Blue Paint & Trim & Random Holiday Stuff

So maybe some of you noticed, this was a holiday weekend?  As such, not a lot was accomplished on the dollhouse.  Actually not a lot was accomplished period. 

We did several things, went to the home of friends for Thanksgiving which was awesome cubed (yep, I'm good enough at math to make that reference now.  Tears of pride anyone?)  Seriously they're such good cooks that I liked sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce (the homemade kind) and stuffing with sausage in it.  And pork tenderloin with this reallly yummy sauce to go over it.  All of these are things I don't normally eat and yet I ate and ate and ate because it was all sooooo good.  Rachel & Bill you guys are made of cool. 

We won't mention the Cowboy game.  Ever.

On Saturday my phone stopped working.  Apologies to anyone who tried to call me. Not that I get a lot of calls, but still... I go today to get that fixed.  Saturday we also journeyed into Frisco to see Silver Linings Playbook.

This is a great movie.  And if people don't at least get Oscar nods I think my husband might just break something.  I don't want to think about what.  But it was funny and poignant and sweet and you don't have any idea until the end what is going to happen to these loving and damaged people.  It's really good. Go see it if you can find it in a theatre near you. Or like us, even if you can't.

So the Dollhouse.  Before I can put the shingles on, I'm supposed to put on the roof trim.  You may recall that the instructions say to paint everything before putting it on the dollhouse.  And I don't know about you, but when I use wood glue I like it to go in between wood. Not in between wood and paint.  So here are all my pieces of roof trim:

Nice piece of cardboard so I don't get paint everywhere.

And these are not in any particular order.  Order comes later when I've figured out which board goes where.  See, they're angled at the ends and what side I paint will depend on what part of the roof they go on.  See this handy diagram?

Very helpful right? At least labels everything.

So I figured out what side I needed to paint and laid them all out so only the exposed side would get the blue paint.  And here is my can of blue paint which looks very bright but should darken when its dry.  I'm hoping. 

It seems bright to me.  I'm not used to painting with colors.

But with some work and manuevering to make sure nothing got painted and then stuck together, I got all my little trim pieces done.  Voila!

See?

Once I've gotten them on the dollhouse I'll give them another coat of paint to make them a little prettier and also color any exposed edges.  But I'm pretty stoked about this. 

I also worked a little bit on another dollhouse project which I'll try to finish up and show you guys hopefully midway through this week or next weekend.  Ha!  See I'm getting so good at this I'm throwing out teasers for the next post...

Yeah I'd probably sound more professional if I didn't point stuff like that out huh?

Anyway hope your Thanksgivings were great and I'll see you guys next week.

Dollhousing Again! Yay!

So this weekend had several issues to delay this post. 

Number 1) I had strep throat thanks to the lovely folks at work who spread it around.  So I was exhausted and really not in the shape to do anything but sleep. 

Number 2) The photos did not want to upload from my phone.  I love when the phone says it has an update and you think it'll make your life easier but it just messes up everything you thought you understood about your phone.

Number 3) Tali'Zorah Vas Normandy.  Yep, my kitten was definitely an impediment to accomplishing work on the dollhouse.  She was fascinated by the paintbrush and got paint on her paws which freaked me out.  I returned the favor by freaking her out and washing her paws with soap and water.  She hasn't died yet so I think she'll be okay.

But the goal for this weekend was to start painting and as you can tell from Tali's trouble paint I did.

I started with building the front steps because they had to be wood glued on and I din't want to glue paint to paint.  So first step, attach the treads to the steps.  Like so:

Notice my high tech carpentry tools here.

And also like so:

More very high tech professional grade tools.

The end product is supposed to look like this:

Nicely specific aren't they?

I painted the steps partially before I glued them together.  I thought it might make it easier for some reason.  I never said logic entered into this process.

Painted the sides and front of the bottom step

Here's the top step partially painted:

You can see the paint a lot easier on this one.

Then I glued them together and glued them to the house.  Which I forgot to take a picture of.  So we'll skip right to the part where I painted the steps completely. 

Snazzy huh?

Eventually I'm going to put a gloss on the steps and another coat of black paint.  But for now this works.  I also painted the foundation of the house the same color, hence wanting the steps to have a little contrast.

See, I don't want the steps to blend into the foundation as much.

Here's a pic of the side of the house.  Tali was fascinated by this process.

A little dark but still you can see what I did since it contrasts with the raw wood.

But that wasn't all I did folks.

