RGT Contemporary Ranch

I am not a huge fan of Real Good Toy's Contemporary Ranch dollhouse: The style of the house is okay -- but every photo I see of it didn't excite me.  It's usually shown with a white ceiling/wall/flooring interior and the exterior is usually displayed with pale blue or beige walls and white trim.  I was not overly enthused by this house.  But a customer wanted the kit assembled, painted, and finished off so I built one.

I don't know if it was the customer's excellent choices in colors/décor or if it's just the difference of seeing this house in the flesh versus in photos, but I loved this house and was so sad when the customer came to pick it up:


Living room, bathroom in the loft, and kitchen



One of my favorite aspects of the house was that glass half wall (not included in the kit)!

Looking from living room into sun room - one of my favorite papers from Brodnax but a tricky one to match the seams as one sheet was not tall enough for this large room!

The stone on the front porch coordinated beautifully with the house body paint!

Love the big picture windows!  (Most photos show the windows chopped up with mullions)

The shingles were such a perfect color!



Bedroom in golden yellows/burgundy

View from sun room into bedroom



Sun room, so open and airy (double meaning there thanks to the side opening!)

Wallpapering the tall rooms was a challenge as one sheet was not tall enough.  The sun room had the border making it easier to hide the seams but the living room took a lot of brain power (aka coffee) to match up the patterns to hide the seams.  I'm still loving that bathroom glass wall and the sky lights all around the roof!  I did not realize the potential for this house and am glad to have worked on one!

Now on to the next customers' projects!

Off on a Tangent

I know I have so many other projects to be working on (Mansion, Shark Tank, my New York box, 1895 and 1795 kitchens, Modern Townhouse, Confectionary Shop, Suishi shop, and Log cabin -- just to name a few), but I went off on a tangent and created a new project to do during this upcoming month...

My youngest daughter loves butterflies so (naturally) when I found miniature butterflies for sale at the Chicago Show two years ago, of course I bought as many as I could.  Thus resulting in an abundance of butterflies with no home.  And after attending the Dallas Mini Show last year, I have this gorgeous doll (dressed by Tish of Versailles Dolls) who is holding 2 butterflies in her cupped hands (Dallas Mini Show Blog Post).

Butterfly Girl

I needed some thing "outdoors" to properly display all these butterflies and this doll!

Mondays are my day off of work, so a Monday morning with no appointments or plans meant I could go play on the Laser Cutter, producing this little room box to fit inside a plexi box I already owned.

A small indoor space and a platform for an outdoor garden

There is a space between the walls for a Shoji sliding door that I will construct:


Looking down, sideways - sorry I can't figure out how to flip the pic - into the "room"

I took out some plants I had previous acquired that didn't fit into the spaces they were originally bought for.  And I had some left over field stone pieces to create a walkway...the scene started to come together nicely...

Dry fitting a rough draft of how it will all look

I had my heart set on a little fountain though -- in fact, I recalled some pottery I had for my Irish Cottage (another Work-in-Progress that I should have worked on instead of creating a new project!).  This pottery was a collection of small nesting bowls with spouts on them!  I could glue them in a way that water would flow from one bowl to the next!  But after searching for an hour thru my miniatures I concluded that I either gave the bowls away or sold them on a Facebook Used Minis Sale page when I decided the Irish Cottage wasn't getting any landscaping.

I was disappointed: I really had my heart set on this little fountain in the scene....and then I recalled my no-bake clay that was still sitting in my fridge from my bread-making experiment (Previous Blog Post about no-bake clay)!  Using a small chunk of clay, I created my own little bowls with spouts...

Once fully dried, I'll paint them black and glue them into a cascading fountain shape

I have begun to collect my supplies - including the dirt for the gardens on either side of the field stone walkway...

Coffee is my friend for so many reasons...

And I'm hopeful that next Monday will be a quiet day as well so I can run back over to the Laser Cutter and cut out my Shoji sliding doors!  Updates will be posted as I work on this little scene, but first there will be some blog updates on some customer's projects and some mansion work I did accomplish since Dad finally delivered the Addition Base to me!  It's been an exciting Mini week!