Welcome to my life . . . .

This is a blog about my passion: dollhouses and miniatures. This particular blog was started to follow my miniature dream: to create a Victorian Mansion. But work on my Mansion is slow. Very slow. Sloth slow. Ice Age glacier movement slow. Why? Because I am easily distracted by other personal miniature projects (I have 50+ roomboxes and 15 dollhouses in various stages of incompletion) and because I work for a miniature shop and am often up to my elbows in miniature projects that aren't mine! So, I thought, some artists work in a particular medium (woods, watercolors, clay, oils, etc.), I work in progress . . . .

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Harborside Wallpaper Liner, Polyurethane Floors, and Arch Resolution!

The biggest complaint of the tape wire electrical system (besides the junction splices and long-term connection issues) is that even painting over the tape wire doesn't hide it on a bare wall.  You're practically forced to wallpaper over it.  But what if you want a solid color wall and not a busy wallpaper pattern in that room?  Not many solid colors are available for dollhouse walls.  Which is why we use wallpaper liners!

Found in your local wallpaper store (if you're lucky enough to still have one of those!  Ours was put out of business by constantly increasing rent and a big box store which then quit carrying wallpapers as soon as our local source was also gone!) and I have also found it the next town over at Lowes, wallpaper liner is a roll of white paintable wallpaper!  It is available in patterns as well, but we use the plain flat liner.  It covers the wires and can be painted any color!

Kitchen when dollhouse was brought to us.

Kitchen with walls in place and covered with white wallpaper liner.
Kitchen room: you can see the tape wire on the floor where it goes to the walls, but cannot see the tape wire under the wallpaper liner!
Kitchen covered with wallpaper liner that was then painted (room will get crown molding so we did not paint right up to the ceiling).  This wall, to the right of the arch, had the imperfections mentioned in the paragraph below:

So customer gets her painted walls and her tape wire is all around where she needs/wants it!  I did have a momentary scare when I first painted the liner and three small bubbles appeared under the paper on the left wall, right up at the open end of the house where EVERYONE would notice it!  There was no disguising it.  I did not notice the bumps before I painted: had painting caused the bubbles?  did I use too much paint and wrinkle the liner?  were the bubbles there but not noticeable until the paint was on to highlight the imperfection?  I fretted for about ten minutes, trying to think of a solution.  Luckily a customer walked into the store right then and I had to walk away from the project.  When I returned a hour later, the bubbles had disappeared/laid back flat!

Also I have wallpapered the Living Room and applied polyurethane to the wood floors that will be some rooms.  Ever wonder what the Housework's Random Plank Flooring looks like once they have been sealed with polyurethane?  All the Housework wood floorings look much prettier than how they look in their packaging once they are sealed!  The grain really comes out and the color deepens.  So pretty!
Floors on left have been polyurethaned.  Yeah, I know polyurethane is not a verb, but I'm a rebel like that!
Floors up close.
Floors will go into this room.
And, for anyone that was laying away at night thinking about my arch issue from the last blog entry (looking at you, Cheryl! Love ya!), the solution was simple:  Lawbre makes an arch that fits over a 1/2" thick wall!  Just need to exchange the 3/8" arch for the 1/2" arch.  Yes, some days I need more coffee than others!


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