Roughing It

     It doesn't look like much yet, but here is the front porch project. I used 1/2" plywood sheets from the Michaels store for most of the club's porches. It was expensive, and I had some left-over 1/2" plywood that I had purchase at a lumber yard/do-it-yourself store.  So, I used that instead. It doesn't take much effort to see the difference in quality.

    The surface veneer above the left window and the front door popped loose in the cutting-out phase of construction, and even other pieces may eventually pop off of the frame for me. Fortunately, that will all be covered over and no one will ever know (except you) how crummy it looked!

Another thing I did to save on production costs was to make the angled roof section out of a couple of smaller pieces of plywood. I then pieced them together in the center, and glued a piece of plywood to help support the joint where the two pieces meet. You can see small dark oval spots along the edge of the roof area, just above the windows and door. Those are pocket screws. This requires a special tool (jig) which helps me to drill those holes at an angle. The advantage of pocket screws is that they help a builder to anchor a couple of flat surfaces together - like this or at angles. Glue alone would not be a satisfactory way to put this together. It's just not sturdy enough.

By the way, I used my Office 2010 software to modify the photograph above so that you can really focus in on the house structure in spite of the clutter of my workbench. I love playing with some of the new software that's out there. You can do some really interesting things with it!

It's Almost August!

I know I promised to be better about posting to this blog. That was back in December and it's almost August! Sorry about that. It's been a crazy bunch of months.

In late January, I had a stroke. Fortunately, I could tell that I'd had one and my wife took me to the hospital ASAP. They treated me with a medicine called TPA (I have no idea what that is short for. All I know is, it works!) I have hardly any residual effect from the stroke. The only thing I've noticed is a little numbness in my left foot. What a blessing.

Last week, our daughter gave birth to a healthy little baby boy. Our first grandbaby! In the meantime, the Miniature Club members finished their room boxes of the barbershop, and we've started work on the front porch project. I should have some pictures to post in the not too distant future - if I get any time to do that. Visits to see the grandbaby will definitely take priority!

Geo.

P.S. I thought you might appreciate knowing what the symptoms of a stroke are. General symptoms of a stroke include:

• Sudden numbness, tingling, weakness, or loss of movement in your face, arm, or leg, especially on only one side of your body. (this is what I had)

• Sudden vision changes.
• Sudden trouble speaking.
• Sudden confusion or trouble understanding simple statements.
• Sudden problems with walking or balance.
• A sudden, severe headache that is different from past headaches. 

Source: http://www.webmd.com/stroke/guide/stroke-symptoms

How the Doghouses Turned Out

Thought you might like to see how the dog houses turned out. I was able to snap a few shots of what some of the miniature club members did with their projects. All of the photos below were of various members' houses. Mine? Well, I was busy helping others, and later when I tried to fix something I'd done badly, the little house split in half! Oops.

New Club Project - a Front Porch

At our most recent meeting of the miniature club, we got to talking about what we might do next. I had an idea of doing a craftsman style house front porch, complete with a porch swing.

I've always liked the craftsman style houses - especially the gently sloping columns on the porch. Those should be interesting to cut out with my table saw!

Above is my PowerPoint "drawing" of what I proposed to club members. Based on the feedback I received, it looks like this could be our next project.

When I drew up the plans, my wife suggested that we make it a welcome sign. So, we will most likely cut out half-inch tall letters to set into the framed box below the house. We will make these so that they can be hung on the wall. I'm hoping they will be no more than about 8" deep.

Doghouse Details and Construction Instructions

Here are the instructions and dimensions for construction of the doghouse. If you want to use the picture from this blog as a template for cutting out the front of the house, copy it and paste it into a Word document (if you have Word). You can then resize the picture as needed to get it to where the dimensions print out exactly as drawn.

Here are the individual pieces you will need to cut out. The base is 1/8" basswood and the sides and roof are all 1/16" basswood. I have not sided my doghouse yet. I plan to do it with individual pieces of siding that I cut myself. I'll do a blog post for how to do that soon. If you use sheet siding, I recommend the siding that is ¼” rather than the ½” plank widths. You don’t have to side the house, but it looks really cute when it is.

