Progress pic with the painted roof & porches. Need to work on the railings.

My picture didn't turn out too clear on this one. New dining set and billiard table.

Finally, some progress pictures...

Chimney, unfinished

The difference between the new brick and old

 I mentioned that I had run out of brick paper for the fireplaces in the Fairfield. The picture on the left is of the fireplaces and the last bit of unfinished chimney.

When I reprinted the brick paper, it came out quite a bit lighter than what I had used before. You can kind of see the difference in the picture on the left (the chimney on top is the new paper, the fireplace below is the old). I think the stuff I used before may have been printed on my other printer that I had to replace when it died. Anyway, I decided to just redo all of the brick so it would match. I still need to redo the insides of the fireplaces and the hearths, but here's how it looks right now. I think I actually like the lighter brick better anyway, so I guess it all worked out.

New brick paper

Extending the tower walls

Since I wanted to open up the third floor tower room, I had to add some wood pieces on to the tower walls to make them match up with the roof on that side of the house. Here's the extensions installed. I need to add another piece of siding and paper the inside of the tower room still.

Bathroom, billiard table, dog & cat.

Also, I just received some halfscale furniture and animals that I had ordered for the house. Here's the 'eyecandy'...

 I love the itty bitty little dog and cat. I don't have any people for the dollhouse yet, but I have animals.

Look how tiny!

Now if I could just get the house finished enough for them to move in. :)

Waiting for the glue to dry...

I have been working on the Fairfield the past couple of weeks, a little bit at a time. Nothing really worth taking photos of at the moment though. I got the attic walls papered and the round windows painted and installed.  Hubby helped me cut the hole in the roof and pieces to extend the walls of the tower room. We're getting those glued into place today, then I can wallpaper the inside of those walls, do the siding on the outside, and get the windows installed. We'll also get the front tower wall glued into place hopefully today, then we'll be able to work on the 2nd story balcony.  I ordered the railings for the balcony last week and they were delivered on Friday. I still need to figure out what to do about the chimney than runs through the attic space before I can glue the roofs into place. There's still a lot to be done but at least it feels like I'm making a little bit of progress.

Slow going on the Fairfield

No pictures to share, but it's been a while since I posted so I thought I'd give a quick update. I have the roof pieces painted and ready to install now, as soon as I cut an opening for the tower room. The dining room floor has been glued in. The warped wall is now glued on and clamped and hopefully it will stay in place. One staircase is installed, but I still need to do the railings. I also need to figure out what to do about the top part of the chimney. I thought I had enough of the brick paper I used on the fireplaces, but found that I don't have enough to cover the whole thing. And when I print out more it doesn't match exactly. I wish I'd done the whole thing at the same time so I could make sure everything matched (there's my TIP for the day... if you're using printable wallpaper / brickwork, make sure you have enough for the entire project). Some of the things on my to-do list to finish the house include the following:

• "brick" the chimney in the attic
• install the 2nd staircase and all the railing
• cut opening for tower room
• install small windows on the tower and circular windows on the other walls
• figure out how to finish the 'foundation' that shows at the bottom of the house
• tower roof
• porch and 2nd story balcony
• mantels for the fireplaces

I really like the look of this house but it's been a bit of a pain to put together. The wood is hard to work with and it hasn't all fit together correctly. Plus I made things harder on myself by deciding to 'bash' the kit in several ways. It would be easier as well if I had a dedicated workspace for assembling it. Right now it's on a little table in my front room so it's kind of in the way and I don't have a lot of room to spread things out. Luckily my kids are old enough now that they pretty much leave things alone when I tell them to.

 Anyway, there's my random rambling for today. Hopefully I'll have more progress to report next time. :)

Dry-fitting the roof

I hit a snag on the stairs and won't be able to finish them the way I'd like until I can get some more supplies. But I wanted to keep working on the dollhouse, so I did a dry-fit of the roofs. What I discovered is that one of my walls is pretty badly warped, and several of the tab-and-slots didn't fit together very well. We trimmed things down and got most of the pieces together okay. The warped wall will need to be strongly clamped when we glue it on, but I think it will turn out alright.





Part of the reason I wanted to fit the roofs was to get a better idea of how it all goes together so I can decide whether to make some changes to the tower & roof. There's a little room at the top of the tower that is closed off from the rest of the attic if you build the kit according to plan, and I think that's just silly. I think we're going to cut a hole in one side of the roof to make that room accessible so we'll need to make some changes to the tower walls too.






It's starting to look a little more like a house now, but there's still so much left to do...

Staircases

The staircases are assembled, thanks to some help from my hubby. The shorter staircase goes on the 2nd floor, where the ceilings aren't as high. Now we just need to put them in the dollhouse and add the posts at the top and bottom of the railing.

Oh, and I mentioned before that I was trying to decide about the interior trim on the kitchen and bathroom windows. I decided to put the trim on so that all of the windows will be the same.

So I'm making some progress, just not very quickly.

Stairs

Last night I spent a lot of time painting the spindles for my stair rails and I think I figured out part of the reason I never seem to finish any of the dollhouse kits I've worked on. I really don't like painting. It's not that it's a really awful task, or that I hate it with a passion or anything. It's just so tedious! Especially on tiny little things on 1/24" scale stair rails, or fiddly little window frames. Maybe that's why most of my dollhouses have wallpapered interiors.

At any rate, the first coat of paint is on now. I think I'll need to sand them down and do another coat (bleh!) to make it look more smooth and finished looking. Then I just need to fit the staircases into place and I can move onto the next task. I'm so looking forward to finishing this house!