Another Scratch Build - Day 3

Well an update to my Georgian townhouse project.  I sat down with it today for the first time in what seems like months, but I'm fairly certain is only weeks - if not just one week... regardless, far too long.  We've had a lot of rain the last two weeks, and that humidity has taken its toll on my plywood.  All the walls, including the front opening facade, have warped.  It made it quite a challenge to build up the box structure for this house, and I'm not entirely sure what to do with the front halves of the house.  There must be a way to flatten them back out, and I will find it.



This afternoon I dremeled out the channels for my wiring and, as previously mentioned, assembled the box structure.  I'm torn on how to tackle the entry way, I would like paneling but I don't think it would look right with the crisp white interior doors.  I also haven't decided on how to paper the interior, and until I decide that I can't build the frame that the hinges will attach to.  So many directions to go when you don't have an instruction sheet guiding your every step!

I did however decide on a colour for the front door, it will be quite red with brass fittings.  I even have a mail slot here somewhere in this crap-room to put on the front of it.  I also started working on the staircase but then ran out of the triangle wood I'm using for the steps, so tomorrow I guess I will have to go to the hobby shop along with the gym.  Luckily they are right beside each other.

I'm still not 100% sure how to attach the hinges to the front panels yet, I may have to thicken up / reinforce / flatten the front panels with columns of some sort so the screws have something to bite into, and that may be enough to take the warp out of the panels so they fit together again.  There is also the front garden to assemble, that may just do the trick too.

Every door should be red in my opinion

I'm finding the directions in this book don't make sense until you just sit down and do it, then looking back after several choice utterances, it makes perfect sense and you don't really realize where the last four hours of your life went.  I suppose it's just the way the English phrase their sentences - helps I've been Americanized!

Another Scratch Build

After some soul searching, and finally admitting I'm in a touch over my head with my first scratch-build, I decided that perhaps it would be prudent to start with something a touch more ... basic until my long unused carpentry skills are sharpened.

I had ordered a few books off Amazon.ca weeks back, and they're filled with projects that are primarily done in the European style (front opening) rather than the North American open backed style.  I've never really been fond of these, they tend to look like boxes with windows, and I'm still wrestling with that - unaided by the fact that I do literally have a 24 x 17 box that I'm currently cutting window holes into.

The project I chose as a learning exercise is the second project in the book, a seven room Georgian townhouse with faux basement.  Although seven sounds mighty large, three of the rooms are located in the attic and at best guess will be too small to function as much other than a bathroom.  I didn't realize the depth of the house until I was dry fitting the panels together, this thing is ridiculously deep and seems to not be making efficient use of space.

The author's goal with this project was to build a "home of a well-to-do family and that the rooms should be large enough to fit quite a few impressive pieces of furniture...".  Fair enough I say, but when you have a 17 x 10 dining room and not a thing to put into it, plus you have to walk upstairs to find a sofa to plunk your tiny butt on after eating, that just seems ridiculous (I currently live in a townhouse - not georgian - and it's nothing but stairs, this is a serious consideration in my mind).

Now that I have the panels cut, I don't want to go putting access doors everywhere on my very sturdy box, so I am tossing around ideas for a visual division of the ground floor room so it can be both salon and dining room.  My first attempt is pictured, the second option will be pillars .  I like that the division travels across the ceiling but I don't think I'm entirely sold on this idea yet either.

Yesterday I started with the base.  The one thing I do like about the front-opening style is that the structure is incredibly sound.  This is the first house that hasn't creaked when I pick it up - in fact there's no give to this thing at all.  Constructed out of 1/4" pine plywood it should stay relatively stable through the years.  The base tucks in between the exterior walls, and has a 1.5" recess at the front where I plan on putting my electrical panel for ease of access.

If anyone has built anything out of this book I'd love to hear your thoughts on the process.  I find I'm having difficulty following the instructions and images provided, they seem out of order somehow, and the author comes across as smug somehow (this is the only true way to do something or other...), but his designs are quite sharp.  The book is "Making Georgian Dolls' Houses" by Derek Rowbottom.  If you see a copy around definitely thumb through it!

Day 2 - Beacon HIll

After a week of procrastination I decided it was high time to tackle the 2nd floor staircase, which of course meant tackling the wallpapering as well.

