It’s been a little while since I worked on the dollhouse. Helping a first-grader do schooling online has become a full-time job. But today, I thought I’d fix up a bench for the downstairs hallway.

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I was thinking of having a bench under the stairway in the front hall, but the ones I found were all too big.

So I decided to cut this one through the middle to make it fit.

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I cut out a center section of the bench.

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Then I sanded both sides so they would fit together well.

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Before gluing the pieces back together, I stained the bench.

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Then I glued it together and used extra strips of trim to cover the cracks.

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After it dries, I’ll varnish it so it becomes shiny. I’ll probably also add a few more trim pieces to balance out the design. But for now, it fits beautifully in the area under the stairs.

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I’ve also acquired more furniture for the library over the past couple months…

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…as well as some furniture and musical instruments for the music room.

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Time for bed. Good night.

Tonight I started by printing out some watercolor paintings by Louise Rayner, that will hang in the library. She was a British artist who produced watercolors of landscapes and cityscapes in England from around 1860 to 1910. The owner of this house has collected quite a handful for his library.

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I taped them up to the walls to see the effect. I may use a couple smaller frames instead of the big one by the fireplace, but we’ll see.

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Then I took some late-blooming roses which I had picked from the garden last week and allowed to dry.

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I crushed up the petals and placed them in a tiny glass jar, to make a lovely potpourri.

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I placed it on a whatnot in the corner of the drawing room. I also added a fan and a throw on the settee. Makes it look more lived-in already.

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Then I started staining the trim for the front door. I needed to match the trim that was already around the door itself, so I tried out a new “Honey” stain I had bought for the purpose.

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It seemed pretty close. (The original is on the bottom and the newly stained trim piece is on top.) So I started staining and then coating the trim with polyurethane. And then glued the trim into place, after widening the window areas so I could trap the “glass” between the front trim and the trim that would go behind it.

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I also cut out acrylic panels for the “glass” windows. (I kept losing these every time I put them down somewhere because they were so clear….!)

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Next I stained the edges of the illustration board just in case, so there would not be any white showing on the edges of the glass.

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And I placed the doorway back onto the house.

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It was getting late, so I didn’t have time to draw the “leaded” pattern on the window panes. So I’ll leave you with a close-up of some of the Louise Rayner paintings, as well as the collection of oddities that the owner has been slowly adding to the top of his bookshelves.

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Good night.

Probably no work on the dollhouse today since I’ve been battling migraines for the past 24 hours. But I did want to share an exciting addition that came in the mail today.

For a while, I’ve been putting off doing the entrance hall because I did not want to have to make the staircase (I wanted it to have fancy carvings and I don’t carve wood well at all). And so far, I’ve only found miniature staircases that look like “dollhouses” staircases, in that they don’t look realistic enough for what I wanted. But I recently ran into a company, Miniland in Canada, that makes the most amazing staircase. And so I ordered one and it just arrived…it exceeds all expectations!

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The design means that I will have a lot of extra room under the staircase that I hadn’t planned on, so I’ve got some thinking to do.

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It comes with a matching balustrade to go around the second floor opening, so I won’t have to match anything to it for that purpose.

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So there’s the staircase issue completely resolved. On to other things next time I get to work.

Be well.

Exhausting first week of school, so I didn’t do much tonight except dream and plan. One thing I decided was that since the only way we will be looking at the entrance hall will be through the front door, we would be able to see more easily if I added a transom and some sidelights. So I started cutting out the shapes for the sidelights.

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These will be on each side of the front door.

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Then I cut some trim which I will need to stain the same color as the trim around the doors.

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And cut out the transom.

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Then I doodled a bit to figure out what designs to add to the windows. Came up with something somewhat inspired by the design on the doors.

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Placed some bricks on top for the full effect.

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Not sure I like the designs on the sidelights. But I like the one in the transom.

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Inserted the door with the cut openings into the house.

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So we should be able to see the entrance hall through the sidelights…

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…and through the windows in the doors.

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That’s it for tonight. Sleep well.

Last night, I used what illustration board I had at home to start making walls for the last section of the first floor. I didn’t have much, so I only got a few done. Hopefully I’ll get some more in the mail soon.

First the entrance hall.

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The staircase will go up the right side there. The door in back goes to the dining room. The right doorway goes to the sitting room. And the opening on the left goes to the library.

