Merry Christmas!

From my dollhouse, to you: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

And for those of you who are Lehmans, or those who have a sense of humor that would earn you honorary Lehman status, here's a shot of me installing the lights

Merry Christmas!!!

It's Aliiiiiiiiiiiiiive

I bet you all thought I'd forgotten about this, didn't you?  I find your lack of faith disturbing* (bonus points to anyone who gets the movie quotes in this mad rambling)  Summer hit with a vengeance, and I decided that the dollhouse can be worked on any time, but my swimming pool is only useful for a couple months out of the year.  And then swimming season gave way to traveling season, and traveling season changed into social month.  Winter changed into spring.  Spring changed into summer.  Summer changed back into winter.  And winter gave spring and summer a miss and went straight on into autumn.  Until one day...**

I came back to the dollhouse project! 

I started "installing flooring" (also known as gluing down paper)

and I used almost all of the sheets I had already drawn lines on.  And that was almost a third of what I bought.  I just hope I don't run out of paper! 

I also stained all my pretty new woodwork

You'll get to see more close-ups as it goes into the dollhouse.

I finally glued in the third floor wall and attic floor

And when you fail at overcoming gravity while waiting for glue to dry, why not use the glue bottle to prop the board into place?  Also, if that lightbulb up in the attic ever burns out, I think it's just going to stay burned out forever.  It's even more cramped up there than this picture indicates. 

And now, dear readers, I share with you a bit of a thought process.  I logically waited until after I got all that flooring glued in to stain the trim.  Logically.  Because I'm brilliant.  Err... umm... then I realized that...

I really don't like how pinky-gray the floor looks next to the oak-stained trim.  It looks even worse in real life, but it's hard to get the color balance right on a phot when you have three different kinds of lighting hitting your subject.  Hmm... what to do...

Stain the paper!

What do you think?  The floors and the baseboards still won't be exactly the same color, but I think it looks a lot better with the paper stained.  Don't you?  I need to cross my fingers REALLY HARD and hope that I didn't get too much glue on the top of the papers I've already put in place. Stain doesn't soak into glue.  That's the reason that I logically should have done the staining before I did the gluing.

Next up: figure out how to miter the corners.  Mostly, figure out how to do it without buying expensive equipment.   

Answers to the movie quiz:
*Star Wars (the first Star Wars movie... one of two good things to happen in 1977... the other being my birth)
**Monty Python and the Holy Grail
***That was actually a freeze-frame from an old episode of The Muppet Show, circa 1976.  Dan and I made plans to see the new Muppets movie last weekend, so I had Netflix send me a little sumpthin to put me in the mood.  Also, the movie was really good.  It started out a bit slow, but once all the Muppets showed up, nostalgia and over-the-top silliness led to a good hour of happiness!

And I just realized that this whole post was apparently brought to you by the 1970s (Holy Grail is from '74)  Peace!

Three Day Post

I've been working on this post for three days now.  Want proof? 

See, today is Thursday and there on my laptop is Tuesday's spacewalk.  I always wanted to be an astronaut.  (Okay, I'll wait for the "her head's already in outer space" jokes.  Are you done now?)  But the last shuttle mission took off without me, so I had to sit in my house and work on the very highest level of my dollhouse instead.  Trust me, some of the ceiling work would be a lot easier if I was in microgravity!  It's hard to stand on your head and paint up in a corner.  Don't forget, clicking pictures should give you a closer view.

Let's get back on topic... there's also a new light

The little midget outlet is adorable as all get out, but kind of a pain in the rumpus.  Well, it's not the outlet's fault.  I had to wire the itty bitty plug on the lamp's cord and I don't know if it's operator error or design flaw (no comments from the peanut gallery!) but I'm having fits getting it to keep working.  It'll work once, then I unplug it and plug it back in, and it doesn't work.  *sigh*  Yeah yeah, I know, quit unplugging it!  But I haven't decided where that lamp is going to live yet.  And if I can't unplug and replug, then what's the point in the outlets?  It's really no more difficult to hard-wire lamps in place.  But I'm off-topic.  Look!  Wallpaper!