The second floor is a much plainer room, less room for furnishings and only one light, it couldn't handle the floral wallpaper of the ground floor.  I opted for a stylized yet relatively simple fabric which was again mod-podge'd onto the walls.  I will be able to carry the single square around to the front wall, which means I only have to match one seam on this wall (score!)

Before the front wall goes on I also decided it would be a good idea to get the flooring started as my head doesn't fit in this house what-so-ever.  I'm going with coffee stirrers again, I liked the grain that comes out when you stain them, they are fairly cheap, and you can say it's real hardwood that's been installed!

The flooring is possibly my favourite tedious part of a house, it's just mindless enough that you can watch TV or listen to the radio while doing it, but not so tedious that your hands cramp and eyes cross after the first ten minutes. I may find it so easy solely because of my easy-cutter, I really can't imagine doing it without.

Beacon Hill - The beginning

I finally have a measurable amount of work done on the Beacon hill kit that arrived a few weeks back.  I can tell already this is a very persnickity build.  The two sub-assemblies went together rather easily, the stairs are complicated but all in all I can't say they were terribly difficult.  However getting the stairs into the sub-assemblies.. well that's a different story!

As I'm not one to build and then decorate, most of the work has been determining where lighting will go, how I will conceal it, and then figuring out the priority in which to get the paper on the wall and the paint on the ceiling!

I went with a floral fabric for the hall/dining room paper.  It's bold, but I am still reasonably convinced I can pull this off.  It lends an over the top victorian aspect to the staircase, and I'm sure that once the room is filled with dark furnishings it will be toned down considerably.

For some reason the photos always make the paper more yellow than it actually is, the background on this fabric is cream, not yellow - but you get the idea :)

As far as the exterior goes, I've been waffling between two styles of masonry, but I think I have finally decided to go with the red brick.  Every BH I've seen (with the exception of one) has had siding, so I want to avoid that at all costs.  So here is my inspiration photo, lol and I'm about to learn a lot about bricking in minature!

A General Update

I've been working non-stop on a few different projects, but no photo-worthy progress to report on yet!

In somewhat exciting news, I was given the perfect excuse to justify starting a Beacon Hill.  A friend of mine is getting married, it seems as grand an occasion as any to build a massive house, plus I have until July 2013 to get it done so it won't be a rush like the last minute christmas fiasco.

I also had a chance to sit down and sort through the last lot of miniature supplies I picked up on a trip for balsa wood.  It's been both a boon and a source of frustration that every hobby shop in this city is going out of the minatures.  I am getting a lot of supplies for next to nothing, but I am going broke buying these amazingly cheap supplies - and places to keep them.

The boxes contained numerous houseworks windows, hundreds of light fixtures, miles of wiring, several bulb extractors and wire strippers, furniture kits, glassware, furniture components, ceiling tiles, wooden shingles, siding panels, stripwood, landscaping materials - and there are still three boxes to go through.  Thankfully, Walmart just "rolled back" their rubber storage bins.  I picked up some lovely red ones for a rather reasonable sum.  I have just enough room for another stack of two, hopefully I will be able to store everything else in 6 drawers worth of space.

Also, I found some amazing dollhouse books from the UK on Amazon.ca, 2 of which arrived this week.  I now have several more projects to attempt.  My scratch build is on hiatus, I lost my drive on that particular project - I'm not sure if it just wasn't speaking to me, or if I was in over my head making something so very complicated as my first real woodworking project in almost 12 years.  Either way I'm going to scale it back a bit, the house has moved in to the furnace room so I'm not confronted with it every time I come to my work space.

Glencroft - Day 27

I'm on to the landscaping portion of my build, this is where I'm finding it difficult to keep the pace up, There is just so much to do and I don't know what to tackle first!  The last couple of days I have been working on the fence and yard on the house.  I'm fairly certain the light on the front of the house has been thoroughly destroyed by the cat so I have to figure out how to replace that fixture with the least amount of damage.

 The paperclay shrunk an incredible amount on the paving stones, I'm not sure why but I"m fixing the issue with moss and grassmat.   The shrub is actually supposed to be an orange tree.  the raised bed will be filled in, some gravel/soil and tiny plants made for a kitchen garden.

 Overall, i just need to find the window frames for the upstairs west window, I still haven't had any luck tracking them down.  I may have to raid the second kit in the garage - but then what would I do with that one!