Piece	Dimensions	Quantity
Sides	2” tall x 2 ½” wide	2
Front and back	2 ¼” wide x 3 1⁄8” tall	2
Base	2 ½” x 2 1/8” *	1
Roof piece A	3 ¼” x 1 15⁄16” (1.937”)	1
Roof piece B	3” x 1 7⁄8”	1
Inside supports	1⁄8” x ¼” x 1 7⁄8”	4
Roof beam	3⁄16” x 3⁄16” x 2 ½”	1
Siding – sides	1 15⁄16” x 2 5/8”	2
Siding front & back	2 1⁄8” x (about) 1 7⁄8”	2
Upright corners	1⁄16” x (about) 1⁄8” x 2 1⁄8” **	4
Sign for front	1⁄3” x 1 7⁄16”	1
*This may need to be sanded slightly narrower. **These pieces will need to be cut at a 45 degree angle on one edge so that they fit snugly against the roof line. The height is approximate and is the longer dimension of the pieces. You might want to cut this a little long and then trim it off as needed.

Assembly instructions:

1. Cut out all of the pieces, including the doorway of the house. 
2.  If you plan to side the house, use double-stick tape or use a slight amount of rubber cement to hold the siding to the face of the doorway piece. Cut the doorway entrance through both pieces. This assures you that your parts will match. Once this piece is cut out, sand the cut for any slight errors you may have made, and then disassemble the two pieces and mark the two sides that will be glued together (in case your cut is not perfectly centered or symmetrical).
3. Now you can begin to assemble the house. Glue one of the sides to the base. (It’s helpful to have a right-angle jig to clamp the side to so that the pieces are glued at exactly a 90° angle.
4. Glue the back of the house to the base and side, using the jig again for this.
5. Glue one of the inside supports into the corner.
6. Glue the other side to the back and base.
7. Glue the other inside support into the corner.
8. Glue the front to the base and sides. Make sure the side you marked to be glued to the siding faces outward!
9. Glue the remaining two inside supports into the corners in the front. 
10. If you want to stain the inside of the doghouse, do that now, before you add the roof. It will be much easier. 
11. Put a little glue on the inside at the top peak of the house at each end. Glue the roof beam in place. Make sure the roof beam angle aligns with the angles of the front and back of the house. (See drawing for the yellow square and note how it is angled.)
12. IF YOU DO NOT PLAN TO SIDE THE HOUSE, paint the roof pieces before you glue them onto the house. This will save you a lot of time and frustration of trying to paint the undersides of the roof close to the house.
13. Start with the slightly narrower roof piece and glue it flush with the edge of the roof beam. Put glue along all of the edges of one side of the roof, place the roof piece against this, then set the house down onto the roof piece, then push the entire piece up against your gluing jig or other fixed object. (This assures you that the roof is perfectly aligned across the top of the roof beam.) Make sure that the same amount of roof  is exposed at the front and back of the house.
14. Now add glue to the rest of the roof edges and glue the other roof piece in place. Use the same technique of placing the house on its roof and press it against the gluing jig to assure that the top edge of your second roof piece is aligned across the top.
15. Seal and paint your siding and the external upright pieces. Also seal and paint the edge of the doghouse front doorway. I recommend you paint this the same color as the siding.
16. Seal and paint the under sides and edges of the doghouse roof. If you're going to add siding, you don't need to worry if you get a little paint on the sides of the house. Glue the siding to the house starting with the sides.
17. Glue the back piece of siding in place.  Add the uprights on each side of the back piece.
18. Glue the front onto the doghouse. Add the uprights.
19. Now add shingles to your dollhouse. I would recommend buying or cutting shingles that are only 1/2" wide. In full scale, the shingles would be 6 inches wide, and that would look more appropriate on such a small scale building. I also would recommend spacing the shingles so that about a third of an inch of shingle is exposed per each row. The amount of shingle exposure is your decision -- like that of a cook when the recipe says, "season to taste." If you want to use fancy, shaped shingles, that is also your decision!
20. I plan to put the doghouse onto its own small base which will be about 6 inches square. I'll then paint it to look like dirt and grass, and perhaps I'll add a few weeds, maybe I'll even grind out a "hole" in the base, add a "mound of dirt" and put a bone in the hole.
21. Dog dishes would also be appropriate, but I'll leave the decorating details to you.
22. Don't forget to add the sign above the door (if you want to name your pooch). You can seal and paint the edges of the piece of wood and then print the signage (if you don't trust your own penmanship) and then glue that to the sign. (Remember to seal your printed sign with spray-on fixative so that it doesn't fade as badly over time.) Or you can hand paint the name in as detailed or as sloppy a hand as you want. 