Yes I ripped off the banister around the staircase hole.  It was bothering me.  Over the years it had gotten warped and at first I didn't care, but the longer I stared at it the more it annoyed me.  So I yanked it out and am squishing it flat.  Technically, didn't "yank".  I stole Dan's hair dryer and melted out the hot glue.  I hope I didn't get any glue on his dryer, or he may have a new way to make his flat-top stand up tomorrow morning!  And then I will be in trouble. 

More wallpaper!

The wall between the two rooms and the bedroom ceiling/attic floor piece are obviously not glued into place yet.  But I had to show the justification for the wallpaper spontaneously stopping 3/4 of the way up the wall!  I didn't just get lazy.  I promise.  Yes the angle thing at the right side is supposed to be white.  I put ceiling paper on that.  And the wallpaper-stopping-height in the library was, well, mostly because I wasn't going to be able to go all the way to the top without patching paper, one sheet wasn't tall enough, so I just changed paper entirely. 

There isn't a whole lot of rhyme or reason to which parts I designated "ceiling" and which parts I designated "wall", but it all makes sense in my head anyway.

That was Tuesday.  This is Wednesday.  One more room up on the third floor.  Well, the bathroom is also not finished, but I still don't know what I'm doing in there, so the girl's room is the last one I can work on up there for now. 

Here's a lovely before-and-after, all in one shot:

I'm going to have to make new bedding, I don't think the baby pink will work anymore. 

It's a good thing I didn't do this room first, I probably would have just given up on the whole thing!  I had to cut 10 different oddly-shaped pieces of paper (4 purple and 6 white) to do this room, and I still fudged a little.  You see that small cross-section support up at the top?  Yep, just painted that.  And did a terrible job of cutting around it on the paper.  Don't have any pictures of that.  Do have a finished picture of the room.  Don't mind the weird "dent" where white and purple come together at the bottom of the angle-ceiling.  I'll hide that behind furniture or something. 

Technically, not a "finished" picture.  The wall you can't see at all because it's facing the same direction as the camera is not finished.  I have all the white pieces cut out, just need to cut one rectangle of purple and then paste them all in.  But it was my bedtime last night and I was tired of pasting my fingers together. 

And that's how this has become a 3-day post. 

One last thing.  Look at what my FedEx guy brought me!

So many lights!  And yet still not all of them.  I have one more order on its way.  This place is going to glow like the sun when I get it all wired.  Well, except just when I got that lamp plug and outlet working again, the hanging lamp over the pool table quit working.  So maybe I need this many lamps just so I can have a few that will actually light up.  *sigh* 

Also, I just realized that I accidentally ordered two sets of bedside lamps for the parents' room.  Oops!  Gotta go see which ones were cheaper and which company has a better return policy.  Bye for now!

Stop And Smell The Roses

Except don't really smell them.  You'll be sorely disappointed!

I just realized there's still a sheet of plywood laying on top of the dollhouse.  I'd forgotten it was there until I saw this picture.  Hmm.  Anyway, is it too difficult to see in this picture?  If you click on the pic, it should load a larger view. 

Or better yet, I'll zoom in!

I'm so proud of my little flowers.  I don't actually know if they're roses or not.  I made them using the technique for creating roses out of fondant for cake decorating, but I only got about a third of the way through the process per flower before they were the right size and I had to stop or I'd have ended up with goofy too-big-for-scale flowers.  They're almost a rose/tulip hybrid.  Or something.  I don't know.  Wanna see one close-up?

Yep, I made that all by myself!

I filled the boxes using some stuff from the model train room.  I cut pink foam insulation to fill the inner space of the boxes:

That wire thingy just melts right through the foam.  Also, the entertainment of the day on the laptop is Futurama.  If nothing else, this blog has shown me just what a complete and total nerd I am!  Anyway, I ended up with little rectangles, which I then topped with some plant-life-colored ground cover model train stuff:

Because seriously, I definitely didn't want any Pepto-Bismol-pink showing through! 

Then it was just a case of gluing on the flowers and leaves. 

Here's a couple shots of my new gear box, mostly full of clay but also the tiny knitting is towards the back:

It's oven-bake clay, so all those blocks of unformed clay stay soft, but the flowers and leaves are rock-hard.  Yay!  I thought I'd made enough for all 5 window boxes, but I just barely got 3 done before I ran out of both flowers and leaves.  One day soon I'll have to make more. 

