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!

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.

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!

Working on Lily again!

I have a week off work so in between Halloween costumes (I made great Marilyn Manson hair for my boyfriend today!); Murder Mystery costumes (the following Saturday, I'm a Geisha, thankfully a Kimono shouldn't be too hard to make at short notice...) and generally catching up on the housework, I have finally got back down to working on Lily... hurray!

I started work on the floors today; I was lucky in that the wood was good quality and the same colour on each floor so I have decided to stain them with the Sandolin that I used on my decking! It's a natural colour with only a hint of stain and contains restorers and preservatives; as Lily's wood can be quite dry (sitting under a bed for 7 years will do that..) I wanted to try and do it some good as well as decorate.

I'm pleased with the results, the grain has come up beautifully - a coat of varnish and they should shine! I have also decided not to try and create floorboards, something I was very keen on before my dollhouse hiatus. I spent hours researching how to score floorboards, but when I looked closely at the wood before I started to stain, the grain was long and wide (especially on the ground floor) and I think it would have looked odd squeezed into 12 scale floorboards. I will instead concentrate on getting beautiful, shining floors which I think will be just as effective. Now I'm going to finish the rest of the wallpapering; I want to do it all, whilst the walls can be laid flat and the patterns matched as accurately as possible. Then I need to start painting the coving and skirting; again, I think it will be easier to cut and prep for installation before the walls are put together - it's going to be a busy week!

The joy of repetition..

It may just be me, but I find a welcoming quiet in repetitive work and I am getting plenty of it in the sanding, filling, sanding, painting, painting and painting (with a little more sanding and filling in between!) of the 85 pieces to finish the majority of Lily's windows (part B in the instructions).

It was a struggle to get the pieces out, most of them needed some TLC (as the pictures show) and there were a couple of breakages. The sheet that held all of the casings and pediments was particularly bad, thankfully I had a duplicate pediments sheet so where breakages were too bad to repair I was able to replace them all. There was a huge sense of satisfaction once the sanding was all done and things looked better!

Before:
After:

I painted two coats on everything and have started assembling various parts before a final fill, sand and third coat of paint. The corner blocks I blu-tacked onto newspaper - they held fast and I didn't need to be too careful or fussy when painting!



Slightly off topic, there was huge excitement earlier in the week when I finally bought a Willowcrest dollhouse! Buying it also helped me finally decide the external colour scheme for Lily, so all white trims for her. The Willowcrest will indulge me and take a stronger colour scheme, so I can leave Lily to a quieter scheme: a soft green, white trim and extra railings on her roof lines - I'm thinking New Orleans pretty!

Speaking of paint, I had a slight panic with the white paint I have been using (an off the shelf, good brand, white satin). When I matched up the windows (painted a couple of months ago) with the newly painted frames I noticed that the windows were off-colour. This sent me shooting round the house, and I have a lot of full-size repainting to do as all my newly decorated skirting and doors are also discoloured! I was shocked as I have always been a huge fan of this paint and I'll have to see how much I need to do to repaint over it - I doubt anything as simple as just a coat of another brand's white satin will do the trick! I was also in a panic about the dollhouse as it would be far less easy to paint over everything, especially with plastic in the windows etc. However, I have reached a compromise, I held the green I've chosen for the siding up against the off-white and it works better than the bright white does so I am going to take the chance. I am touching up all the windows as I put the final coat on the frames etc so that everything starts again at the same colour and then I will let fate take it's course and hopefully not be kicking myself in a few months time!

Panic slightly abated and buoyed up on the success of the near completion of the sanding, painting marathon, I started to put up the wallpaper. I may be being a little pedantic, but each section of wall is being measured and a template drawn up before I cut the final sheet, I don't want any mistakes and I'm working hard to join the patterns too as a number of them are quite bold and I don't want bad joins to detract from the overall look.

I am using normal wallpaper paste which I blitzed to ensure that there would be no lumps and which is mixed by eye to a thicker and drier consistency that I would normally use. I then paste the wood and leave it for a few minutes before putting the paper on and the system is working extremely well. Also, most of the papers that I picked are heavy-weight so I'm having no issues with bubbles etc. The only (bubble) exception has been the stripes, but I am not changing it! It was hard enough to find in the first place as I wanted a striped paper as I'd decided to bash out the wall between the hallway and downstairs main room and needed a wallpaper that would sit well in such a large space and also be quite calm against the stronger kitchen and bathroom wallpapers (Basic Grey's Archaic "Rock", I just love those Klimtesque circles!)





In rooms (i.e. the kitchen) where the wallpaper covers slots for other walls, floors etc. I was originally going to cut out the slots but thankfully realised in time that doing so would leave an unfinished piece of wood visible right in the middle of my wall! I am particularly pleased with the kitchen, the pattern is so pretty and the join onto the back of the staircase is perfect.

I can feel the house coming together, it's lovely to see and spurs me on to do more. I'm now going to start to paint the skirting and coving so that the walls will be complete for when they are slotted together.

Time flies..

The summer holidays are so busy I've not had a chance to do anything on the dollshouse lately and I've missed it! Once the first batch of wallpaper arrived I was able to choose the rest and I am generally very pleased with my purchases... including all the extra "I'll just have one of those sheets" which I've added to my general stock! I have also decided not to put any lighting in Lily, I was looking forward to trying it but couldn't find any lights that I liked. Best not to do it, rather than put in something I will not be 100% happy with.

I'm back to part B, R&P of the first batch of walls, all visible ends I am sanding, filling and painting white. Then the wallpapering starts and I am jumping around like a kid at Christmas in anticipation. I also have a lot of window casings to R&P too, plus all the sills, casing bottoms, pediments, corner blocks... and much the same for the doors...