Building the Built Ins and Adding Baseboards

My actual house has a nice amount of built ins, in the bathroom, the living room and the bedroom/study.  They're a bookshelf/cabinet combination that's really pleasant.  The storage is great especially for someone who has tons of books.  (That's not an exaggeration.)

And there's something about them that makes the house seem more like a home than just throwing furniture in them.  As if people have really thought about how the space would be used and what would be the best way to improve that utilization. 

So of course with the dollhouse I wanted the same thing.  The first one, the Gothic Victorian, I didn't have enough experience with building to really do anything like built-ins.  If I was going to do it anywhere it would have been in the library.  I love the idea of paneled walls and shelves with a good library table in the middle of the room.  But the space wasn't very large and as we've discussed, I wasn't a good enough builder to manage that.  (Maybe the next house. LOL)

Or I could do roomboxes.  That might be a way to keep the hobby contained and still be fun.  I could sell them if they're good enough... Hmm... Well we'll see.  And I still don't have this house done so I'm definitely getting ahead of myself. 

Whenever I think of that expression all I can think of is a zombie chasing it's head rolling down a hill.  Don't' ask me why.  I'm a strange and wonderful individual and you should treasure me as such.

....

What were we talking about?

Oh yeah, built ins.  So you saw some that I did, the one next to the fireplace:

See? 

And the one in the bedroom upstairs:



And this turned out nice



But I wanted the built in to be a little more substantial in the bedroom.  Like the home owners wanted to make use of every inch of space.

So I started with this.

So this is the start...

Then we paint... and pray the glue holds...

Lots of praying there. 

And the next step is this...

Just to get a good idea of how it fits and if I like how it looks. 

So far so good.

I want cabinets.  Shelves and drawers are fine but I really want a cabinet or two on the wall.  Cabinets involve either sliding doors or hinges.  I decided hinges were the way to go.

Thank God for Sticky Tacky glue...

I wanted one sort of goofy cabinet and one normal one.  By the way, it helps to put hinges on the right way if you're going to make cabinets.  The above picture did not actually work right once the glue dried.  Luckily brute force wins over glue every time.  As my cat proved with the dollhouse.

Yep.  When I was working on the electrical the roof had separated and broken the tape wire.  I didn't notice until I tried to put the lights and outlets in.

More on that later... After I've finished hyperventilating.

So I fixed my hinges and managed to get two cabinet doors set.

Here we are with some paint and everything.

Then there was lots of debate about another cabinet or whether or not I should just leave well enough alone.  After all the more I added the busier the wall was going to look.

So I decided to stop messing with it and just add handles and glue it to the wall.  So far so good right?

Here we are with my fancy dancy handles.  More beads.

I like telling you guys when I screw up because then you know for sure that I'm not perfect.  I know that some of you wonder and I feel that I must reassure you that I'm only human.  LOL

I've been watching Roseanne reruns and sometimes the humor rubs off on me. 

But I did eventually get the shelves/cabinets onto the wall.

See?  All nice and white against the pale blue.

The only thing I'm debating is trim.  Once I get the baseboards in I really think I might do some thin strips of wood along the rooflines...just to mimic the crown moldings downstairs.  Because there are some gaps between the shelving and the roof and I don't like how that looks.

But before I get to that I had to work on the other idea I had.

This one took a bit longer, and oh man...not easy for me to do.  I had a few false starts and then I had to take the whole thing apart and reglue because I'd put the supports in the wrong place.  See?  Not perfect.  Very definitely not perfect.

What I wanted was a built in table/bench along the wall common to the bathroom.  There really isn't enough space for two bedside tables.  It would look way too crowded.  So my idea was to have a table/bench with storage underneath that would go around the eaves into the window area.

And I started out all right.



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You can see the little cut out for the eaves on the top.  The doors are made out of the tongue depressor woodies that I used for the porch roof.  I glued them together and held them with tape until it dried.  

Then came the tricky part.

Here are all the parts... the second time around.

I used some of my channels for the supports on either end.  It was tricky for me to get everything lined up so the doors would slide properly.

I used the left over ends of the tongue depressors to make little circles and put them on the front of the doors for decoration.  It also keeps them from bending inwards too much. 

Then I painted them white.  And glued, carefully, so that the doors would stay inline while I glued the top and bottom together.  Oh man... I really had to be careful.

See?  Real doors.

But I worked slowly.  And then... OMG it worked!

See?  It fits.  And the doors work too. 

At first I thought I might put shelves on this side too.  But then I decided a little table/bench would be better.  Shelves would be too much.

Now!  On to the baseboards.

I measured everything out...and then cut them up and numbered them.  That's always interesting.  And don't ask me why I go counter clockwise when I start.  Maybe it's because reading goes left to right? 

Lots and lots of little baseboards

But I did it.  Then I did the same thing with the bathroom.

So the room looks more finished now.

And I did the bathroom too.  I had this idea that I wanted a little defined tub area so I used the boards to make a border.

It doesn't look too bad does it?

Here's one more.

I wanted a little step down into the bathroom from the door.

I noticed with a lot of older houses the rooms aren't always level with each other so I like the little boards on the floor on either side of the door.

And it hides a few gaps the floor left.

So most of the upper floor is done.  A few things left to do.  Fixing the wire tape. (Thank you Tali.)  And the rest of the electrical. 

And I'm really thinking I need to do some more trim...just to make things look finished.  But that's for next time.

I did figure out a few things for the bathroom.  The plumbing for one thing...  I'm pretty pleased with my ideas.  See you next time.