Chim chim cherie!

I finished the chimney on the Whitney/Primrose.

I glued the bricks onto the frame, trying to alternate them to look like a real chimney.



Once they were all glued, I used tile grout between the bricks.

Not bad for my first try at brick-laying.

Balcony railing.

Bay window, shingled.

Front view,with shingles painted.



Bannisters, railings, and shingles!

Disclaimer- I haven't made much progress lately, due to the surgery on my hand a week ago. I had "trigger finger," which isn't nearly as amusing as it sounds. I'm hoping that by next weekend the incision will be healed and I'll be back to better-than-normal.

At any rate, work does progress (slowly) on the Whitney/Primrose house.

Front view, partially shingled. Sadly, the shingles look very zig-zaggy, which is really not what I was aiming for. I shall repaint the pattern after I finish shingling.

So I was working on the porch railings.
This is what happened to the ones that came in the kit:

They totally fell apart when I tried to remove them from the sheet of wood. Plus, I thought they looked too blocky, especially on the bedroom balcony.

I got Houseworks spindles and porch railings from HBS, and employed my stronger-than-me-with-actual-working-hands husband and the Easy Cutter to help cut the railing.

I painted the spindles thusly:

This took several days - paint, touch up, realize I needed more spindles, paint, touch up, and finally, glue to the porch.

I think they turned out rather nicely. I'll do the same for the bedroom balcony, which is on the left of the above photo.

A 3/4 view. I am very pleased with the way these look.
And a bit irked with myself that I didn't paint enough spindles for the bedroom balcony.

Just for the heck of it, here's the back view.

A very tiny house, and progress.

The Whitney/Primrose has a nursery.

This weekend, I made a tiny house from a kit I got on Ebay. I was at camp - I brought the kit, glue, tweezers, and colored pencils.

The colors would have been sharper and I could have added more detail if I'd used markers, but all I could find were the colored pencils. I think it came out OK. The manila envelope it's sitting on is 8 1/2 x 11, if that gives an idea of the scale.

I have been working on doors. Installing them. The little metal hinges don't work worth a darn, so I cut up a rip-stop Express Mail envelope and made hinges. Gluing them to the doors and the door frames has been a challenge, and I won't know how successful it is for a few days, at least. I had doorknobs for two of the doors. I found beads that seem to work for some of the doors, but they are very hard to attach. I'm not sure they are on firmly.

I had to re-sand some of the door frames, for the doors to fit.

I had already installed the stairs. I am working on the railing, with variable success.

The brown railing upstairs is not yet installed. I will try to replace it with something a bit more delicate.

 I had made stained glass on the front door - not bad for a first try, but not fantastically good either.



The three (four, really) upstairs doors. Door knobs are the next step.

This is the side of the nursery. When I put it together yesterday, it became clear that I had no clue how to measure and cut the parts I changed. I will have to fill in the space, probably with foam core papered over.

The back roof part is another oops - I papered the wrong side. Once I have shingles on, it should be ok and no one will know.

There's still a fair amount of spackling and touching up. I have several roof pieces to attach, paper, and shingle. It needs to be mounted on the base, landscaped, and furnished. Parts of it are coming out fantastically well, and other parts have gone horrendously wrong - I'm having a great time with this build.

I love it when a house starts to come together.

The Whitney/Primrose build is making fantastic progress. I really need to come up with a better house name. Hmm.

Anyway. The siding is complete.

Tomorrow I think I'll work on installing the doors. I'm thinking about skipping the downstairs porch railing. I think it'll look better with just the corner post. Maybe a two-step stairs in front of the porch, as well as one in front of the kitchen door.

The upstairs porch and the balcony will need railings. The ones in the kit seem really cumbersome. I may try to make some with wooden kebab sticks.

I put together the flowers for the windowbox.

I used foam core, with florists foam glued onto it. I spread glue on the foam, and dipped it in the coffee grounds. The flowers and greenery are from batches of cloth flowers I bought at various craft stores. I dipped each stem in glue, and stuck it into the florists foam. Once dry, it simply sets into the windowbox. This makes it easy to change out, if I decided to put in, say, Christmas flowers.

This is the view of the stairs through the front door. The railing that came in the kit does not fit the stairs. Possibly because my construction of the stairs is a bit off. (Plus, I have apparently misplaced the finished railing.) I may be reconstructing the handrail and upstair railing. I would like it to be a bit more delicate. I'm going to install the doors first, though.

I decided early on to leave off the shutters. And, to leave off the canopy thing over the balcony. I'll be shingling the bay windows. It's getting to an exciting point, where soon I'll be ready to decorate. Yesterday some of my mini orders were delivered. I had found two awesome sales on the battery lights. 40% off, which essentially means I get two for the price of one. I got a living room floor lamp; an outside streetlamp; a ceiling fixture for the bathroom; and a wall sconce for the bedroom.