Okay that was probably way more than anyone ever wanted to know about making polymer clay flowers, but I'm tired and a bit delirious so you all get bored silly. 

The other exciting update is that I got a new kitchen set!  Here it is, in my real kitchen:

The egg carton is waiting to go to the basement too.  It, with about a dozen of its brothers, are soon eventually going to become a new stone chimney for the fireplace.  More on that later.  Much later.  And yes, the kitchen came with two pieces already broken off, but it was an easy glue-job.  All better!  Pictures of the set inside the dollhouse will come later.  I still haven't decided exactly how to arrange the room.  I'd come up with an idea before the stuff got here, but it doesn't quite fit right in the space... so I'm back to the drawing board.  I have options though!

Haven't done much lately in the way of papering the walls.  I need to place an order for more lights first.  I did finally get the last of the wallpaper though!  Well, technically still don't know what I'm doing on two walls of the bathroom.  But I got everything else.  Just haven't gotten much work done, I had a busy week of actually being out and having a social life!  I know, shocking.  But today is gray and rainy and I can either do real-house housework or I can work on the dollhouse.  Tough call!  Only not really.

Starting at the Top

It's a special Memorial Day posting to The Dollhouse Project. Okay there's really nothing special about this post compared to any of the others, except a heartfelt thanks to my all-time favorite veteran, who also happens to be the builder of the dollhouse. Love you!

I have two ceilings covered and I think I'm up to 6 lights now. Wanna see?

The first three lights:

And just because I like to be obnoxious and draw on pictures,

We've already zoomed in on the carriage light on the outside by the front door before. But here's a close-up of the other main floor light from the inside of the house:

Cool huh? There will be ceiling coverings, wallpaper, and flooring. So the almost 50 ft of tapewire I put in the house won't show when it's all over. Yes I said I put almost 50 ft of tapewire into the house. I might be insane! But I'm veering off-topic. I think that lamp is just perfect for over a pool table. Oh, I also had to fix the chain because it had broken. And I bought an adapter so I can just plug the lamp into the ceiling instead of hard-wiring it in. It's removable now! I should have taken a picture of that. I will when I do the ceiling in there. I also should have taken pictures of the process of fixing the thing and installing the adapter. That took an ENTIRE afternoon! Luckily the dollhouse is in the basement and we were having 3 waves of severe thunderstorms that day... I just spent the whole day in the basement. Working on the dollhouse.

Wait, did I just say "luckily we were having severe thunderstorms"?!? I totally did not mean that! Oh seriously, you know what I meant.

Anyway, moving on to the other light from that first picture. It's the ceiling fan in the parents' bedroom. I've decided to not even bother worrying about what era this house is... because any house that has a ceiling fan in one room and a high-tank toilet and wringer washtub in another room is just a mish-mash of this that and the other thing. I like everything in the house so I'm not worrying about it! Also included in the following picture is the bare bulb on the far side of the bathroom.

Oh, so much to explain! At the bottom of the picture is the ceiling fan, also with a shiny new plug-n-play adapter. The upper room is the afore-mentioned bathroom with the bare bulb. That end of the bathroom is going to be the laundry space and I just thought it needed the random exposed bare lightbulb with a pull-chain on it. Haven't installed the chain yet (and the chain will be for looks only, that's an always-on-if-the-house-is-on wiring job) but there's the light. There will eventually be another light on the other side of the room, over the bathroom sink. Also, please note my fancy ceiling covering. Now you can't see the tapewire anymore! It's the kind of paper that grown-ups make watercolor paintings on. As opposed to the Disney Princesses coloring book that children make watercolor paintings on. Here's a bit of a zoom-in, you can see the texture of the paper:

If you click on the picture, it should make it even bigger. I'm so excited for ceilings! (the color balance in the picture is a bit off, the paper really is pure white) Those are the only two rooms where I've finished the ceilings. I don't want to do any more until I decide whether or not there will be lights in those rooms. And if there are, until I have decided what and where.