Oh no.  I got out my brand new paint brush and my special paint that I bought that has primer and paint in one BEHR paint that the Home Depot lady mixed up special for me.  She was really great, helped me figure out my colors and decide on a nice pale pale blue for the main body of the house.  As you see here:

The color doesn't pop as much from behind the plexiglas.

But it's so pretty.  and the front part of the house looks a little weird because part of the house is meant to be on hinges and open so I couldn't paint it attached to the house because then the paint would dry and its really got a glue like quality to it once its dry.  So a little weirdness.

But here's another picture of the side of the house.  I'm very pleased with this color.

Isn't it pretty?

So now I need to paint the trim, stain the shingles, glue the shingles on, glue on the trim...

Yeah I've got a lot of work.  But this is the fun part.  No more case building. We're dollhousing again!

Yay me.

Late Progress

So I'm two days late with this post and I offer my apologies.  I hadn't been feeling great last week and this weekend due to a trip to the movies and the husband being sick, I was feeling pretty lousy yesterday.

I did make progress on the dollhouse case this weekend.  I ended up making another trip to the Home Depot for screws and sandpaper but other than that it went pretty well.

I worked on the lid more on Saturday and suceeded in getting the Plexiglas sandwiched in between the wooden frames.  Wood glue is wonderful and I also bought some corner braces to help with the support.  So here is a picture of the lid on top of the case, working hinges and all.

I was very proud of myself at this point.

Then of course I had to put it on the table or I would have been kneeling on a tile over concret floor and I'm sorry but my knees have enough of kneeling when I go to church.  But it was still pretty light at this point so no trouble.

The Plexiglas Linda had cut for me worked out pretty well, I got the holes drilled for the hinges without any major snafus.  I even got the hinges attached without too many problems.

Then I ran into a little snag.  As you can see below, I got the dollhouse into the case no problem.  And it fits just great.  (It'll be staying on top of the table by the way, its safest there.)

See?  Nice and snug and safe. 

No, the problem came when I realized that due to some of my Plexiglas doors overlaping, I can't use the sliding bolt locks I'd bought.  Not on the front and back doors anyway.  So I'm working on a way to keep the doors closed.  Right now duct tape seems to be working.

So hopefully a more permanent solution by next weekend.  In the meantime, Tali kitten is having a great time trying to figure out a way in.  I couldn't get a picture of her on top of the case but she has taken a regal pose several times, just to taunt me I suspect.

So next week hopefully the case will be securely locked and I can begin painting the dollhouse.  I'm so looking forward to that.









Framework & Bedding

Well this week I have gone back to my roots.  And by roots I mean what got me started on all of this in the first place. 

I think I've mentioned (and shown you guys) that I do some sewing.  And part of what got me into miniatures in the first place was sewing for my dolls.  I think I also mentioned I've been doing that from an early age.  Like nine or ten?  Well a long time ago.  We won't talk about how long, it makes me feel old.  I don't need to feel old(er). 

So anyway, sewing.  I'm still working on the frame for the dollhouse though with some wood glue and clamps it's progressing well enough.  But I wanted to actually accomplish something this weekend.

So it's progressing...a little bit anyway.

So I talked before about the master bedroom and the colors I want to use.  I did a little research about Victorian bedrooms and bedding and apparently the upper class bedrooms were fairly ornate. 

Here's the base of the bed I started out with.  It's actually a canopied four poster but for our purposes the base will be fine.

See ivory satin brocade, glued down.  Very basic.

I like how it looks but I want it to have more color and definitely a little more pizazz.  So I got the blue fabrics I showed you a couple months ago, the gauze and the blue cotton, along with triple tiered lace and made a bedspread.

Slightly better I think.

But I wanted a little more contrast and something slightly more ornate so I added some ribbon in a basket weave pattern to the blue.  I also detached the pillow from the bed and wrapped it in the same blue fabrics with the same ribbon for some detail.

I also decided that the bed needed some throw pillows so I dug out some other ribbon trim and a few fabric roses.  I'll eventually work on a few regular pillows for the bed with some big fancy shams with lace so the bolster pillow goes in front with the throw pillows. 

But I think this is pretty good for now.

Not a bad picture...

This is a little better. 

So along with the bigger pillows and shams I'm probably going to make a new canopy with the blue gauze and curtains to drape down the bedposts.  Those will match the window curtains and will go with the rug I bought for the room.  But for now, this is pretty good I think.