Walls & Tower

This weekend has been a bit of a hodge podge of playing with real life furniture and dollhouse furniture.  Of necessity the living room needs some rearranging and other rooms followed because some chairs were changing rooms.

I've been gluing walls and floors then giving my legs and back a workout moving furniture in between waiting for glue to dry.  It's been... a full weekend.

And for all my fellow descendants of Irish immigrants out there, Happy Saint Patrick's day.  I spent eight years in Catholic school and one of the things we learned the story of Saint Patrick.  Interesting guy.

I got some of the upper walls glued together, and determined where my breaks will be for the removable wall.  I have one more long cut to make to get that completely set up.

And I'm working on my door placement.  I scaled down my front door so I could mimic the shape of it for the inside openings.  And I began the process of building my tower.

I'm fortunate in that the division between the two containers falls right at the level of the second floor.  So that's something nice and easy to remember.  It looks a little crooked in the picture but it's actually plumb.

I'm building up the ground level though because the floor is a full inch above the ground.  I really need to figure out my stairs before I cut window openings.  And I need to wire the tower for some sconces too I think.

In the mean time, I've figured out that much as I'd like to have the tower set on the corner of the cottage, it'll ultimately make my life simpler to have it off of the back wall.  Though I still love the idea and if I can figure out a way to do it I will.  So here's where the second level tower door would be on the back wall.

The upper right corner will be a bit cut off but I think that will look fine.

I also got my materials for the tower's brick.  I saw this on Pinterest, I think Kristine actually did something with sandpaper on a fireplace, but of course my computer is now goofing up.  There are more pictures on Greenleaf's forum if the links will work on your computer.  The idea is you paint the sandpaper and cut it into brick lengths.  It has the texture of brick.

I figure what I'll do is layer it onto cardboard to give it a bit more depth, maybe a couple different thicknesses.  I'm hoping that I can figure out some Tudor style brick patterns.

And since I'm waiting for more glue to dry I decided to play around with furniture placement for the ground floor.  I have some Tudor style wall panels that I want to use in the bedroom on two of the walls at least.  Here's a few pictures.

The panels don't reach the ceiling but that way they aren't in the way of the beams that will support the second floor.

The box with the black and white is supposed to represent the fireplace.  I'm planning on staining the wall panels a medium brown so the darker furniture will show up against it.  The rest of the walls will be plastered an off white.  And the white rectangle is the door to the tower stairs if I can't figure out a way to set it off the corner of the house.

The table in front of the window will be replaced with a smaller cabinet with a sink.  I'm still debating a water pump in the house.

With a smaller sink cabinet the table in the center of the kitchen will pull back from the fireplace a bit but the fireplace will be a bit deeper I think.  And I only need two chairs.  I can put the fourth up on the second floor.

You can see in my little entryway where I need to either cut off some of the MDF wall or build out some shelves and hooks. Maybe for buckets and brooms?

I'm thinking I might just make the window openings smaller.  Raise the bottom of the opening and leave the top where it is.  I need to work on new windows anyway, why limit myself to the windows that came with the kit?

I've got some more gluing of walls to do before I can call it a day.  Hope everyone is having a good weekend.