I also got two tea sets, a set of dinnerware, garden gnomes, a teapot, and a few items for the Fairfield. I had fun filling the dining room hutch.

I am really thinking that I will use more modern appliances in the kitchen. I have a refrigerator that needs to be painted, and another sink. My stash of kitchen cabinets - some are oak, some are white. It'll take a little experimentation. Still clueless about the living room, too. Bathroom, bedroom, dining room, nursery - those are all fairly well set. There will be minimal landscaping on this house. I had the base board cut not a lot bigger than the house, because the house itself is not small.

Siding/clapboards

I've spent the last three days putting cardstock siding on the Whitney/Primrose. The color is a bit paler than I had intended, but it was a really good deal.

I am liking the cardstock siding. It's easy to cut, easy to glue, easy to adapt to the different sizes and shapes I need the "boards" to be.

Here is the kitchen side. This went pretty smoothly.



Corner of the kitchen side. The upstairs room will be the nursery. I'll be figuring that out later - combining the two roofs, putting in the molding. I've decided to make a curtain door to this room, as there isn't enough room for a real door.

Kitchen front. Still need to finish the door frame, and put up the window box.The right side is the dining room on the ground floor, and the master bedroom is on the second floor. I need to put the railing on the upstairs balcony, and of course, hang the doors. The bay window needs a bit of fussing, too.

The right side of the house still needs the "siding." I've a bit of door trim to put in, doors to hang, and I need to make floors for the porches, as well as put in the railings.

On the kitchen side, I finished the corner by gluing a half-inch strip of paper, which had been scored through the middle lengthwise. I think this really makes the outside look smooth. I'll do the same for the other corners.

 

I'm still concerned about the kitchen furnishings. The house does not seem to like the old-fashioned stove, or the ice box.

The foundation of a foundation, and some tiny furniture

I began work on the Whitney/Primrose foundation. I painted the foundation area gray and dark gray. I spread watered Tacky glue on the area, and used paper clay to make little rocks that I smushed onto the area.

And a close up.

I still need to paint the "rocks" with grays and browns, and to paperclay the back side of the house. For which I will need more paperclay.

I had a bit of a lightbulb moment last night. I had been wondering what to do about the interior doors, how to frame them. Suddenly, it struck me - Cardstock. Tomorrow I will work on the door frames.

I got a package today - the 8-piece half-scale parlor set I bought on Ebay. I'm trying to stock up on affordable half-scale furniture before I start building the Fairfield (haunted edition).

The two beige chairs and the brick fireplace were part of my mother's collection. The rest is the Ebay set. It's all sitting in the bedroom of the Whitney/Primrose, just for picture-taking purposes. Plus, I opened the set and thought, "Holy crap, is this half scale?" It just seemed awfully small. It does seem to match what I already had, though, so I guess the size is right.

Here are two of the beds I have scored on Ebay lately, also half scale.

I contacted an Ebay seller from whom I'd bought a comforter set for a 1:12 bed, and asked if she ever made half scale sets. I could probably dress the beds myself, but I would end up spending twice as much on materials, and I'm not exactly Betsey Ross here. My sewing skills are not fantastic. I sent Michelle - the Ebay seller - the beds' measurements tonight. I'm pretty excited about having her make the bed sets. She does a fabulous job.

More plants, and a couple of peculiar photos.

I made another plant.

This one is meant to be sort of a palm. It's planted in a copper plumbing doodad - I have no idea what it's called, but I believe it's a piece meant to cap a copper pipe. Or something like that.

In any case, the plant is made from masking tape and florists wire, with florists foam glued into the "pot," which I spread glue on and dipped into my stolen coffee grounds for the dirt effect.

The next plant is in the works - floral tape this time. I'm flirting with the idea of doing a smaller plant, but time will tell.

Tomorrow these leaves will become a plant. Which, I think, makes me very much like God, since that is usually his job.

Besides making leaves this morning, I framed two photos.

I could not get a clearer photo of this. Although it's hard to see, the photo is of my father a very dashing young US soldier in Austria in 1946.

This one is a bit clearer. It's children waving to the train carrying the US soldiers through Austria, in 1946.

I picked up the oval frame at one of the craft stores in the scrapbooking section. Makes a lovely dollhouse frame, and I have not been able to figure out how to make an oval frame. I'm all over the square and rectangular frames, but oval is far beyond my skills.

The back of the Whitney/Primrose house. The dining room has an odd glare in the picture. I have not yet put the roof on. I did paint the foundation gray/dark gray, and my next project is to make paperclay stones for that foundation.