Dutch House Done (again)!

Back in 2009 this dollhouse was brought to us for an update.  Old wallpapers were removed and some rooms were painted.  Daughter so enjoyed playing with the house that the dollhouse has now been returned to us in 2014 for clean-up, proper electrical installed, and wallpapers.  I say "proper electrical installed" because somewhere in the last 5 years someone (not us) wired the dollhouse for them, but in order to not put tapewire on the painted walls, they ran wires everywhere (EVERYWHERE) so that lights would be in each room:

Various wires under the house all running to a power strip.

The mess of wires and painters tape made it nearly impossible to tell what went to where.

 So the first step was to remove the tangle of wires and extensions.  Even within the rooms, wires were running all about . . . After wires were all removed, tapewire was installed in the outer rooms (center hallways were to remain untouched as customer wanted to keep those original wallpapers from her childhood).  Then floors were cleaned up:

Cleaning floors: that's when you realize things like the floors in the hallway run left to right instead of front to back like the side rooms!  Interesting effect.

 Wallpaper was installed, which was a trip as none of the crown molding or baseboards were removable!  The baseboard of the room above was the same piece of wood that was the crown molding for the room below.  This one piece of wood trim was baseboard, crown molding, and held the floor in place so removing either one was impossible without taking the entire house apart!

Likewise, the window trims were all glued firmly in place.  So wallpaper had to be cut exactly as there was no window trims, crown, or baseboards to cover up mistakes!  Some of the more difficult rooms I created templates for (using small scraps of paper taped together to get an exact template of the wall).

BEFORE: Whole house view.  Wires were everywhere and some lights were not lighting up.

AFTER: Whole house view.

BEFORE: Blue Bedroom.

AFTER: Blue Bedroom.  Extra crown had to be installed on side walls as paper was not as tall as walls.

BEFORE: Pink Bedroom.

AFTER: Pink bedroom and center hallway.

BEFORE: Parents Bedroom.  A lovely mess of wires.

AFTER: Crisp and clean.

BEFORE: Kitchen.  I assume furniture in the corners covered those wires and plugs there.

AFTER: I loved the green wallpaper they picked for this room!  Wires and plugs/outlets removed.

BEFORE: Living Room.

AFTER: Living Room, a tall room that almost no wallpaper would have worked with the height so we added more crown as customer did not want a paper border.

BEFORE: Hallway.

AFTER: Hallways, sconces are wired to rooms on the right.

AFTER: Front lights are working, waiting for the family to come pick it up!

There was one other room (the bathroom) that we were going to wallpaper, but the paper arrived in a different dye lot than shown in catalog.  So we simply wired that room in such a way that it could remain painted with no wires showing.

I hope the young lady who is getting this house continues to love it as she used to and I hope that the house appears cleaner and easier to play with now that the network of wires are removed/hidden behind wallpapers.

(I'm still working on the Harborside Mansion - that house is not complete quite yet due to an arch ordering delay and a lighting issue; check back soon for an update on that house!)

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!

Harborside Stuck in the Arch

Between helping customers in the store, taking inventories, placing orders for restock, straightening up the shelves, checking and packing up online orders, updating the website, and replying to emails, I try to fit in an hour or two of work each day on customer's houses in the store.  Since I only get to work for an hour or two, work is slow.  But I felt I made huge steps yesterday in cutting out the arch on the Harborside!  My I-drill (I love my I-drill!) worked great and I had the arch cut out within an hour - I was ahead of schedule!  Maybe I would also mix up the ceiling paint and start painting ceilings!  But first I should test fit the archway trim . . . .

Customer has a Lawbre arch for the doorway from the kitchen to the addition conservatory room.  I love this arch (not that my opinion matters for much, but there it is)!  I have it as well for my Victorian Fantasy dollhouse but have not yet installed it because my Victorian Fantasy dollhouse has a double wide opening so side walls must be cut out and the top opening of the doorway must be filled in before the arch will fit (i.e. lots of other work must be completed first so it hasn't gotten done yet).

On the Harborside Mansion though, it fit beautifully once I cut out a little bit off of each side:

Arch cut into main housebody.

Arch cut into addition wall.

Arch trim looks fantastic in the space!  Oh, wait, I have to put the addition onto the side of the house too and then put on the archway trim!  Oops.

The disappointment came after I had cut the arches and discovered that the Lawbre arch fits over a 3/8" thick wall.  But in this dollhouse it has to fit over the exterior wall of the main house body (3/8" thick) PLUS the addition liner wall of the conservatory (1/8" thick).