I'm really the queen of sentence fragments, aren't I?

Poor grammar not withstanding, let's move on to the last light I'll be showing in this post. First of all, a picture of the upstairs space after I busted out the partition wall.

Don't worry, the wall is coming back. Actually I built a new wall so it will fill the space all the way. The original wall had openings on both ends. So I'm rebuilding. Actually I have rebuilt. You'll kind of see it in the next picture, although it's just sitting in place there. Not actually glued in yet. But it does exist! And I've been hanging around Dan too much, I said "actually" three times in one paragraph.  A good writer would go back and edit that.  Nah.

The other thing from this picture is the white paint I put on the ceilings/angle walls. I had hoped it would cover and I could just call that good. But, as you can plainly see, even three coats didn't cover the tapewire. Ugh. It would have been so much easier to just paint than to have to measure the paper, cut, remeasure, cuss, throw away, get a new piece, measure again, paste, hold in place while the paste dries, get paste on the outside of the paper, cuss.... well, you get the idea. But I do admit that the textured paper looks way better than paint would have. Also I have no idea why the bathroom sink and the loveseat are in there. This house is currently a mess. And my previously referenced second light to go in the bathroom will only be put over the sink once the sink is actually in the bathroom!

Wait, wasn't this supposed to be about the light?

I know, kind of boring. Just another bare bulb. But once I put that horizontal board in... you know, this one:

(as seen in this post: Demolition!) that space will just be attic, and bare bulbs are perfect for attic spaces. Of course that means I'll have to install more lights in the room below the attic space, but did I mention I ran 50 ft of tapewire through the house? I bet I can make it happen.

There is one more light in place, but I'm not showing it yet. It's a bit of a weird thing and I don't even know if I'll be able to pull it off, so I'm saving it for later. I'm such a tease!

However, I do have a couple other randomly unrelated things to show. First of all, I fixed Doll Mom's head. Isn't she lucky?

She still has a massive hole in one side which I need to cover with hair and/or a bonnet. But at least she has a complete face now.

And speaking of Doll Mom, I'm having this need for her to have a knitting basket. Whether it will end up in her bedroom or in the living room remains to be seen. Or maybe even the music parlor but probably not. But I do know she will have a knitting basket, and it needs to be small scale, and I'm a bit obsessive. So, I spent some more of that tornado time in the basement seeing if I could knit in small scale. I had purchased the smallest knitting needles I could find (smallest in diameter... they're still like 8" long which is taller than Doll Mom, I'll worry about that problem later) and some DMC embroidery floss and... well...

It's still a bit too large for scale, but that's no problem. I used all 6 strands of floss for this one, if I drop to 2 or 3 strands it should be just about right. One might be too small. But I made tiny knitting! Go me :)

And last but not least, here's a preview of something to come. Not the next post, but somewhere along the line. A floor!

There are so many things wrong with this picture. First of all, this is in the wrong room. I just shoved all this stuff up in the third floor boy's bedroom and library room which are still missing their divinding wall as of this picture. That's why the wallpaper seems to be angling back towards you. It really is! Secondly, I don't even think I'm going to use that wallpaper in the living room. Or either of the rooms where I made this display. I just wanted to make it look a little, well, finished. The focal point of this picture is the floor! I found this kind of brown-ish paper with tiny faint dash lines on it, and I drew all the board outlines on it to make it look like hardwood floor. Genius, huh? Just 13 more sheets of paper to draw on, and I'll have a whole house worth of floors. Here's a closer view of my work. The paper is a little lighter colored than I had in mind, but this is about the 5th thing I've tried and first that has looked anything like a wood floor so it's good enough for me!

Anyway, I think that wallpaper is going to go in the parents' bedroom. Maybe. I'm having a little trouble deciding what to put where. And I only have three rooms worth of wallpaper so far anyway. And I may end up doing carpet-like flooring in some rooms too. I'm still in flux!

Well that's all for today's ramblings. I'm leaving on vacation in a few days and will be gone a week, so no new updates for a while.

Chim Chiminey, Chim Chiminey, Chim Chim Chiree!

I finally finished the chimney and put it back on the house. 

