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.