When adding an addition to a Real Good Toys dollhouse they provide a liner for the side that butts up against the main house.  If the dollhouse has milled siding, such as the Harborside Mansion, it covers the milling so that your interior addition walls are smooth for decor.  But it creates a thicker wall.  Now the arch does not fit.

Channel inside the arch trim will not fit over the two walls together.

Even when I press them together, the two walls are just 1/8" too thick for the arch trim.

Solutions?
Well, there's the first possibility: a labor intensive and risky solution of routing out the wall(s) or cutting out the liner in the exact shape of the trim so that the arch trim fits into a snug groove.

Lots of detailing to route out around precisely.

But there is so much detailed trim on the arch trim that cutting out for it will take time, a steady hand, more time, and lots of potential for mistakes that will have to be filled in with Spackle or wood fill.  It will also look poorly when the trim is not snugly in place (as cutting out will be done by hand so some parts will be jagged and uneven).  But it's possible.

Second possibility is to remove the addition liner wall (or cut most of it away so that only thin strips support the ceiling piece) and fill in the siding with Spackle so the milled nature of it is covered and painted smooth.  The wall is only 3/8" thick so the trim fits again:

With paper and a spare piece of crown molding I created the look I am trying to describe.  You have to imagine the rest of the conservatory is there (ceiling, floor, front wall, and other side wall).

Without the addition on it, the house will always look like this.

So the decor for the one wall of the conservatory will always be attached to the main house body.  Looks odd without the conservatory up against it, but how often will the conservatory not be up against the house?  During transportation and/or moving?  That would be okay.

However, what is not okay is that by removing the addition's liner wall, the corner of the ceiling has no support where it meets the back open end of the dollhouse.  What would the ceiling rest upon to keep it from sagging over time?  (Now, some other miniaturists have assured me that the ceiling would not sag - it is structurally sound due to cantilevering or something like that, but I am a worrier and cannot help feel that it would sag over the decades and my customer has too much invested in this to have a saggy dollhouse!).  My only solution to that potential future issue is to either 1. permanently attach the addition to the main house, nailing thru the walls into the conservatory ceiling/roof or 2. attach crown molding to the main house body so that the roof of the conservatory has a solid piece to rest upon (since we removed the liner it previously rested upon):

Ceiling/Roof piece would receive extra support from the crown molding if it needed it.

So today's hour or two will be spent debating pro's/con's of these two solutions while still drinking lots of coffee in hopes that a third option materializes in my mind!

Any suggestions, Mini Friends?  I would appreciate any thoughts!

Finishing up Halloween and Preparing for Christmas

So, it is less than three weeks until Thanksgiving . . . and my dining room table (as usual) is covered in miniature projects.  In my defense, not all the miniature projects are for me!  I have a customer's house sitting there, waiting for me to rewire it and wallpaper it.  There are 2 in-progress miniature projects which will be Christmas gifts for my 2 best friends.  And my daughter has some of her sewing project stuff on the table (but, yes, hers are easy to pick up and put away as opposed to the dollhouses which are harder to find space to put them).

The largest thing on the table is mine (Leaky Cauldron/Diagon Alley structure) and I have bits and pieces for another small project (a beach stall) I am working on when Leaky Cauldron frustrates me.  I know my husband will begin to make comments about how we need our dining room table back for Thanksgiving dinner, so within the next week or two I have to remove the larger structures at least.  The smaller things I can tuck away in various nooks and crannies in the living room and kitchen.

I do not want to put Leaky Cauldron away -- I procrastinated for almost 10 years in removing the old stone floor.  Now that it is finally all out, I don't want to delay another 10 years in finishing it.  And I worry that if it goes back to the dimly lit, scary, spider hotel (aka basement) it will be years before I work on it again.  So I want to get at least the floor done to try and maintain my motivation for working on it.  I had to restain the baseboard area as the plaster stone floor had discolored the previously stained wood:

New stain is a bit darker, but in the long run I think it'll be fine.

I planned on making a template at first to work on the flooring outside of the structure.  But the opening is so small the template wouldn't have fit thru the opening!  So I have to glue down the individual pieces of strip wood one at a time inside the structure.  Then I had the stumbling block of trying to fit flooring in places I couldn't see very well:

Gluing down the first few strips.