Hello there!  Oh how I love the Doctor.  *drool*

Sorry, I seem to have gotten a bit sidetracked there.  Also, I'm totally writing this in a British accent.  You just can't hear it. 

Anyway, wanna know how I did the bricks on the chimney?  I think I had a moment of brilliance.  The last thing I wanted to do was to measure off a bunch of tiny rectangles and paint them with a little brush.  That sounds like work, and I'm lazy.  No, wait.  Not lazy, "resourceful".  Yep that's it!

I took one of my foam brushes, cut out a piece of it that was the size I wanted the bricks to be, cut a slit in one end, and glued it to a skinny stick.  Instant bricks!  Dab in the paint, dab on the chimney.  I'm feeling brilliant, momentarily.

Okay that's enough with the conceited attitude.

I've also been making progress on the wiring.  No, really!  I swear, I have!  It's just taking forever.  I want to do this so it'll last, because I'm going to wallpaper over top of the wiring and I don't want to ever have to rip out the wallpaper to get at the wiring to fix something.  So, I'm taking my sweet time and doing it as well as I possibly know how.  It helps that technology has improved a lot in the last 30 years.  I read that tapewire was invented in 1976 which means it was still pretty new when Grandpa went into the house building business.  Lots of changes since then. 

I actually have all the tapewire in all over the house except for the girl's bedroom and a couple little extra pieces if I decide to put switches in.  I did learn how to wire switches, so I can turn rooms on and off.  But I'm having an inner debate on whether or not to actually do it.  Anyway, here are a few pics of the wiring work:

That's an in-progress picture.  Also, Chick-fil-A Diet Lemonade on the top floor, and Mystery Science Theater 3000 on the laptop.  The lemonade's in the styrofoam cup, I may love Chick-fil-A Diet Lemonade but not enough to put it in a wine glass.  The wine glass is there because it's holding all the little brass nails.  This was fairly early in the wiring process.. I ran a line all around the base so I can put in outlets for Christmas lights, and ran the main line up through the middle of the house.  And I've started in on the main floor in the previous and following pictures. 

I had to prop a Mag-Lite up on the loveseat so the light would shine on my work.  Wiring is tedious and dull, and even worse in the dark.  (sorry about the upskirt shot on Doll Mom, I had her out to measure how high to place things and she's taking a nap right now) I possibly put in more wiring than I'll actually need, but you can always have extra wiring sitting around doing nothing, and like I said before it's just about impossible to add any more wiring after the wallpaper goes in.

Hey look I finally got the outside light wired in!  (poke the picture to make it larger and see the extremely fine wires I have to work with.  it's a bit crazy)  (on second thought, you can't see the wires... maybe next time I'll take an even closer picture)  Oh, speaking of wires, I forgot to mention this earlier:

Did you know if you have hot glue on something and you want to get rid of it, you can just hit it with a hair dryer and it'll soften up?  I got all the old wiring out from under the house.  Yep, that's the underside of the dollhouse. 

And here it is, the moment of glory.  I put in the tapewire, I push in all the little 1/8" brass nails to make the connections, I turn on the power cord... and I hold my breath while poking the wire with the electric tester.  And look, it lights up!  Whew!

Moving on to the second floor:

I sure now how to use a lot of tapewire, don't I?!  I actually ran out before I finished.  My kit had 45 ft... FORTY-FIVE FEET... of tapewire.  And I ran out halfway through the third floor.  Seriously.  I worked until I had to quit.  I put in a few extra little pieces to places I might someday want a light, so that took extra tape.  And the double line in the above picture is because the one on the left is the main that goes through all three floors, and the one on the right is just for the kitchen lights.  I had to do it that way so I could put a switch in if I want to.  I already own one switch, and I think I'll definitely use it in the kitchen here.  I have most of the other rooms set up to put switches in too if I want to, but I'm not sure I'm going to.  Maybe.  We'll see.  I did take the time to put all the extra tape in, I might as well put it to good use.  But I need to buy more switches.  And do the extra work.  So, yeah.  We'll see.  But first, I need about 5 feet more tape, and some hanging light adapters so I can make them plug-in instead of hard-wire.  Easier replacing in the future. 

