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!

Finally, painting all those little trim pieces is starting to pay off!

I love this phase of building a dollhouse… well, love it and hate it. I hate all the tedious trim painting. But when you start to glue that trim in place and step back to see how pretty everything looks – I wouldn’t trade that feeling for anything!First of all, I finished my porch railings. I’m so glad I decided to “bash” this, even if it’s a small change. I really like the colors, and the newel posts are surprisingly easy to paint (with a tiny brush!)

I glued a newel post to each piece of fencing. When that dried, I glued the fencing together at right angles.I haven’t glued them on to the porch or the side of the house yet, but here they are assembled.

Also, I painted the window trim for the five curved windows, and assembled the windows. (I’d already cut the wallpaper for inside the house and marked where the windows are, and painted the inside of the window frames to match the trim color, so it was safe to glue the windows in now.) I started by gluing the windows to the house. I had to cut them down so the plastic part wouldn’t stick out past the trim (this was especially a problem on the bottom).

This can be hard to do without making a mess. I was careful to wipe any glue that showed off the plastic while it was still wet.

Some of the trim looks a little crooked because the vertical pieces were thinner than the ends of the curved piece. That’s okay, though, because the shutters will be glued on top of the vertical pieces, hiding the crookedness. I have my shutters all painted but there’s one last thing I want to try on them before I glue them in place.I haven’t painted the trim for the rectangular windows yet, or for the interior. With all those little pieces, working in small batches helps me stay sane! (Okay, relatively.)

Oh, I also stained and assembled the porch step. That was so easy. It’s not fair how much faster it is to stain pieces than paint them… I wish stain came in the same colors paint does!

Do you see the “stripe” running across the middle of the house? It’s where the two pieces of the front wall came together. Even with wood filler, it’s obvious. I guess the porch roof is there to cover up that crack! My plan is to cover it with some fancy trim, but the dollhouse store was closed this weekend for the holiday so I haven’t been able to buy any yet. I think it’ll look cute when it’s done. (I love trim for covering up mistakes!) Stay tuned.

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!

As expected, May turned out to be a very busy month for me and I didn’t get to do any mini work for several weeks. But now I’m back on the horse! My Arthur is very close to being done. The biggest thing left to do is the wallpaper, and the roof and shingling. Other than that, it’s all trim, trim, and more trim… which can take a deceptively long time!

A couple of weeks ago, before I went out of town, I painted the shutters, porch posts, and the fronts of the porch fence. Now that I’m back, I’m working on the railings and the backs of the fence pieces. I’m hoping to get through all these today and to assemble my porch. I can’t glue the shutters on yet, though, because I haven’t done the trim pieces that go around the windows.

Because I’m using Houseworks porch posts instead of following Greenleaf’s instructions, the railing pieces that came in the kit are a little bit too short. So, I cut the porch posts from the kit (which I didn’t need anymore, since I’m using the Houseworks posts instead) down to the right size.

This is the piece I’m supposed to use for the railing… too short!

Once I cut my railings to the right size, I painted them green. (The color scheme for the house is purple, with off-white trim and green accents.)

Before I went out of town, I went to a scrapbook store near my office and picked out paper for the walls. I wanted nice solid colors, a different one for each room, that would go well with the purple exterior. Originally I’d planned on pastels but wound up buying darker colors, instead.

I covered the first floor ceilings with white posterboard, and cut the wallpaper pieces for the first floor rooms. I’m not going to glue in the wallpaper just yet though. Since the porch fence pieces fit into slots on the front of the house, I don’t want to put up the wallpaper until those are glued in and any cracks are sealed up… just in case. I’d hate to get glue or paint through the slot and have it mess up the wallpaper.

Here’s what the first floor will look like. I haven’t cut the paper for the second floor yet (that’s the hard part, so I’m putting it off!)

Off to see if my paint is dry yet…