Scratch build - day 6

I finally got my newel posts up.  I had bought some a while ago but they got lost in my craft mess, decided after three days of searching for them it actually would make more sense to just go buy new ones!

Tomorrow, with any luck, I will be able to install the railing and balusters.  some trim work on the side of the staircase (I haven't decided how to treat the sides yet) and I will start staining these bad boys.  It's such a relief to feel like I'm doing something on this house again.

Scratch build - day 5

I've actually lost count of the days because I've been picking at this house between other tasks / while procrastinating going in to the office.  I don't know if it's burn out from the christmas house in such a short time or if I'm actually stuck on what to do next, either way it's extremely slow going on this little house so far.

I have been working on the staircase in an attempt to get something which looks authentic and is "functional" (as functional as a 1:12 scale staircase can be anyway).  I have the risers in place and now i'm attempting to figure out where on earth I put my newel posts!  I have a vision of these stairs of flowing arches with Victorian opulence oozing off every tread, and I have a saw and glue, but I haven't the faintest idea how to achieve it!

My next small step will be cutting the second floor - once that is done I can make my lighting plan and start getting some wallpaper up - once I hit that point I think the process will resume it's normal faster than lightning pace.

This house is much, much larger than I had originally planned it to be, I think I may be getting overwhelmed!

Glencroft Table and Scratch Build Progress

I have been spread between two houses today.  I started with a table for the Glencroft to sit on - just to get it off the floor if nothing else.  The kitten had far too easy access to the house while it was on ground level.  The table has some work left on it obviously, I'm going to dress up the table top a bit - I struggled to keep the design somewhat simple to go with the "basic" style of the house.

The centre of the table top was cut out so the wiring and fuses are still accessible.  The benefit to the table is that I can now do some landscaping!  The house oddly doesn't seem nearly as big now that it's elevated.

On my scratch build, it was a two steps back day - I had to knock down the walls I had up and rip the base in half.  I cut / added a 5 inch spacer to give a bit more room to the hallway and living room. Now I play the waiting game until the glue has fully set.

Scratch build - Day 4

Dear readers I am ashamed to say that in my haste to build this next house I ignored two cardinal rules.  The first of these rules was "measure twice, cut once" - the second, and possibly the most important - dry fit.  With my front walls glued firmly in place I came to realize that the measurements on my hallway were all wrong.  Nothing about these measurements was at all correct.  Had i completed my foam core dryfit I would have realized this.

My hallway was supposed to be 7.5" wide, this allowed room for the stair kit I have which is 2.5" wide.  I'm not sure why something didn't trigger when I realized that my double door kit was too wide - regardless my beloved front wall had to come off tonight and now I have to figure out how to cut my base without taking down all the other glued and nailed walls so that I can add a spacer of three inches.

I wrestled with putting a "tower" on the back of the house but in the end I knew that I wanted to have visibility of the hallway, and if it was only 4" across it wouldn't be very impressive at all.  Two steps forward and one step back it seems!

I will have further news once I figure out the best way to cut my base!

Scratch build - Days 1 -- 3

 Now that I've had some practice on three kit builds I have decided it's time to put that humongous bundle of windows and doors to good use and make my own house from scratch.  To the right is my inspiration photo from a set of blueprints dated in the early 1900's.

I have no idea how I'm going to do the roof on the tower yet, or how to tackle the bay windows (mainly because I have to fashion my existing windows into skinnier versions of themselves) but I will cross that bridge when I get to it.

Day 1 was spent making a pattern out of foam core in an attempt to conceptualize the house.  Now that I'm in the middle of the build however all this has gone out the window - at this point I find myself winging it and I have no idea where to put the stairs!  There have been a couple of points where I found myself longing for a kit build so I could feel like I was making some progress - but today I got a table saw and it's sped things up considerably - I am now making straight cuts and not spending hours sanding the wood down to square up corners.

Access to the two "tower" rooms will be from a side opening much like in the Lily kit.  If I get truly adventurous / confident I will hinge a wall there so when the lights are on it doesn't cast strange light all over the place.

So far I think it's managed to avoid making "a box with windows" - that's the one type of little house I can't stand.  I'm not sure what it is about them that drives me mental - maybe because I think anyone can build a box.  I love the Greenleaf kits because none of them, even the colonials, have such a boxy look.