Real wooden doll house floors.

In my mini house I wanted to have real wooden floors. But I wanted to find a way of doing it cheaply that would still look realistic and pretty. I decided popsicle sticks would be about the right scale and they also have a small (realistic) sized grain so when they are stained they look like real floor boards. Like I said in my other post, Tim cut the ends off with his skill saw for me. I used P.V.A. glue to glue them down. (That is what we call it in New Zealand, but if you call it something else - it is just that normal white glue.) Then when it had dried I stained it (two coats).

This first picture shows the left cupboard in the second floor back bedroom. I did this bit cause I thought it would be a mission to do after the back wall was on. Then I decided to do the whole floor cause I realised it would be a lot easier too.

Once I had cut all the bits to the right length and glued them down I put books on them to keep them flat. The books weren't heavy enough so I put my boyfriends diving weight belt on top. That worked well. It was so heavy the floor was sagging! I had just dry fitted the back wall so I could get the boards right along that edge.

Here are some more weights keeping the balcony nice and flat.

And here is what the floor looks like without any stain on it. I was quite stoked with the results.

This is the view from the other side.

And through the back wall window.

This is what I used to stain it with. Bondall Monocel Interior/Exterior Stain and Varnish in Cedar. I got it from Mitre 10. (The people at Mitre 10 are always very helpful to me even though I'm only building a mini house.)

Here's the finished result! (You can see where I have put masking tape around the bottom of all the walls.) 

After I had completed this level I realised I should really do the bottom floor too. So I did that next.

Here it is with all the boards glued down and the bay window masked in place.

And this is the bay window masked in place from the outside. 

This photo shows half way through the second coat of stain. You can see in the foreground that I have not done the floor in the bay window part. I will do this later as if I did it now I wouldn't have been able to remove the back wall anymore and I wanted to have easy access to paint most of the room. Next I need to paint a lot of popsicle sticks white for the skirting boards. (It is really expensive to buy proper doll house ones for a house this big.) 

If you want a handy tip for cutting wood on an angle try this. Just get a piece of paper and place it by the angled wall. Fold the paper over so it follows the line of the wall. Next take the paper out and lay it down on your piece of wood. Now mark it along the angle you have folded and cut it. 

You can also use a piece of paper if you need to measure in a small space that is hard to reach. Just put the paper in the place you want to measure, then fold it to the right length and take it out. Now you can easily measure the space just by measuring the piece of paper!

See ya later! Amy.

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.

Putting the windows in.

I havn't written in such a long time as I have been having problems with my computers hard drive and couldn't get my photos off my camera. I still havn't sorted the problem out propperly but I'm using a different computer for now.

So. I have put in all the windows. What a mission. First I had to hot glue all the frames to the outside wall of the window holes. That took ages, and of course when I painted them the paint sunk under the peices and covered up half of the writing I had put on the back of all the peices telling me what they were. So there was a bit of guess work involved, and a bit of frustraited removal of glued on peices, to go through, before I completed this step!

Here is one of the windows with the outer frame on. The frame is made up of 4 peices. The top curved part, the two sides and then the sill. When I had got the framing on I then had to go around all the edges and fill them as some of them were quite holey and they looked a bit rough. The next step was to glue the perspex window glass to the inside of the windows with PVA glue.

Here is what they look like before they go in.

At this point in the proceedinging I realised that 2 of the attic window panes were not in the pack. I emailed Greenleaf who make the kit and they said they would send me the missing peices. I sent my adress and waited for several weeks but nothing came in the post. Then I emailed them again and found out that their server had crashed (poor people!) and my email had been lost as it came though at that time. After that though they sent them straight away and I was excited to glue them in the other day. After the glass was in I had to glue the frames onto the inside of the walls over the glass. I had to do this with PVA aswell to prevent the hot glue melting the window glass. There were all these walls with heavy books covering all the windows (to hold the framing in place) all over my lounge!

Here are the walls with the windows in - I should do a close up shot so you can see the detail on them better.

While I was waiting for the windows to come I had a try at making a little blanket chest that I bought off http://www.minis4u.co.nz/ a bit shabby. I have been so inspired by reading other doll house bloggers blogs. Particularily Carolyn. You can have a peek at her blog here http://carolynslittlekitchen.blogspot.com/ It's fantastic! Anyway here is how I did it.

First I sanded it down.

Next I painted it light pink.

Then I painted it a really pale light pink.

Next I painted it an egg-shell blue.

And then I sanded it down a bit to expose some of the under-layers of paint and make it look worn. This is how it turned out.

The last three photos are better because I took them on my SLR.

I also painted the stairs white. It was a quite a mission getting into all those little corners. But the result looks good. Then I tryed my hand at making some miniature roses out of polymer clay and also some cute little bottles out of pretty beads.

The flowers are not done to scale. I was just practicing the technique of making them.

Here are the stairs. The little flower pots next to the chest, I bought off trademe.

And here's a pretty picture I took from out my dining room window the other day to finish off with!

Next I will be figuring out what to do with wall paper and lighting.

Love Amy.