Random subject change: I'd been having an inner debate about the kitchen set.  (second time I used "inner debate" in this post.  allow me to translate... inner debate = talking to oneself.  don't ask)  Part of me wanted to replace it because it doesn't really go with the rest of the house.  It's all plastic and... plastic.  And 1970s.  But there's another part of me that's wanting to keep as much of the original stuff as possible, and is also a tightwad.  And I didn't want to spend the money on a new kitchen set... especially since the one I really like is $70.  Yeah.  So I studied the old set, and started thinking about how I might be able to make it less 70s, and disguise the fact that it's all plastic.  And I actually was getting things figured out.  Right up until I realized that:

Even with her not-yet-repaired busted skull, Doll Mom is WAY taller than the cabinets.  It's like a kid's playset for a doll.  A decision was made for me!  New furniture it is.  Now if only I can find something I like that isn't $70. *sigh* 

Well this post has been a random hodgepodge of unrelated things.  So I guess the only thing left to do is to sign off with a non-dollhouse picture.  Dan and I made ground goop for the train layout last weekend.  We're building up the hillside where the elevated track goes.  I think the train layout is going to have to stay with the house forever, there seems to be some goop on the walls.  Funny thing is this is kind of dollhouse related because ground goop was the inspiration for dollhouse stucco.  Different color, different scale, same idea. 

On that note, I should go be productive in my real house.

Help, I'm Stuck... Oh!

No, wait.  Stucco.  Yeah that.  Not stuck at all, in fact I've made a lot of progress. 

Dollhouse got a makeover!  Check out this beauty:

Okay picture quality may not be the best.  And don't zoom in too much, I still have a ton of touch-ups to do.  And I still need to do some landscaping and put flowers in the window boxes.  But... well.... look at it! 

It all started with an attempt at homemade stucco:

See, there's a funny story.  I could buy dollhouse stucco.  It would have cost me about $40 to buy enough for my entire house.  Or, I could buy $6 worth of white paint, $1.99 in fine decorator sand, and use the Celluclay we already had for the train layout.  Look at me being all economical!  In fact I could have used paint I had around the house too, but my only white paint was semi-gloss and I wanted flat.  Anyway, it only took about 300 attempts to get something that actually resembled stucco (instead of resembling random bits of sand stuck to a plain flat wall) Thankfully I had the brains to test on a spare scrap of wood instead of the house itself.  In any case, once I was happy with the spare wood, I tested again on the doghouse.  (the white on the dollhouse in the background of the above pic is just a base coat of plain white paint) 

Once I got all the walls stuccoed, then I painted the timbers brown.  Here are a few more pics:

*Still haven't done anything about the chimney issue.  I've had a change of heart from the original plan.  Wait, did I already say this?  Crud, I can't remember anything.  Well, the plan now is to stick the original chimney back on there where it was, and put either a wood stove in the music room or a small fireplace in the parents' bedroom or both.  And then build a new chimney for the other side of the house to go with the fireplace I put in the living room.  Well, I will be putting it in the living room.  The house is completely gutted right now. 

Now that I'm done with painting, I hope Dan will have time in the near future to build a new table for the house.  It's been sitting on that crappy ancient card table forever, and the table's getting a little swaybacked.  Which means the turntable doesn't always spin so well.  The turntable is fine, but the edges of the card table get in the way.  And Dan's really good at making sturdy tables, he made a bunch for our train and for my dad's.  I think he comes by the woodworking naturally, his dad is really good at it too!  Dan's is a bit more industrial, his dad makes furniture and decoration and stuff.  Check out the new nightstands he just made me! (warning: non-dollhouse picture)

I'm such a spoiled daughter-in-law!

But I digress.  Coming soon to a dollhouse website near you:

No, not quite.  Close, but still missing something.

That's it!  There's a welcoming light on the front porch!  Before anyone gets too excited though...

Yep, that's me all hunched up behind the dollhouse making a rather redneck connection... the light is wired through the walls, but the tapewire isn't in the house yet.  I'm holding the cables from the transformer up against the lamp's dangling wires on the backside of the wall. 

But I did successfully install the wiring for that lamp!  I know how to create light.  Next up: actually putting the tapewire in the house.