Queen Victoria

I spent most of the day yesterday working on my HBS Creatin' Contest piece, so nothing to report on the San Franciscan right now. I have a real desire to make a Tim Burton - inspired haunted / gothic / dark dollhouse and after careful consideration I've come to the conclusion that a Heritage, a Pierce, or a Beacon Hill are my favorite options for it. I've been looking at Heritage auctions on Ebay for an hour or so. I'm leaning toward the Heritage or the Beacon Hill for different reasons.

I've also got an itch to make miniature foods and things again, so I may do a little of that in between house building stages. Anyway, this was mostly an update to let it be known that just because there hasn't been much posted here the last couple days, I have been working like crazy on my projects. :-)

Stalemate - The San Franciscan

I seem to be nearing a speed bump in my San Franciscan construction. I've got a lot of ideas and the skills, but I'm at a crossroads of whether or not to make the inside of the house historically accurate or more modern. I've been slowly priming and painting the window frames and trim while I try to decide what to do. I have to decide before I can continue with construction because I have to have the house wired before I can do any permanent work.

I didn't work on it at all today because, on day four on constant howling wind, all my joints in my arms and legs were sore and screaming. So I took a nap. Now I'm getting ready to pack up and ship out a large Etsy order and head to the hobby store so I can buy some foam core for chimney and bay window mockups. Hopefully I'll have more interesting stuff to write about tomorrow or Saturday.

A Painted House - The San Franciscan

I started dry-fitting today! The first picture shows the base (or "footprint" of the house. The beveled sides on the left are the front of the house. The second picture shows a picture of one boring, blank wall that I will be adding a chimney to. I took the second picture primarily as proof that I am, in fact, still working on it.

That streaky white on the walls is sanding sealer, not the paint I am using. At this stage it kind of reminds me of the house in John Grisham's "A Painted House". I have plans to add something to the other side wall that has nothing in it, but I'm not sure what's going to come of that yet. I've realized that the solid walls bother me considerably more than they did when I did a Dura-Craft house as a teenager. 

Anyway, this might be the last picture for a couple days. I'm going to make a major push to get the sides painted and stabilized before any more exciting news. 

Dramatic Distraction - The San Franciscan

There have been a lot of dramatic things happening at our house this week and I haven't gotten as much done on my San Franciscan as I would have preferred by now, but I have made some progress. All of the wall pieces are glued (which I'd hoped to have done by Wednesday but just finished yesterday) and most of them are primed and ready for sanding. Most of my window frames are primed and ready for sanding, then I can paint the frames and put the "glass" in and start the leading process.

So far, everything has been at a slow pace that I can mess with it as I have time, but now I'm coming up on the dry-fitting stage and that will need a considerable piece of time as I want to get the whole shell up in one go.

I've also decided it's time to put my desire to learn some woodworking into action and I'm going to (hoping to) build all my kitchen pieces from scratch and have working doors and drawers in all the cabinets. But of course, the house itself comes first. I have ages to work on the interior, so I'm trying not to get ahead of myself.

Anyway, here's a not-the-most-recent picture of some of my pieces with primer drying on them.

Strong Like Ox - The San Franciscan

I do not have any pictures today, but I wanted to stop by for a second to update that all but one of my walls are glued. They have to dry for 48 hours and then I can do the wood filler and sanding sealer. Hopefully the last wall will be done by tonight and I can move on to the next step for the walls by Friday.

I've been avoiding the corner post work because I really wasn't wanting to work on cutting all those big long strips of wood, but I cut them last night while Husband was out running errands for me. I glued most of those this morning - though I did glue one wrong and had to go back and pry the pieces apart with a butter knife and in turn I've learned that Gorilla wood glue sets up REALLY fast.

Just a couple more days until I can begin dry-fitting and exterior painting, hopefully!

Windows to the Soul - The San Franciscan

I worked yesterday on cutting the pieces for window jambs for my sliding window sashes. All of those parts and the door jambs for the outside doors are cut and in the beginning stages of priming. Half of one of my major side walls is glued and my outside wall edges are cut. Husband and I went to Home Depot yesterday for paint for the exterior of the house. I think, in the end, it will end up looking like an typical Easter egg Victorian (which is fine) and I'll have to save my gothic decor for another house. Luckily I already have another house picked out for when I get done with this one. We also picked up the base support board for the saloon and the Victorian, so I can start major construction as soon as I get the walls done.

Window and door jambs with fresh primer

Bright Beginnings - The Sanfranciscan

Welcome to my new blog all about miniatures. I built my first dollhouse about 13 years ago and did a couple rehabs after that, but nothing in at least ten years. So after many months of struggling with motivation and ideas, I decided to venture back to my first artistic undertaking and construct a dollhouse... or six... or twenty. We'll see what happens!

My starting project will be the Dura-Craft SF 555 San Franciscan with some minor modifications but no major bashing. I got it for a steal from a listing on craigslist about a week ago. 

Right after bringing it home - Phantom cat is very curious

Anyway, yesterday I finally really started on my house. This has been sitting in a box for close to twenty years - the wood is slightly warped and reeks of stale cigarette smoke, so I've got some wood glue, an army of clamps, various things to use as weights, and some sanding sealer painting primer to start with.

In the beginning, it was going okay - until I discovered that I don't have the finger strength to hold the pieces together and weight them to lay flat at the same time.

So I got clamps out. Then came a bunch of experimenting to see how to get the clamps on without letting the walls buckle all crazy-like. 

I have a backup plan though - if the walls are buckled when I go for the initial fitting (taping pieces instead of gluing), then I will add the wonky factor in and make it into an old rickety haunted house. So we'll see what happens. 

As for that front door piece that's out in the open when I'm nowhere near ready to use it, I'm going to finish the door early so I can make a stained glass window in the door using Glorious Twelfth's stained glass technique, and I started that earlier while I was waiting on other supplies I needed to get started.

So now we're off and rolling. Hopefully there will be more exciting things to report in the next few days.