The narrow wall to the left in the picture above and the doorway wall on the right create a smaller opening for viewing the room.  My head and hands don't fit in the opening very well so I can't really see right behind these areas while I'm working on them.  So I am gluing down the strips and then returning to fill in the bare spots afterwards:

The threshold of the door needed a piece of wood.

Not the best fit (lots of gaps) but who's gonna see?

The only way to see back here is to stick in a camera and click a picture so I don't think anyone will ever really see the gaps, but yes, they do bug me.  I'm hoping that once I sand and rough up the floor (it's Leaky Cauldron pub - it's been around a while so the floors will not be all nice) that the gaps will look more appropriate -- if anyone ever really sees them!

Behind the narrow wall . . .

Needs a small sliver of strip wood . . .

This side finished off better than behind the door!

I still have a way to go, but the floor is slowly coming along (I warned you I work slow, sloth slow!).

Making progress but still have about half the floor to do.

I had wanted Leaky Cauldron to be finished by Halloween and (no surprise to me) that didn't happen.  I work best with deadlines though, otherwise I'd never get anything done, so I am giving myself this week to finish gluing down the wood strips, rough them up, age them, and then seal them.  Then it will return to it's resting place (the dimly lit, scary, spider hotel) until maybe next summer when I will try to get husband to help carry it back up the stairs so I can officially finish it by Halloween - of 2015.

At work I have been distracted by this little fun project in preparation of Christmas:

A red lantern that I thought needed an elf's desk!

This elf office was so much fun to put together!  The desk is the "Lilanna Youth Desk" by Bespaq.  I added some gold accent to the trim and began decorating it with some things an elf would have/need.  Being a youth's desk it is the perfect size for an elf!  It is still a work in progress (as are all my things, hence the name of this blog!) so the elf desk is still a bit bare and the chair is still on my work table (aka dining room table) waiting for its gold accent trim, but I wanted to share it with you partially finished . . .

My elf has an Elf on the Shelf!  And a gingerbread house kit he'll get to make someday (like me and my dollhouses!).

I love my little Santa snow globe!  It's the little things that make me stupid happy.

I have always admired these wreaths that I have for sale in the store; Finally have an excuse to own one!

Take down the Halloween decorations, prepare for Thanksgiving (and family birthdays in my house), and brace yourselves for the holiday season: 2014 is wrapping up quickly!

Harborside Mansion's Pre Existing Condition

The Harborside Mansion that was brought in to us is gorgeous.  Such beautiful exterior colors!  The interior is still bare which is why the customer brought it to us.  She wants me to finish the inside with wallpapers and floorings and light fixtures she has picked out.  Sounds like a straightforward, easy job.  But this Harborside had a pre existing condition: the electrical.  Customer hired a friend to do the electrical.  There are parts that were cleverly done (attaching each level to it's own individual on/off switch at the foundation) and other parts that were done without thinking ahead to the next step.  Such as the bulk of wiring being brought up to the different levels of the house.  Since each level is on it's own switch, each level needed a run of tapewire brought up the wall.  Rather than run them side-by-side, the electrician ran them one on top of the other, creating a bulky wad which would look terrible under the wallpaper/flooring and possibly even break when I try to fit the papers/flooring tight to the corners . . .

But I simply couldn't remove the wad and tie them all to one run because underneath the foundation, the three different tapewire runs were connected to their individual switches!


The switches to operate each floor's lighting.

Under the house, the 3 levels are wired to 3 switches on the foundation
and must be kept on separate runs as it enters the house.

So I cut out the wad, separated the 3 different tapewire runs under the house (you can see I've already done that in the photo above) and wired them to new runs going into the house that aren't layered one on top of the other.

Each level now has it's own run that lays flat on the wood.
No more bulk that will look awful beneath the wallpapers/floorings!

The other electrical issue involved the chandeliers.  On the first and second levels, the customer wants the ceiling lights wired to the floors above.  But friend wired house with tapewires across the ceilings.  So we will be removing the ceiling wiring and running the wires across the floors above (yet still keeping them to the proper run so that they still turn on/off with the rest of the lights on their respective levels: don't want a chandelier on the first floor to stay on when all the table lamps gets turned off by the switch!).

Once this electrical is all sorted out, we'll start priming/painting some rooms and installing wallpapers, floorings, fixtures, and staircases in some other rooms!  Stay tuned!

Customer's Non-Colonial Colonial

This dollhouse originally came in to be converted into a true Colonial (centered front door with symmetrical single windows on either side).  However, the siding is individual strips glued onto compressed wood so removing, cutting and replacing the different components would involve a great deal more labor (and cost) than the customer wished to spend.  So she opted to have us do minor architectural repairs and changes.  Customer will then remove the interior wallpapers and re-wallpaper the dollhouse for her granddaughter.

