Cabinets & Stairs

 This weekend I decided to do a dry fit of the first floor walls and make sure that my kitchen cabinets and countertop fit into the area properly.

A few adjustments later and I decided to glue the cabinets together.  The uppers go all the way to the ceiling which begins at the wooden channel at the top of the walls.

I don't plan to glue anything into place for a while. I have to get the floors down and a template for the backsplash before anything can be set in permanently.

I'm actually debating the size of the window over the sink. It's so big. I wondered if I moved the bottom of the frame up, keeping the width but making the height a little shorter how it would look.

Because as it is there isn't much of a backsplash in the kitchen. So I'm debating a bit about the window size. I could also make it narrower and put some open shelves next to the door.

I'd have to redo my front wall but I don't know that it would be such a bad thing.

I've been thinking about flooring. I saw some gorgeous wood on a HGTV remodeling show.  It had these gorgeous greyish tones with oak and I thought it would look beautiful with the cabinets.

Isn't that pretty? That's the closest I can get to what I saw.  So I thought I'd use tongue depressors for boards, do some ebony and grey on them, sand them down and do oak on top to see if I can get the same effect.

That's an experiment for next week.

The other debate is whether or not to do a herringbone floor with those wide modern looking planks or just keep it simple and straight? With the herringbone it wouldn't be so obvious that I was using tongue depressors because the length would be somewhat disguised.  Opinions?

You all know my hopes for the stairs. I have the straight stairs that came with the kit (or the fittings that match the kit anyway). I've got the gorgeous curved stairs from Marion's shop on Shapeways.

See my problem?  Both of them take up sooooo much floor space. So I think we'll be going with one of my homemade spiral stair cases.  I've still got quite a few fan blades and beads so I did a little test run.

I think that I could make some different steps using my Cricut. I'll experiment with that some during the week too.

I've got a plan for the ceiling/roof of the lower level.  The first dollhouse I did for the Creatin' Contest was back in 2015.  In order to run wires through the walls I made them similar to a wall in a real house, with balsa '2x4s' between thin basswood panels.

I can do the same thing with the lower level ceiling/roof and that'll give me places to run my wiring for the lights.

So even with a few little set backs we're clicking along.

In other news we've finally gotten folks out to start the process of remediation and remodel/reconstruction of the back bathroom where we had all the water leaks in February. Yes, it's taken this long. Because pretty much everyone in Texas is in the same boat. 

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!