Details, Details, Details... oh, and Pets!

This is gonna be a mostly pictures post.  Because my weekend was spent going through all my stuff and doing a few little things to each room to make the rooms look lived in. 

So let's start with the living room.  I added a bookshelf because part of the wall looked so blank next to the chair and a picture wouldn't quite have done it.

Books, shells and a few candles

A sweet Australian Shepherd

Some artwork from the bead aisle at Hobby Lobby and an elephant

A shot of the entire left side of the room.

The kitchen was... well.  Lots to do there.

A painting and a blackboard.  This shot is through the front window.  I need to wash it really.

Phone, clock and some little sayings for the wall.

A shot of the island with it's wine rack and apples

And now upstairs to the office/studio. 

Some things for the desk

Props and supplies for the artist



A nice shot of the left side of the room so far.

An artists smock on the back of the door and a soothing fish tank

And some work for the architect

With the bedroom, I added a few things and did a little rearranging of the chairs.

A shot of the closet doors and the art on the wall, painted by the resident of course.

Slippers and a sit to put on your shoes chair

And some cats on their climbing tree and in the basket.  Sleepy kitties

I did a few more things in the bedroom, I'll put the pictures up tomorrow.  For now, I added a thing or two to the bathroom.

Toothpaste and toothbrush

Bath salts (citrine & topaz) and some mouthwash on the shelf over the toilet

You can just see the clock and the shelf in this picture.  I always loose track of time when I'm showering.

 

And I also set the garage up nicely.  I'm pretty pleased with it.

A box for the cats, and a fire extinguisher for safety.

The tool box will probably end up on the floor and the box will be switched out for a crate.

It doesn't look too bad does it?

Balcony Railing!

I finished this up on Friday night and then forgot to post it because I dove into working on Saturday and didn't blog. I know. Shame on me.

But here's the finished railing.

Please ignore my spray paint cans

I'll end up touching up some of the wood...maybe giving it a slightly darker tint with some black paint for contrast.  It looks like it just blends it right now.

Oh, I also promised you guys a shot of the bedroom windows.

See?  I love this contrast. It's not huge but I love the black and brown.

Bedding and Towels

As promised, I did some more work on the house.  Little inside things mostly.  Like bedding for the master bedroom and towels for the bath.  Rugs... laundry baskets... that sort of thing.

The bedding is fabric I bought from the remnants section at JoAnns. 

Not bad looking right?

Making tiny realistic pillows is beyond me so I bought them from Otterine.  I love the little Owl the best.

Isn't he cute?

They come in sets of two so I used the extra one on the green chair in the sitting area.

Looks pretty good...I need to polish the side table though

I also made some things for the bathroom.  A roll of toilet paper, towels and I added a tissue to the tissue box.  Makes things look more real in my humble opinion.

Real paper.  Just in case you know?

And the towels are a very fine corduroy, pressed and glued into place.

You can see my tissue box in this pic. On the corner of the counter

And last but not least, the laundry basket.  This shot also gives you a nice look at my closet doors.

Well, not a great look, but you get the idea?

One more thing I did was install the garage door and the trim for the windows on the upper floor.

I like the contrast of the dark windows with the pale stucco. 

I'll try to take some more pictures so you can see the variation in the trim colors later.  Right now it all looks dark which is fine.  But the windows are actually stained a dark brown and the outer trim is painted the same black that's around the front windows.

One last pic

My two youngest enjoying the holiday.  Jack is the big old orange cat. He's barely a year old and still at that stage where he wants to sleep near his sissies.  Helo is on the floor behind him doing his evil dead impersonation. He's such a drama queen.  And Tali, my little calico is resigned to never getting the chair to herself.

Hope it was a happy holiday!  I'm back to work and trying desperately to get caught up.

Stucco!

For some people Black Friday is when you go out at zero dark thirty to wait in line and get bargains.  That is so not me.  That will never be me.  As far as I'm concerned, this is a four day weekend that means I don't have to ever leave my house.  I should have gone and gotten my nails done and didn't because I was busy with the dollhouse.

