Simply Curious

I managed to create and burst a blister on my middle left uppermost finger joint with the rough part of my Xacto blade, so I am out of commission on cutting at the moment.  Grumble with me now!

The house is primed now, and I did get quite a few fun alterations done, or at least decided, so I thought I'd show you some pictures while I'm waiting for it to heal.  (petroleum jelly is wonderful for wounds like this.)

New Willowcrest porch.  Now THIS is a porch you can sit on!

First off, I haven't gotten around to showing you the porch!  Mainly because I haven't decided on trim, but that's something I can put off until inspiration strikes.  (I discovered MWK Designs, a local business woman who will cut any shape I request with a laser cutter, and the excitement has temporarily fried my brain.  I guess the light bulb over my head got too bright.)

Anyway, porch!  I added 4" to whatever width was there originally, so it's a little over 7" wide.  Plenty of room for that swing at the far end.  I used 1/32" thick basswood and my nifty stylus tool to create the plank floor.  I'm still not sure about the color.  I saw some awesome glossy black porch floors on Pinterest, but historical accuracy and possibly physics screams that it would absorb heat and make the porch too hot to sit on.  Wasn't a function of a porch to be someplace cooler than inside the house on a hot day?  I went with wood for now, I may paint it a light blue or lighter green.  It will get a few more pieces of furniture and possibly a trellis.

I'm still debating switching out the light for something fancier.  I stupidly ran the wire down the front of the wall and inside at the bottom, meaning I bricked over the wire.  I'll likely just cut it off at the base rather than trying to extract it again, and drill a new hole at its placement point.

Willowcrest upper staircase, before painting and finishing. I'm still trying to figure out what color to paint the hall.

Next and quite likely equally exciting, at least to me, is the attic stairs.  I changed my mind a lot about the upper level stairs, and managed to lose a few parts in my indecisiveness.  I also glued carpeting down REALLY WELL and, well, can't get it off again.  There are STILL fuzzies and glue all over them and it's more effort than I care to exert to scrape it off again.

What's left of the staircase is now installed over the first floor staircase!  I cut off the top of the staircase and made that the bottom.  It's got a turning platform so there's a nice wide section at the top that reached all the way to the opposite wall.  Now, technically, I COULD use the rest of the staircase here, I would just need to add a little bit at the other end to make it reach the wall.  I could also forego stairs altogether and move the door to the bottom.  I'm still debating whether to keep going and make new stairs out of illustration board, too.  The whole wall is two layers of illustration board.  There's wall behind the door, and it won't open when I'm done.  (You can only really see this through the window, and even then I'm not sure if you'll be able to when I get the new wall up.

You're just going to have to suck it in, Robin.

In this position, the stairs are actually BEHIND the wall of the upstairs attic.  (or garret, I can never remember how to spell it.)  I will put a door upstairs, facing the viewer on the upper left of the front window.  The stairs 'climb' up the left side of the house and curve to the right again at the top.

The bit that makes me twitch is that it's incredibly narrow.  It LOOKS OK, but there's no way you could move furniture upstairs that way if these were real dimensions.  If you were claustrophobic you would never visit that upper floor.  And yet, these are the original dimensions, made to the staircase provided.  If Robin were to stand on that top step, her head would brush the ceiling.  I just could not bring myself to cut a hole in the ceiling.  This placement technically works for me. I have an explanation for how to get upstairs and it's not taking up floor space.  I'll try not to think about it.

I love my fishtank.  I Got it at a mini show but don't know the maker.  I see I attached a mini plug, too.  I will have to remember to install a wall socket for it!

The stairs do stick out a little bit into the door space of the bathroom.  I should be able to nudge that doorway hole over to prevent it.  it'll depend on what I decide about redoing the staircase.  In the meantime there's still enough room for my lighted fishtank on the landing.  It's showing its age, unfortunately! Some of the 'water' is starting to vanish.

I decided to swap the office and bedroom, since the attic has so much more open space.  The middle bedroom wall is another of those pieces that has gone AWOL, so I had to cut another - out of illustration board, of course.  I haven't cut out a door to it yet!

The reason I need the wall again
is that I want to add built in closets in the space formerly occupied by the upper staircase.  One side will be a closet in the bedroom.  The other will be in the bathroom.  I decided that I HAD to have a washer and dryer this time around.  And they make them now, if you can find them in stock!  They're roughly 2" square and about 3" tall, depending on who made them.  Easy enough to make, but there's cheap enough models that I don't feel bad about buying them.  (My finger would appreciate less work!)  I haven't decided if I'll make the closet in the bedroom a 'real' closet, or just install yet another fake door.

A floor plan for the living room.  Plenty of custom work to do!

Moving on downstairs, I've made a few drastic decisions.  The biggest is covering up the french doors in the living room.  I am going to install a 'gas' fireplace, with a TV hanging above.  (If I can get it to work I'm going to 'hide' the TV behind a pair of hinged paintings.)  This gives me a great focal point, and I can display awesome artwork!  Now I need to FIND some awesome artwork.

In the picture, the middle rectangle is the fireplace, and on either side will be either bookcases or tables, depending on what I find.  The middle square will be a very small coffee table, and the L shape is the sofa I'm planning.  Oooh, the sofa.  I can't wait.  I found a fine, large red leather purse for 99 cents!  It came home with me.  I don't necessarily LIKE leather furniture, but the red fabric I bought for the project really didn't inspire me.  If I end up not doing it, I will make a red leather jacket to hang in the hallway with it instead.

the upper cabinet is a little hard to see.

To make up for the lack of light from the french doors, I'll hang mirrors and install lamps on either side.  I'll still install the doors on the outside, and just fill the space with small scale siding.  Maybe add a half table to it for decoration.  I'll also be sure to make the front door windows as big as I can.

Finally, there's the space between the kitchen and the dining room.  I was never quite satisfied with it, and I think I came up with a solution.  A hutch pass-through!  I have moved the doorway to the inner wall, so now there's three doorways all in a fun but short circle, which seems a bit silly.  This gives me about 4" of room for the hutch.  The notecard mockups help me determine just how big I can make it.

The upper part will have glass doors and shelves.  This will hopefully make the cabinet less of a light and vision barrier.  I have lots of display items from the Archaeologist's Study that can go in there.  It also means more kitchen storage and dining room storage!  I am debating making it a counter and adding stools.  It may be too much.

I think the hardest part about doing a dollhouse is deciding what to do once you get beyond the house instructions.  Sometimes you just need to make changes to accommodate what you want.  I struggle with overdoing realism and functionality. I keep telling myself to just relax and let it be, no one will care, but a certain part of me still points at my first dollhouse and my cardboard box bed with felt bedspreads and red and green clay candles for light, inhabited by bears.  I was clever with making do with what I could get my hands on then, think of what I can do NOW.