet, but ever since Calamari posted those links to other people’s Westvilles I have been brainstorming what I want to do with my own. I have always loved this house for its realism… it really does seem to belong to Anytown, USA! Last year I bought some Nutshell News back issues off eBay and stumbled across a couple of great projects for 1950s-style furniture. Somehow I got it in my head that the furniture would look great in the Westville… if I ever got around to building it. Well, there’s no time like the present!

I have decided to forgo my usual requirement of having a bathroom in the house (eek!) and will do the Westville with a kitchen, a living room, and two bedrooms.

For the kitchen, I’m planning to try a project that kitbashes two Realife furniture kits (the Heritage Kitchen and Heritage Dining Room) into a beautifully gaudy post-war kitchen. This is a three-part article by Chris Dukeman that ran in the October, November, and December 1990 issues of Nutshell News. The Realife kits aren’t sold anymore but I found some pretty easily on eBay.

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Arthur – another Saturday’s work

May 2015: I started the Arthur as part of a Greenleaf community build in 2005, and at the time we blogged our progress on the Greenleaf forum. After a few site upgrades the old community blog has become hard to link to and I’m redoing my website anyway, so I decided to move those posts over here and backdate them. Sorry for any weirdness that results!


I am finally getting a chance now to upload the pictures of the work I did on Saturday.

Geoff and I made another trip to the hangar. My main objective for the day was to get the door finished. Doors in die-cut houses are notorious for not fitting right, especially after you’ve painted on the edges. With my Orchid, I must have spent half a day trying to sand down the inside of the doorway to get the door to fit… very frustrating! It didn’t occur to me at the time that I could use the electric sander to sand around the edge of the door instead. Since the sander lives at the hangar, I wanted to get the door assembled so I could sand it to fit in the doorway.

But first I started my day by staining the rest of the shingles. (I had only stained about half of them initially. There isn’t really a well-ventilated place in my house to do it so it’s better to do staining at the hangar.)

(Notice the torn wallpaper inside the house… I had a mishap with Yes glue. Fixing that and finishing the papering is next on my “to do” list.)

Next came the door pieces. Some of the outer layer of wood came off the back of one of the door pieces when I punched it out. It’s not terribly noticeable, but you can see it if you look closely at where the two pieces meet (where the window fits in). I just have to console myself by thinking that most people won’t be staring at the house from an inch away the way I usually do!

Another great reason to visit the hangar — to borrow Geoff’s C clamps!

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Arthur – little leaves, and lots of shingles!

May 2015: I started the Arthur as part of a Greenleaf community build in 2005, and at the time we blogged our progress on the Greenleaf forum. After a few site upgrades the old community blog has become hard to link to and I’m redoing my website anyway, so I decided to move those posts over here and backdate them. Sorry for any weirdness that results!


Ever since I’ve been working on the Arthur I’ve had this idea in my head that I’d like little leaf embellishments on the shutters. Why leaves? No idea, except maybe because the green accent color is kind of leafy. I’m not usually into “cute” houses but because I’m not planning to keep this one, I’m giving myself permission to do things to it that I normally wouldn’t. And who knows… maybe the Arthur will cure me of my disdain for cute houses!

Last week I made a trip to the scrapbook store and bought a leaf-shaped paper punch. I have been looking for these for a while to do a wreath project Dollhouse Miniatures featured last year, and unfortunately the scrapbook store only had one style of leaf (maple), so I’m still looking. But the maple leaf was fine for what I had in mind for the Arthur.

First I tried using the paper punch to make a stencil, and painting leaves through the stencil, but it didn’t work. The paint seeped through and it came out looking like a blob instead of a leaf! So I went on to plan B and painted a piece of posterboard with my accent green.

Once that dried, I used the paper punch to punch out a leaf for each shutter.

I glued the leaves onto the shutters, then painted the shutters with a coat of matte finish. This made the leaves more durable, so I’m not as concerned about the edges curling or peeling off.

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