Thanksgiving and Black Friday I used wood putty and plaster to fill in any little cracks and areas where the house wasn't quite structurally sound looking.

Then I used the Dollhouse Stucco to give the plaster and wood some texture.  I was really pleased with how it turned out. 

The texture isn't very easy to see here.

I like the contrast between the black around the windows and the off-white of the stucco and then the dark brown of the siding. 

I'm adding the trim around the garage and windows today and tomorrow.  Then it's back to the roof garden/patio and the details of the decorating.  And at some point I need to make a railing for the balcony.  That means another trip to Hobby Lobby for some wood or dowels.  I'm thinking squared posts and brass rails.  Simple so nothing looks too cluttered.

But that's for another day.  Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

Siding and Tiling

This was a labor intensive weekend for me.  I got the siding on the front of the house glued on and stained.  I'm pretty pleased with how it looks.

Not too bad I think

 

And then I started to work on the living room floor.  I got the tile glued in and the floor supported so it didn't warp.  Then grouted my tile.

 

 

I need to wipe down the tile one last time here

 Then it was a matter of clean up and getting the baseboards and stairs glued into place. 

Pretty pleased with how it looks

The stairs still look odd from this angle.  Here's a better one.



Now the fun part. Furniture! 

My husband loves that the dollhouse has a gaming console. 

The couch is from Mod Pod Miniatures and the sideboard is from Minisx2.  The little throw pillows are from Otterine.  I got the chair and ottoman off of Ebay along with the TV, remote and rug.

I'm going to find some artwork for the wall above the couch and brighten up the place a bit.  But overall I'm pleased with how it's turned out.

The Roof (continued) and the Platform Bed

My inspiration photo shows a house with a metal roof often found down here in Texas.  I really like how these look and they come in a variety of colors.  Near my old job in Irving there was a white building with a blue roof.  Very appealing visually.

Here's a link so you can see more of the inspiration house.  Love it.  Contemporary Forest House.



Can you see the ridges and lines?

I've done this kind of roof on my Beach Bungalow and so I knew exactly what I needed for it.

Lots of thin strips of wood.  1/8th by 1/16th to be precise. 

They're so thin they bend easily.  And that's helpful for a curved roof.

You can see how well it worked on my Bungalow

All aged and everything.  Looks pretty good I think.

But I wanted a more metallic gleam to the roof.  So I got some metallic chocolate brown paint.  I didn't like how glittery it was though.  See?

Almost sparkly.  I do not want and Edward Cullen roof. No.

So thus began the process of aging and de-sparkling the roof.  Black metallic and espresso brown paint diluted with water and dripped/brushed onto the roof.  Using the water makes it gather and run in realistic ways, kind of like real weather would beat at the roof.

It was raining and icky for the last couple of days so I could have let the actual weather do the work for me but even I'm not crazy enough to try that.

A bit better right?

Then I let it dry and added some trim to the front and back, and did a bit more aging.

Still a bit of a gleam but not too bad.

The last bit of trim had to be added and I'm waiting on the glue to dry.

Slowly but surely, it's coming together.

I did find a picture of my windows for the master bedroom, I knew I had one. Just forgot to upload it.  Absent-minded? Me?  Naw...

Here we are.  I can't wait to put the white stucco onto the wood. The contrast'll be awesome.

I also, while waiting for the roof to dry in between coats of paint and gluing, got the platform bed stained and varnished.

I'm pretty pleased with it.

Here's another angle.

Not perfect, but pretty good for my first attempt.

And that's pretty much it folks.  I have some more painting to do tonight for that last bit of wood trim, and then its full speed ahead on the roof/garden/patio.  I'm looking into making some furniture for that area since I only have a couple of pieces.  But it should be fun.

The only issue? 

The area is rather...exposed... to cat inspections. 

Cats who have a history of stealing my flowers and electrical tape.

So we'll see how this goes.