Not much to look at yet, but I have been making slow, steady progress on the Queen Anne rowhouse. The first task was siding. Usually I have sloppy edges because I know they’ll be covered with trim. Since this house has panels that open, I tried really hard to keep the edges that will be […]
Tag: Half scale (Page 18 of 22)
After last weekend’s impulse buy, my eagerness to get started on the Queen Anne Rowhouse was thwarted by my lack of any actual plans for it. I placed some orders for doors and windows and got some books about San Francisco painted ladies from the library, but much of the week was spent thinking and […]
Many moons ago, I saw an eBay auction for a half scale Queen Anne Rowhouse kit by American Craft. This kit was from the 80s and I hadn’t seen it before. It opened on three sides and I loved the building design, which looks like the Victorians common in San Francisco. The house is similar […]
The Little House in the Big Woods cabin is pretty much finished. I added basswood over the exposed edges of the plywood. Now all that’s left to do outside is a bit more weathering, to bring the color of the shingles more in line with the rest of the house. Now I can finally do […]
I’ve started furnishing the Little House cabin. I’ve collected several Cassidy Creations kits for this house and am also planning to scratch build some of the furniture. I started with the “big bed” and trundle bed. Little House in the Big Woods has a couple of illustrations that part of the big bed’s headboard, but […]
Shingling was the last big job to do on the cabin. When I glued the skinny sticks to the inside of the roof, something got off kilter so the roof wouldn’t glue on straight. Oops. The porch roof is supposed to attach to the front of the roof at a 45-degree angle. I glued a […]
In my last blog, I pointed out that the half-round logs that came with the log cabin kit make the corners look kind of silly. My dad suggested cutting pieces to glue to the flat edges, to make a “full” log. It was a bit tricky dealing with such little pieces, but I managed and […]
With the first floor interior of my Little House cabin finished, I moved onto the exterior. The Sugar and Spice kit came with a bundle of “half timber” logs that sit flush against the side of the house. They have to be cut to size. Initially I made the mistake of cutting almost all of […]
With the floor and walls of the main room “timbered,” I decided to try aging the wood while I could still easily get my hands inside. I have some Minwax slate gray stain (water based) that I originally tried on the raw wood, but it was too light. The ebony stain was proving to be […]
In the fourth Little House book, On the Banks of Plum Creek, a big deal is made of the fact that Pa buys Ma a cookstove and she won’t have to cook on an open fire anymore. In spite of this, in Little House in the Big Woods (the book I’m basing my Little House […]
So far, work on the Little House cabin has involved a lot of staining, then waiting for the stain to dry. On Sunday I started by staining the remaining house pieces. This might not have been necessary since I’m planning to cover everything with shingles or siding outside and skinny stick “logs” inside, but I […]
The Hillside Victorian dollhouse is coming along nicely, but after six months I’m ready to work on something else—something smaller. (It’s probably got something to do with the fact that the next step on the Hillside Victorian is to paint a zillion windows… not my favorite task!) I have several half scale kits laying in […]
Yesterday I painted the countertop for the Rosedale. I created green “granite” by smearing green, beige, white, and black paint around with a toothbrush. I really liked the end result… until I put it in the house. It just didn’t look like I’d envisioned it. The green was competing with the neutral colors in the […]
Over the summer I bought a bunch of kitchen cabinet kits from Bonnie Lavish. The first set went into the Fairfield. (And they turned out pretty nice, if I do say so myself!) At the beginning of December I finally got around to starting on the Rosedale’s cabinets and appliances (also Bonnie’s kits), but I […]
After painting my Fairfield’s fireplaces, I decided they should both be the same blue color rather than one blue and one green, so I went to the dollhouse store to pick up another blank one. I wasn’t positive that the ones in the store were exactly the same as the ones I had, so I […]
For years, the Fairfield has had unpainted resin fireplace fronts propped up against the chimney. I got in the mood to decorate the house for Christmas and decided the unfinished fireplaces would never do! I started by making hearths out of a polystyrene brick sheet leftover from when I built the house (I used it […]
Last week when I saw this tutorial from Antique Daisy for making a dresser with fake drawers, it inspired me to make one for the Rosedale. I’ve been looking for a tall skinny dresser that sort of matches the bed and nightstand I’d built from kits for the bedroom. The corner where I wanted to […]
My order of Bonnie Lavish kits included a counter top and sink. The sink is made of wood—three skinny cutout pieces that are glued together to create depth, and a bottom piece with “drains” scribed into the wood. The photo below shows the sink parts after the three cutouts were glued together, but before the […]
Recently there was a conversation on the Yahoo half scale group about Bonnie Lavish’s kitchen cabinet kits. She discontinued these several years ago but said she would cut some for people on the list who were interested. Since I have two half scale kitchens to work on—the Fairfield and the Rosedale—I jumped at the offer! […]
This weekend I assembled some furniture kits for the Rosedale. I’ve also been plugging away at the interior trim, but I’ll wait until it’s done to post pictures… it’s not very interesting progress. I started with the Mission style bed from Daisy House. (I happen to have this kit in 1:12 as well, but haven’t […]
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