Then the library…

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…and then the dining room.

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There will be more walls in the front there, to make the bay window area. But that must wait for now.

And here’s the whole side together.

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I received a fabulous room divider for the entrance to the music room on the second floor. Just placed it in to see how it will work.

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So here’s the house for now…not very impressive from the outside since I haven’t gotten to that part yet…but you get a good overview. There will be a large porch across the front.

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I would say goodnight, but I didn’t manage to get this posted last night…so be well.

Operation move the dollhouse to Philly one piece at a time so it’ll be there safely by the time the movers come for the rest of my things is underway.

Started with the back section this weekend.

After packing up all the little miniatures inside, I had to separate it from the rest of the house…

…and bundle it up snuggly in the back of the car.

(With just enough room for Cider to ride alongside…luckily he’s a very calm road-tripper.)

Everything came out safe and sound on the other side.

And happily, I have enough photos of the rooms (on this blog) that I could put everything back in place quickly and easily.

I haven’t posted anything for the past five weeks….that’s because I haven’t made any progress on the house. I seem to have under-estimated how exhausted this pregnancy was going to make me. After working and teaching and getting through the basic necessities of life, I don’t seem to have any energy left in the evening to design and make miniatures.

But I do have a plan in mind for the design of the drawing room floor, and the drawing room fireplace arrived in the mail….so hopefully I’ll get to it soon.

Until then…be well.

Drawing room…the room where women ‘withdrew’ after dinner (hence the name), so the men could sit around and drink and talk politics or other such things.

Which makes it the most feminine of the formal rooms in the house…and although out and out pink has never been my style, I think I will concede a little here and use a pale peach tone among others.

So here is my inspiration photo for the drawing room (on the left), as well as for the less formal sitting room which will lead into it (you can click on the photo to make it larger and easier to see).

The idea of the stenciled ceiling especially appeals to me, being very late 19th century, although I have no idea how I’ll pull that off yet.

In any case, I started with the walls I had already cut out for the room. (The furniture and chimney here are not right, but I can’t seem to find exactly what I want online and I happen to have these laying around, so they will have to do for now.)

The peach and cream cloth in front will be used for the curtains for those windows propped up on the sides.

I started adding studs to the north walls, as well as cut out a hole for a window.

Placed those where they needed to be.

Did the same for the west wall, enlarging the archway which will lead to the dining room.

It’s late, so that’s all I’ll do tonight, but the south walls still need to be done, and then I need to start thinking of a design for the parquet floor.

For now…good night.

Started by cutting out the pieces to finish off the final floorboard on the landing and more of the wainscoting.

Had to cut them twice to make them fit properly. Then stained them and glued them in.

The second flight of stairs needs a set of wainscoting, but I can’t really do that until I’ve added the next floor, so for now, the stairs are done.

Next I added the light for the pantry.

Which will look like this with the stairs in place.

And like this with all the lights on. (There will be a light for the second flight of stairs, but once again I have to wait until I build the next level to put it in.)

Then I started to cut out the pieces for the pantry shelves.

I was using this photo as inspiration for the brackets under the shelves…

But when I got them done…

…I decided they were too bulky for that tiny a space. So I cut out pieces of trim to use instead.

Cut out and prepared the long shelves as well…

…then glued all of them onto the walls and filled them with tins and jars.

With the stairs laid back in place (I’ll glue them when I get to the next level), the pantry will look like this:

And the stairs like this:

Here’s a view of the pantry and of the pantry as seen through the kitchen doorways:

And the entire side lit up:

I need more things on the shelves and leaning against the wall under them, but for now, I’m declaring this room done.  Seven rooms done, seventeen to go…

Good night.

So tonight I decided to cut out the baseboard for the second flight of stairs, and do it correctly this time…

It takes a long time to carve out the slots for the treads and fit the trim to each of the steps.

Then the other side.

Stained them both…and placed the stairs in place.

Doesn’t look like I did much, but all that took quite a while. More finishing touches on the stairs and some shelves to add in the pantry tomorrow.

For now, good night.

Created the treads for the stairs tonight.

Stained them and glued them in.

Placed it in the stairway.

Then I traced out the baseboard trim…but while I was cutting it out, I realized I had cut out the part I wanted and left what was going to be just scrap-wood. Guess I might be a bit too tired tonight…

So I’ll just stop here.

Good night.