Remember, many a doghouse has been built by the children of the family; so, you can feel okay about the finished house if there are a few flaws!  You might even want to "build in" a few flaws!

Good luck. Have fun with the work, and let me know how your house turns out! I'd love to see pictures!

Our Next Club Project

Our miniature club will be leading the project for our joint state meeting of miniature clubs. Over the weekend, our small group of our miniature club members got together and decided we'd work on building a doghouse. Above is the basic shell that I worked up yesterday. We plan to add clapboard siding and shingles. We'll also have the participants make old-fashioned rag rugs to put inside the doghouse, and we'll include a base that they can "landscape" outside of the house. If you'd like me to post dimensions and construction details, please let me know. Thanks!

Constructing Miniature Rooms - What's the Best Way?

What's the best materials to use to build room boxes or dollhouses? I've built two dollhouses from scratch - one with 3/8" birch plywood and one with Gatorfoam. (The photo at left is of a house built with Gatorfoam.) I was happy with both projects. But dollhouses are generally box construction projects. Unless they have turrets or bays, the building is pretty much 90 degree angles - simple to do.

Room boxes, on the other hand, are often more complicated. The design of a room box is like a stage set design. Few of the angles are actually right degrees. This allows the artist to create a variety of angles in the room and a sense of depth in a small space. It also makes construction of them more complex.

There are drawbacks to using both Gatorfoam and plywood. Both comes in large sheets. Cutting large, flat sections of wood or Gatorfoam, on a small hobbyist's table saw can be a challenge. At best, you'll waste more of the expensive building materials than you would like. At worst, you'll not get the walls cut precisely at the angles you need or want, leaving gaps and walls standing at awkward angles. Some of these gaps can be hidden with crown molding or with matte board glued to the ceiling of the room. Baseboards and flooring also help hide any gaps along the floor seams.

I've made several roomboxes now, and for two of them, I utilized old-fashioned, stick-frame building with matte board glued to the surface. The stick-frame uses pieces of wood assembled much like a real building is built. The problem with the stick built frame is that it's a bit flimsy until it's all glued up with the matte board attached. It's too easy to glue it up so and end up with walls not being perfectly square with the ceiling or floor.

The barbershop project our miniature club is working on is a perfect example. I cut out the pieces for everyone. The pieces were all the same size and shapes, planed to within microns of being the same in shape and angles. Yet, the four people assembling them ended up with slight variations in the finished product, and the angles of the corners are all slightly different one from another. Go figure!

The advantage of the stick frame build is it's lightweight, and you can easily run wiring through the walls or along the walls. The disadvantages are the irregularities you can get with assembly.

I have also done some construction with the paper-backed foamcore material. This material usually comes in quarter inch thickness. I have found two problems with it. One is that it tends to warp pretty easily. Add wall-paper to it, and as the paper and glue dry, the foam can become distorted.

I also find it a bit flimsy. It just doesn't seem like a product that will hold up for an extended number of years. If you don't intend on keeping your miniature creation for an extended period of time, then maybe it would be okay for your project. I plan to burden my kids and maybe even my grandchildren with my creations. ;o) So, when I build my pieces, I want them to be durable.

The most stable, light-weight and easy to work with material is the Gatorfoam. An added bonus to it is it's white. So, if you want white ceilings for your room, there's little or no painting that you need to do! The downside of the material is it's expensive, and not widely available. If you're okay with mail ordering, though, then you're probably good to go!

I started building Pam's dollhouse over 30 years ago, and the house is still as structurally sound as it was when I put it together. The ceilings are still white. The foam core has not shrunk. I know this, because no gaps have emerged.

You can't use screws or nails to put Gatorfoam together. I discovered, though, that a little glue and wooden pegs I made from dowels worked quite well. I used a pencil sharpener on the dowel pieces and then I used my X-acto knife to cut gill-like edges along the sides of the pegs. The sharp pencil-like tips made it easy to push the peg into the Gatorfoam, and the gill-like edges helped keep the pegs from pulling back out.

Even though I've built three dollhouses now, I still want to build a computerized, animated, haunted house. When I do, I will most likely use Gatorfoam to build it. And I think if I do another room box, I'll use Gatorfoam for that project, too!