BEFORE: Double window needed repair and
the rooftop porch needed railings.

AFTER: Minor repairs made.

 At first the customer wanted the entire window replaced, but the only window that fit in this space was this same exact window (another window fit the opening, but did not have as large of a pediment resulting in repairs and paint needed above the window if we replaced it).  Customer then opted to have us replace the missing mullion:

BEFORE: Mullion is broken in lower left hand of the window.

AFTER: Quick and easy fix!

Biggest change and hardest work to complete was cutting the archway from the kitchen to the living room.  I love the I-drill and it usually is a quick cut to create windows, doorways, and other holes where needed in a wall.  However, the I-drill handle wouldn't fit in the room properly and the I-drill would not cut along the curve of the archway.  Plus, the wall is a compressed wood product that splinters and shatters when cutting.  This turned into a slow process of cutting out chunks and filing away the excess wood and then sanding the splinters and jagged bits away.  Luckily the customer is putting Unique Miniature's arch trim on the walls so we did not have to make a perfect cut (which greatly reduced the labor time) . . . .

BEFORE: Kitchen in need of an arch doorway on the right wall.

AFTER: Archway is cut in wall. Customer still has to remove
old wallpapers; then she will install the arch trim (see photo below).

AFTER: Arch trim (loosely in place) will help finish off the opening
once customer removes the old paper and gives the walls a fresh finish.

We replaced and repaired a few shingles on the back roof and installed railings on the rooftop porch area on the addition:

AFTER: Shingles replaced in various spots and along the edges of the roof.

BEFORE: This rooftop porch is not to code.

AFTER: Another quick and easy fix that really completed the house.

AFTER

Now on to the Harborside Mansion decorating job, the Contemporary Ranch (very excited about a glass block half-wall this house is getting), and a Dutch-style dollhouse we worked on in 2009 that has been returned for wallpapers and electrical work!

Ceiling Display

This week I've been working on minor little projects.  I wired 2 roomboxes for a customer.  I created a ceiling for a store display.  And I added a few more photos to my online store.

The prettiest thing I did this week was the store display ceiling:

The ceiling of our display house at
Happily Ever After.

It was a very easy ceiling to make.  I am too busy at the moment to cut strip woods and crown moldings to create a drop, tray, or Victorian, ceiling.  World Market has this paper/Styrofoam ceiling product.  It is supposed to be a "tin" ceiling, and it is paintable!

Above is the full sheet as it's sold; Below is the section I cut out
of my sheet to create the layer look in the ceiling.

 I didn't want to put the full sheet on the ceiling: I wanted it to look more Victorian and their ceilings frequently have murals or paintings or other designs in the center of their ceilings.  So I cut out the center of my 'tin' ceiling sheet (I should have had patience and used a sharp exacto knife, but I wanted to finish it in one day so I used a dull blade and it did rip my edges a little bit but luckily it didn't show too much once I painted it).

Then I painted the sheet sage green to match the decor of the house.  But the delicate, interesting design on the ceiling doesn't pop out when it's all white or all sage green . . .

The detail on the tin ceiling is amazing, but hard to see.

Highlighting the detailing on the ceiling sheet.
I used various color Sharpies on this scrap piece.

 So I used a Metallic Gold Sharpie marker to outline all the detailing on the sheet.  But the center of my ceiling was still painted white and I couldn't decide how to finish it off: just painting it gold was too plain when compared to the rest of the ceiling and putting a mural in that spot didn't match the color scheme.  I considered painting the center gold and putting a medallion in the center to dress it up.  But then I found a scrap of some wallpaper left over from when I worked on the customer's Versailles palace last year.  It was the exact shade of gold as my Sharpie marker and it was the exact size I needed to fill in the center rectangle!

Then came the second obstacle: the ceiling sheet wasn't as wide as the ceiling.  So I filled in the sides with a wooden trim painted sage green that had a swirly design similar to the wallpaper in the center.  Then I markered-up the detail pattern!  (Okay, 'markered-up' isn't a real word, but the paint, glue, and marker fumes may have killed a few brain cells!)

These wood trims had a similar pattern as the center wallpaper!

So I glued all the components on to the display dollhouse ceiling.  All total, including paint drying time, it took less than a day to do.

Finished Ceiling.