Working with Greenleaf Kits

Greenleaf puts out affordable dollhouse kits with attractive designs. This is Alicia's dollhouse. When she wanted me to build her a dollhouse, I started to think about designing one based on some of the Victorian tower houses we had enjoyed seeing in Sioux City.

Alicia felt it might take too long if I designed my own and built it. (She wanted it done quickly.) In retrospect, she may have been right, considering that it took me over four years to build Pam's dollhouse, and I've been "working" on Sara's house now for about 14 years!

So, Alicia lobbied her daddy to go with a kit. She liked the Greenleaf McKinley, and she begged me to buy it and complete it. I gave up my dream of doing my own design and used the McKinley.

It turned out okay, but I wasn't crazy about working with the kit. I don't like the thin walls, which made it difficult to create realistic doorways between rooms, and I really disliked the porous, grainy plywood the kits are made of. I also didn't like the windows that came with it, and I found that due to the tall, narrow design of the windows, I was unable to substitute better quality ones from Houseworks, which I would have preferred to have used. All that said, Greenlieaf makes attractive houses, and this one turned out pretty nicely in spite of its drawbacks.

I made a few mistakes along the way in building it. I chose a roofing material that went on quickly, since it came in long rolls and was easy to glue on, but in retrospect, I feel it was too thick. The copper tower roof was a bear to do. I spent many hours measuring, cutting, and bending the copper foil to make it fit just right. It was also difficult to find a glue that worked well in holding it onto the roof. Last, but not least, I sliced my fingers several times working on it.

The biggest mistake I made, and it's a design flaw of this dollhouse, was not enclosing it so that the rooms don't get dusty. The house has become terribly dusty, and it needs to have some sort of plexiglas cover or doors on the front to eliminate or reduce the amount of dust settling in the rooms.

All in all, I have to say this was a girl's play dollhouse - not a Thorne Room replica. Alicia thoroughly enjoyed her play with it - decorating it and redecorating it for various seasons. To this day, when she's home, she comes in and makes seasonal changes. So, though it's not a museum piece, it's definitely a well-loved dollhouse.

Making Your Own Shingles

After seeing some real, miniature slate shingles at a dollhouse store in Denver, Colorado years ago, I set about saving my pocket change so that I could buy enough to do Sara's dollhouse. As time went on, I realized, there was no way I was going to get that money saved up any time soon since it was going to cost in the hundreds of dollars to do all the roof of this house!

If you read Dollhouse Miniatures magazine regularly, you may have seen the article I wrote about how I substituted real slate with wooden, faux slate shingles. The various gradations of color you see in the slate in this picture is real. After making these delicate little shingles, I sealed them with alcohol-based B-I-N undercoating. Next, I mixed red and green paint using colors as close to the colors of the house as I could get. I scumbled that paint onto the shingles. I was very sloppy in doing this - on purpose. It made the shingles somewhat wavy and revealed "layers" in some places, which made it look all the more real. Next, I took the red and green paint and mixed it together, added some lamp black to it, and thinned the paint just a little. I then painted over the shingles with that. The result? These lovely, various-hued shingles.

Creating with the Computer

Here's the bathroom for Sara's dollhouse. I haven't mounted the mirror over the sink yet. I wanted you to see the floor, which I created using PowerPoint.

I created this small, black and white tile pattern using PowerPoint software. It took a while, but it was less time-consuming than trying to create little tiles and place them piece by piece.

Once I got the pattern laid out the way I wanted, I printed it out on photo (glossy) paper to give it maximum gloss. After that, I sprayed it with several coats of glossy workable fixative to further give it a shine and to protect the ink from ultraviolet light.

The last part was the hardest - I had to piece together the floor, since the space was larger than the 7.5 x 10" image I got from the PowerPoint slide. If you study the picture very carefully, you might see where the two pieces connect.

Wonderful Clock Face

I was saddened a few years ago when I read that Suzanne Russo had quit her business, which was a specialty supply business offering various brasses, including escutcheon plates and clock faces. Fortunately, I had purchased this clock face, the clock hands and the brass finial on the top from her before she closed.

This clock hangs on the wall of the Scrooge room box. To be honest, as I look at this, I'm not exactly sure HOW I succeeded in making the half-round, mitered top to this clock! The carvings, of course, were created mostly through the use of my jeweler's saw. I also had some pieces of brass, which I cut out and polished extensively to create the pendulum.

The whole clock face and pendulum are covered over by a very thin piece of glass - about the thickness of a microscope slide cover. I bought the glass from a dealer at a miniature show years ago, and have never seen any more like it again nor have I seen the dealer! And, again, I honestly don't remember how I succeeded in cutting that rounded glass without shattering the whole sheet! Just lucky, I guess!

If you're wondering, yes, there's a "tag" hanging from the top of the clock. Throughout the Scrooge room, I have various items of value with the names of people who owed money to Scrooge and he's "holding" their items until the come forth with the money. This clock belonged to Owen Moore at 101 Queens St in London. He owes Scrooge 35 pounds. ;o)

Cabriole Leg Example in My Dollhouse

The bed stand at the left is one of my scratch- built pieces of furniture. It's solid cherry wood, and I used the same methodology for producing the cabriole legs as what I illustrated in my previous blog.

Once I cut out the wood, I used a rounded head on my Dremel motor tool to carve out the indented areas toward the top of each leg.

In reality, they're not terribly hard to make. The most "work" involved with them is finishing them off once you've cut them out of the block of wood, since that involves quite a bit of sanding time.

Video: How to Make a Cabriole Leg

I'm just learning how to use the new Flip camera to do Web-posted videos. It's pretty cool!

Here, in video form, are the steps to making a cabriole leg. Whether you're building a table or a chair, the steps are pretty much the same. The video is about 7 minutes long. (Sorry it's so long, and filled with so many ums and ahs!) I cut down the video as much as I could, and in the process, when the software condensed the video even more for Web production, it cut off some of my words. Oops! Obviously I have still more to learn...

My Fancy Victorian Bed Is Finished... or Is It?

At last, I've nearly finished the Victorian bed I've been building for Sara's dollhouse. I knew I wanted a fancy Victorian bed; so I went on to the Internet and "shopped" for full-size, Victorian bedroom furniture. I found many examples, and downloaded several retailers' pictures of antique beds. Next, I began to work with those pictures to develop my own set of shop drawings.

What you see at the right is my "interpretation" of many design elements I pulled from those examples. I liked the idea of the tall pyramid tops to the posts. I considered doing pineapples, and then decided that I didn't want to take the hours and hours it would take to carve four pineapples for each bed post, although it would have been a cool touch.

The bed is made of cherry wood. I didn't have any good burled wood to use for the insets; so I used painting techniques to create the faux burl. As you may recall from a previous post, I stitched the coverlet and pillows for the bed. The "mattress" is balsa wood cut and shaped to the size of a mattress. Using the off-white silk for the coverlet prevents any color clashes with the carpet and walls, but it's a bit bland.

I welcome ideas and suggestions for how to add a touch of color to the bed now that it's almost done - a colorful nightie laid out on the bed? A dog and cat sleeping together on the bed? Perhaps add some delicate ribbons and some bows to the bed coverlet? What's your idea? I'd love to hear!