The cupboard under the stairs (and other doors).

Putting in miniature hinges is a mission! I nearly went crazy attaching the door to the cupboard under the stairs (it was a really awkward shape to attach the door to and it was my first try at doing this). After trying unsuccessfully to push the teeny little nails into the holes in the hinges while trying to hold them in place with my hands; a job better suited to an octopus than a human, I lost my patience and decided it would be best to go and pat Bethell my cat to calm down. After that calming exercise I decided I would glue the hinges in place with the hot glue first and then make a hole though the hinge hole to get the nail started. I had until this point been using tweezers to hold the little nails by the nail head (resulting in several going pinging across the room never to be seen again) so I changed tactics here too and held them just below the nail head. This worked much better. 

Now... Photos.

These first two are of the cute little cot I bought. I am going to make it even cuter though.

Here's the original cot.

Then I painted it blue. You will have to wait to see what I'm going to do next to it until another post though as I haven't done any more to it yet. Don't you just love surprises?

This next one is showing how I have marked where the holes should go through the hinge using a very fine tipped pen and am now using a pin to make a small stater hole for the tiny nail to go in.

Here's the first tiny hinge attached with tiny nails. That took me ages. This is before I lost my patience and began gluing the hinges first.

There are no photos after that step as I was too busy trying to get everything put together. But here is the finished result! Yay! 

Closed.

Open!

Here's a close up of the door.

I love the cute little door handle. I made it from a pretty glass bead. I then pushed a jewelry pin through it and made a hole in the door with a pin. Next I pushed the jewelry pin through the hole and trimmed it. Then bent it over and I had a little door handle. 

This next set of doors took AGES! There are the two cupboards to do and then the two french doors. Mission. Anyhow, here they are finished. (There is now a 'crack' in one of the french doors where I accidentally sliced into it with my craft knife.)

Yay, they work!

Yay, these ones work too!

Next I intalled the door between the bedroom and the hall on the second story. As you can see in the photo, there is a huge gap down the side of the door as I sanded it too much so now I have to make a new door. Sigh.

You can see how bad it really is from this side.

And to finnish off with, here are the two removable bay windows that I made while I was waiting for the hinges to arrive. My boyfriend Steve really likes these.

And that is all for today. I have done a few more things but I'll tell you about that next time. 

Bye!

Progress

I have been very productive in the last week. I had been trying to decide if I would wallpaper or paint the house and had decided to wall paper. I chose out some papers I liked and then after all that decided to paint instead. So I did 3 coats of white paint on all the walls that had windows or doors in them. But the plywood just kept soaking up the paint and it didn't look that good. So then I sanded like a made person and it still didn't look that good. So I went and got some Gesso and painted them all with that and then sanded them all down and gave them two coats of paint and finally they were done. (After I had done the Gesso on all the walls I had originally started painting I realised that there were other bits that needed painting too so I then had to repeat the process for them. ) Here are some of the bits drying against the ranch slider, trying to soak up the afternoon sun.

And here are some of the tools I needed to paint the walls.

Here are most of the pieces when they are waiting for their last coat of paint.

And here they all are leaning up against the ranch slider drying. (It is now covered with little lines of white paint which I must scrape off. ) The tissues and the bowl of water are there to clean all the dust from the windows after the sanding dirtied them up.

Putting the first four walls up and the second floor.

Next you were supposed to install the staircase but I don't want to put it in until I have installed the door for the cupboard under the stairs. I can't do that yet as I am waiting on some hinges. I was going to make my own but changed my mind as I just wanted to get on with the house building.
So next I put in the wall that has the kitchen entry door in it and realised that there were a few walls that I thought were exterior that are actually interior...

So I had to go through the painting process with them and they now look like this.

Next I installed the tower. There were a few walls that had to have their other sides pained for this part too as I didn't realise both sides were interior. I love the tower.

Here is what the second floor looks like inside.

And here is the first floor.

Next I went around the house and installed all the door frames that I couldn't figure out where they went before. That took quite a while. Here is the kitchen entry door. The next thing I decided to do was to go around all the doors with No More Gaps so that it wasn't so obvious that there were three bits of wood stuck together. So this photo is before.

And this one is after.

These photos are from this morning. Just to show where I am up to now.

This picture shows the cupboard in the back bedroom. I can't go on until I install the cupboard doors on this as it is not glued in yet and I think it will be too tricky to attach the doors when the next floor is on top of this.

This is the big space in between the cupboards and will be french doors.

I have glued down the floorboards that are inside the cupboard under the stairs so I could stain them before the stairs are put in. (They are Popsicle sticks that my friend Tim kindly cut the rounded ends off with his skill saw. I taped the sticks into stacks so lots could be cut at once.) These sticks I cut to the right length using a little saw and a small mitre box.

So now I am eagerly awaiting the delivery of my hinges so that I can keep building the house. There are a few little things I can do to keep me occupied until then though.
Bye.