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 . . . .

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Lots of wood (Shoji doors are done)!

Customer really wants the wood flooring in her Glenwood to be parallel with the open end of the dollhouse.  But the flooring sheets are 17" wide and the living room is 19-3/8" wide.  So the flooring in that room had to be pieced because I didn't want a seam right down the room.  But it had to be pieced quickly because customer also didn't want to spend a lot of money on labor or another sheet of flooring for the floor to be fully merged at the center.  So I used the remaining scrap pieces to puzzle fill the remaining 2" to 3" of flooring space left:
Edges cut back
 All the strips had to be trimmed back to where the last seam had been.
Cut the scrap pieces to match/fit in
Filled it in like a puzzle....
Scraps all fitted in and then trimmed it down to fit in the room...

Now front section piece needed to be filled in along side....

All edges were trimmed back except in 2 spots
For this larger section I could leave two sections with the seam as the staircase will be covering that area...
Stair goes right over that part so why piece it?

Floor is now quickly pieced together to be the correct size.
At quick glance there is no straight seam and with the staircase in the room, there will be no noticeable piecing at all.  And customer didn't have to pay for another sheet of flooring and there wasn't a lot of labor time involved!  Score!
Floorings are all done

Now I have to install the window trims, paint/stain staircase and install it, and the shingling of the house roof and the gazebo porch (which has been started):
Wood shingles getting cut for the gazebo peak!
Also, took a strip of Mahogany wood to the laser cutter and (finally) cut out my Shoji doors!


Polyurethaned them and added a piece of wood at the bottom to fill in some of the panes (so it wouldn't look like just a French door) and added a piece of plexi to create a door.

So the Butterfly Garden is (at long last!) finished:

I used some inlay wood trims to lay across the top (cannot glue them down because I need access to the interior in case the doors ever stick or break when/if someone opens them)...
Looking down on the scene
But with the plexiglass case on it, the plexi holds the inlay wood down in place so it all worked out:
View of the doors and interior space:
Fountain, Bamboo, and doors
All together

Looking into the interior space
I still love the doll I purchased from Tish (Tish's Website) that started it all:
Back of the doll
So, back fully focused onto the New Yorker box and Mansion now...but I gotta order some Majestic Mansion doors for the mansion first....

4 comments:

  1. Hi, Lori - You've done a great job on the floor for your customer's house. It was a clever solution to piece the boards as you did to avoid having a straight line across the room. Good choice! And the Shoji doors! I've been so impatient to see those doors, and they look wonderful, as I expected. The wood panels at the bottom do add just the right touch. I love this project, and I've definitely enjoyed watching it all come together so satisfactorily. Congratulations!
    Marjorie

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    1. Thanks for stopping by, Marjorie! I never expected the doors to take so long! I honestly thought this little scene would only detour me for about a month and instead it's 6 months later before I can put the plexi over it and call it "done". So I was impatient to see these doors finally done too! LOL
      Lori K.

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  2. Hello Lori,
    The floor looks amazing. Well done. Nothing ruins a miniature room like a straight seem right down the middle of a larger room. You did a great job .
    Also, your screens doors are fantastic.
    Big hug
    Giac

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    1. Thank you for the compliment, Giac! Your floors are breath-taking but no one seems to want to pay me for the labor that would be involved in creating floors like you make! LOL
      Lori K.

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