Took a break from siding the back of the house to take photos of the completed linen closet…

Enjoy.

 

 

With all the traveling and working I’m doing this semester, I feel the house is being neglected a little….sigh.

In any case, I got the extra electric wire I needed in the mail, so I hooked up the hallway light.

Which means I could finally start building up the siding on the back of the house (that covers the wires).

Also means I can now leave the hall light on and let it shine into the other rooms…

More siding next time, but for now…good night.

Decided that between the piles of grading I had to do this weekend, I was going to finish the nursery.

Started by spraying the room with acrylic.

When I was wandering around the country this summer, I stopped by a wonderful little shop in Indiana, called Jeeper’s Dollhouse Miniatures (http://www.jeepersminiatures.com).

There I started a conversation with the lovely owner of the store. She warned me that dollhouse wallpaper fades very quickly, especially when it’s printed at home (different quality ink and paper) and highly recommended I buy some of this particular brand of matte acrylic spray, that would help protect the colors.

Finally bought the spray and went back and sprayed all the wallpapered rooms in the house today…

Thank you for the tip!

Next I made the second set of nursery curtains and hung them up.

I wanted to add a small canopy on the cradle and I found these plastic pieces that were left over from a set of plastic cups and plates I had bought.  I cut out part of the framework to make the post…

…painted it black…

..and cut out the cloth for the canopy.  Couldn’t find a transparent enough cloth at the fabric store, but this scarf was on clearance for $1.50 and it did the trick.

Had to hem three of the sides…

And there you go…still needs a little ribbon to tie back the sides here (I added it before some of the later photos).

Then I started on the tie-backs for the curtains…used a bit of ribbon and a tiny brass nail.

Put the room back together…

…then added a clock, so the kids could learn to tell time and the nursemaid could keep to some sort of a schedule.

Then I figured it was time to re-frame the watercolor painting I had received as a child…my first miniature ever!

Likewise, I wanted to add a print by one of my friends, Vincent Desjardins, who is an illustrator of children’s books (http://vincentdesjardins.com/).  He graciously allowed me to chose whichever I wanted, so I took this wonderful image of a mama hedgehog feeding her child at home…

…and printed it really small to fit the other frame. Thank you, Vince!

Also painted the frames brown to match the room better.

The printer was messing up, so I will need to try to print it again later, but for now, this copy is temporarily in the frame and the pictures are up on the wall.

Finally, I had found this Victorian print of a fowler snare online a while ago…

…and thought it would go well in the nursery. Printed it out, but I’m out of frames for now. Nonetheless, I fixed it above the fireplace to show where it will go and I’ll get a frame later.

So there you are…looks like the nursery is ready for its tiny inhabitants. Still need to make a quilt and some blankets and a pillow or two when I find the time, but for now…finally…I am declaring this room finished!

Six rooms down, only 16 to go…

Good night.

And here’s the bathroom…

Enjoy.

 

Went and bought some fabric for the nursery curtains… (amazing how cheap fabric can be when you only buy 1/2 a foot of it!)

Chose a dark bluish-green to match the swan motif and add a bit more color to the room.

Started by cutting out some window trim…

…stained it…

…created a couple window sills…

…stained them and started gluing the first sill and trim in.

Did the same for the back window.

Added the curtain rod for the first window…

Then started to make the curtains. Figured I would use the ‘fringed’ edge as inner trim.

Realized that if I hemmed the curtains, they would become stiff…so I used some non-fraying liquid instead on the edges.

Used the tiniest little slip stitch to create the pocket for the rod to go through.

Tried the first panel on the window…

Then finished the other one and put it up.

The tie-backs are just temporary…I will hopefully find something better, as well as arrange the pleats more carefully.

But for now, one of the sets of curtains is almost done, and they can blow in the breeze while the kids play with the cat and toss more books on the floor.

Good night.

Next in the series of photo shoots…the scullery, where I’ve added a few details: a flowerpot, an old box of soap, a clothesline, a broom, a dust pan…and the cutest little bottle brush that I placed on the windowsill.

(I also changed the photos in the previous “More colors” entry…took the new photos in natural light so the colors look right now.)

Enjoy.

Tried to play with the exterior colors a bit more tonight.

Started here:

Thought the green was too dark and the corner trim didn’t work in brown.  Plus the colors didn’t look very Victorian. After some experimenting I ended up with this:

Think it might work, so long as I use the lighter of the two greens on the corner trim. Still not fully committed , though.

Think I’ll sleep on it again.

Good night.

Did a bit of painting today. Painted the outside of the windows different browns and some of the siding green.

Placed them up against the back wall to see.

 

Took the ‘glass’ out and stained the inside of the windows as well.

Put them all back together and set everything up, including a couple corner trims on each side of the house.

Not sure I like the green color…I’ll sleep on it and see tomorrow.

Good night.

So it turns out the reason the electricity was not working right last time was because I had managed to blow the fuse in the power strip without noticing (or maybe it arrived in the mail with the fuse already blown…what do I know?).

In any case…new fuse and everything works fine now. No more dimming of the lights to the point that you can barely tell they’re on anymore.

So I got back to work wiring up the dollhouse. Even added a bit of solder on all the tiny brass nail connections I had made so they wouldn’t pull out accidentally over time.

And now all the bulbs can be hooked up to the power strip (which will eventually be housed/hidden in the foundations of the house) and the lights can be turned on and off easily.

Looks a bit messy, but all the wires will be covered with outside siding soon and none of the mess will be visible. The only lamp not attached is the upstairs hallway lamp, since I ran out of purple and orange wire tape. But I’ll get some more soon.

So the east side of the house looks like this in the dark.

Not sure if you can see it well in the photo, but the nursery fireplace is also lit up.

The west side needed a bit of work on one of the bathroom fixtures…

But I soon fixed it and all the lights work now.

And in the dark, the rooms really glow.

Tomorrow I’ll finish the nursery windows and try to get some curtains in there so the babies can sleep better at night.

But for now…good night.

New set of photos of the butler’s pantry.

Enjoy.