Forward planning.

Well the glue is holding, Lily feels much more secure. I need to find some time and space to sand and paint the stair pieces and door frames. I also need to paper parts of the back and right-hand "half" walls. And I really should do something this week as Indy is on half term at my parents and the house is quiet, but I have a stinking head cold and am feeling lazy...

It did strike me though, as I lined up an impossibly bent left-hand wall (and wondered how on earth I would be able to weight it down as I glued it in place, given that the right-hand side has the bay window) that before I fixed the wall in place I would need to skirt and cove the rooms, my hands may be small but will never fit round walls and through doors once the main access is gone. So, I am drawing up a to-do list of all the things I need to prep and get in place before I finish off the walls. More painting in store, but it will buy me some time to think through the glue/weight issue! It is also a good chance to go through each room and snag them - the bathroom corner walls for example are gappy, not matter how much glue and pressure I apply, so I am looking at some remedial papering. Other papers need trimming and a little repair; gaps need filling and the ceilings and floors need touching up where the tabs have slotted in.

And my thanks once again to the Greenleaf Forum, I haven't been very active there the last few months, but I have spent hours surfing thorough their posts looking for ideas and info and basic sound advice - a great bunch of truely talented and wonderfully helpful people!

Glue, glue, glue....

Now that the bay window is back on and dried, Glen and I went around every joint and seam and tab slot on Lily and ran a bead of glue down them. I am going to leave it to dry for a few days as I'm learning to do and see if it feels any sturdier. I also glued the last remaining frames, which had fallen off, back on.

I also punched out the internal door frames, banisters and stair rails, and the back and right walls; the R&P begins!

Looking at a 3D object instead of lots of single pieces gave me a real sense of completion and in some ways it feels a little like a backwards step - but then I think about the porch and all the work involved with that and I know I have so much more work to still do...

Cat-astrophe!

Lulu and Rascal are in so much trouble! We've had some very unusal wintery weather and neither of my cats like getting their paws cold so they have been going a little stir crazy. I generally don't mind their running, around launching themselves over the furniture, but when Rascal (big, fat, tonne of a tomcat Rascal) decided to use Lily's bay window as a launch pad there were bits of bay flying in all directions... :(

It has brought my major worry about the Lily to the fore again, despite gluing in all the places I've been told to glue, she does seem very fragile. A little thought and research required; I don't intend to let her be played with, but I don't want Lily to be a "no go area". It would be sad if she just sat in glorious isolation because I'm too nervous of her fragilty.

and finally, my favourite rooms...

Once the twisting and taping and gluing was finished, and I had calmed down! I had a good look at the interior of the house and I am so pleased with it; I've used some very interesting and bold wallpapers and seeing them all in one space and working together is really satisfying. Here are pictures of my favourite rooms:

The bathroom with it's Basic Grey Archaic Rock paper:


The main first floor room:and the kitchen with it's perfectly matched geometric "tile" pattern, I love the contrast between the wall and the floor:
I'm also keen to see how the attic rooms come together, but they need a little more work before I'm happy to post pictures of them!

and part 2...

On a slight high after all my work this week, I could not wait to put Lily together this weekend. Almost 4 months after starting part C of the instructions, I could finally able to assemble the house structure!

It didn't quite all go as planned.... All I will say is that these simple words:

Place house in upright position. Interlock left wall into first floor using respective tabs and slots. Once it is in place, interlock tabs and slots for second and third floors - (G). Interlock left wall tabs into front walls - (G). Set aside house structure.

Caused a whole heap of hassle!

Even with tabs and slots all cleaned out and sanded back, nothing seemed to fit. It took two of us the best part of two hours to get the house in some sort of order. Every floor twisted, the central partition twisted and the front wall was so curved across the center that it stood nearly 5mm away from the first floor tab! Glen bravely helped me and as we were wrestling the panels into place over half the external windows fell off as well; I didn't know whether to laugh, cry or throw the whole thing out of the window ....there was a great deal of swearing involved!

We also had to skip straight through to part E 1-7 and installed the partitions and stairs out of order and as and when we needed them to prop up/push down/straighten/etc. any other part of the building.

Glen then played Twister with the house whilst I started to glue tabs etc. We couldn't glue the front on immediately as we had masking tape holding the floors in place on the front side of the building. Once that glue was dried I turned the house onto it's back and glued and weighted the front wall down. I then put one side and the front of the bay to right the floors as they were still twisting up; oh and I glued the windows back on too! Finally I taped the porch floor into place as it was curling upwards.

It's been a long time... pt.1....

I don't know what quite what I did between Halloween and Christmas but it certainly didn't involve Lily! We were so busy that I packed her all away for safe keeping; it was so lovely to unpack everything again after Christmas and this last month I have made so much progress. My laptop's been out of commission so I have not been able to write any posts but I now have my shiny new, rebuilt, laptop (complete with Office 2007!) and a file full of pictures of my progress.

So, here goes...

Painting the ceilings:

Once I had the floors all stained, I decided to paint the ceilings. I wanted a smooth finish to mimic the look of plaster and had planned originally to use wood filler but then found a tub of Polycell's Smooth Over and decided to try that. A test patch worked and I found that I could brush it on which gave me much more control. As it dried I removed any excess and used a wooden skewer to unclog the tab holes. Any Smooth Over that got on the varnish wiped off easily with a damp cloth. It sanded off beautifully and I finished them with a coat of white emulsion.

please ignore the giant pile of ironing!

Finishing the R&P of the windows:
Last weekend my boyf and I decided to have a really lazy couple of days which was perfect for cracking on with some of the more laborious jobs left to do before putting Lily together. I started off by finishing the remaining window frames and sills, door frames etc. Never my favourite thing to paint but I managed to take over half of the kitchen table and get everything primed and first coated in a day.

Glen was engrossed in his new PS3 game so I took full advantage and took over half the living room as well... I was able to finish the wallpapering - a job I love though I do become obsessed with lining everything up perfectly!

Because I've used scrapbook papers, with a couple of the patterns where there are no matching edges it has been interesting if I need a length wider than 12" but I am pleased with the results; particularly the bathroom where I've used Basic Grey's Archaic Rock paper. The pattern is oversized for a dollhouse but I think it works really well; there's a picture of the room later.

As you can see, I was well supported in my hard work: the cats resisted playing with everything and Glen's patience didn't quite wear thin ;o)

Over the course of the next week, I put the window frames on - internally and externally. My initial concerns about the paint are being realised, every piece seemed to be a different shade of offwhite! So I invested in some very good artist's brushes and decided to paint a final coat on the windows once they were glued in. The internal ones are now all installed and painted; just the externals to paint but I decided that they could wait till after the house was put together... It's very satisfying to see some real progress; I'm impatient to have a 3D house to work on now!