Jump to content
  • entries
    76
  • comments
    19
  • views
    128,978

About this blog

Five different views on building the Arthur

Entries in this blog

"stucco's" on

I had to spackle one wall before we left & put on another coat of paint on the trim (WOW).We got home before lunch today so I spackled the front of the first floor. No, I didn't imagine this tub of spackling compound was being difficult to work with, I was using fingers nearly as much as the craft stick, and the credit card wasn't working too well. I turned the house back on the unspackled wall and glued on one of the window trims http://www.greenleafdollhouses.com/forum/\html\style_emoti

Guest

Guest

almost there

I was on a role today.I got all of the front shingles on and they look mahhhhvolouswithout breaks it probably took about 2 hours to prep shingles draw the lines and glue them on....took about 10 to stain after the glue had dried.all the shutters are on and the step is on.all I have to do is paint all the fussy stuff white and glue them on. a comment on the windows....its not to bad to have to make the winow frames for the outside....but the inside too?? ugggg I have had some arguments with the w

Guest

Guest

cracks and siding

So, I glued the gables on. Next step is supposed to be the porch but since I haven't painted yet, that should come first. I decided to use siding on this house so obviously that has to go on before I paint. Of course, as I thought this through I realized I should have done the siding before adding the roof (or at least the gables) to make it easier to fit the siding on the triangular parts of the walls. Oops.It'll be a little harder to get the siding to fit well in the gable with the roof al

Guest

Guest

Touch up of roof

Okay, I have done the touch up to the shingles and they look MUCH better!!I think I will jazz up the house and add the base sooner than later. I can't picture my houses without the yard so I will start on that next even though for the most part, I am finished!! Okay....are we ever really finished with a house ;) . Here are some more pictures and there will be more to come since I am going to do the base....TODAY!! ;) Charles is the Real Estate agent trying to sell this guy a house with a bed

Guest

Guest

making mistakes...

Again, didn't have any time to work on the house during the week. Now that it's the weekend I'm hoping to get a bunch done. Didn't get off to a good start though. The last work I did was on Tuesday, when I glued the left and right parts of the front roof onto the house. (I deviated from the directions a little... they say to put the second floor partition in first, but since I didn't punch out the hole for the stairs, I didn't have a slot to put the partition into. Gluing the roof pieces on

Guest

Guest

Day Eight

Lots of work to do today! I finally got finishing priming the siding and painted it the color it is supposed to be. Then Jimmy had to put the front wall on for me so that I can prime the inside and begin wallpapering. Of course, he put the upper dividing wall in backwards, and had to take it back out, LOL! Once he has the walls installed, he puts a line of caulk into it where the rough edges are to give me a smooth line to wallpaper on. Makes life a whole lot easier and is

Guest

Guest

What A House

I am mostly finished with this house. I painted the shingles brown and I started off too dark so I had to finish the rest of the roof the same way because I did not want inconsistencies. When it dried, I took sand paper and rubbed some paint off. All I have to do now it go all over the roof with a wash of Dark burnt umber and that will make it more realistic by adding depth.The only other thing left to do is for me to either paint the back foundation wall or to paperclay it. I finally put the ho

Guest

Guest

it continues

Well I had to take a day off and regroup....I have to do that often when doing projects...another reason I take so long in getting things done.I was not going to decorate so I had nothing but all of a sudden the house is screaming at me. so I took a trip to Hobby Lobby and got some wonderful fabrics,trims, and scrapbooking papers...photo#1I have the porch shingled but had to stop and will have to move house to the rolling cart hubby made me. the house is to high to reach the roof shingles.photo#

Guest

Guest

Day Seven

Time for me to do a little work again! Yippee! Didn't get too much done though. Some of the siding didn't get glued down real well, or it pulled away. So I took some glue and ran it up under the edges, and then weighted it down again so that it would stay put. Then I "primed" the siding by using one coat of semi-gloss white paint on it. Other than that, I again ... painted trim.Complements of LPCullen

Guest

Guest

Shingles Are on

I finally decided to use the shingles that came with the kit. I was tempted to use paper clay but decided wood would look better on this house. Another BIG thing that made me want to use the kits shingles is the fact that it comes on sheets. What that means is I don't have to add each shingles on one at a time Yeppie!!This is louisa at the front door. She will not live here but is a new doll I just got and so she needed a place to stay until I find her a stable home.I have to paint or stain the

Guest

Guest

Day Six

The siding finally arrived! In the meantime, I have been painting trim, lots and lots of trim. Don't think I will ever be done with the trim! Jimmy snagged the siding and began playing with it. He says to draw lines 1/2 inch apart on the house for the siding. He used wood glue to attach it to the house. Of course it bowed somewhat, so we had to weight it down until it dried. He attached it where it overhung on the sides. Here are some pictures. Once it

Guest

Guest

assembly

Once all the prep work's done the house assembles FAST! Because I trimmed all my tabs & slots during the dry-fit everything went like it was supposed to. Because the wood glue made the tabs swell slightly I used a scrap of 3/8" plywood to protect the kit wood and my smaller claw hammer to "coax" stubborn tabs into the slots. The sidewalls, lower front wall & foundation are now drying. I'll need to reglue one corner of the foundation that came skewed during the "coaxing' process. I k

Guest

Guest

interior progress

Between washing & waxing the tandem kayak and intervening to prevent a potential crisis I still had one piece of roof trim & the porch railings to remove from the sheets, which I did before breakfast this morning. Since then I assembled, spackled & painted the interior trim. I've installed the windows (the "stained glass" bathroom window looks neat), and the trim with dry paint; the rest of the interior trim is going on tonight.It has been raining all day, too gloomy to take pictur

Guest

Guest

tuesday

well the house is looking better!took some advice and used spackling in the cracks on the front.looks much better.I stained my shutters but only 3 sets came out looking ok! I will paint the other 2 for the side windows white.the porch post just didnt look the way I liked so I went into my stash of things bought for other projects and came up with cake dowels I cut them to size and they dont look to bad. kind of a farm house look.even Catriona had to get in on the pictures she really likes how th

Guest

Guest

porch foundation

Just did a tiny bit of work today. First I stained the bottom of the porch (realizing a teeny tiny lip would show if the house were displayed on a glass table and someone got down on the floor and looked up at the bottom of it... okay, I'm anal!) and the porch foundation pieces.Staining on my messy workbench.A few hours later, after the stain had (mostly) dried, I glued the porch foundation pieces together. I think I found a mistake in the instructions. They say that the side pieces and front

Guest

Guest

Let's Make Fire!

Today has been one of those days for me. Some of you may know but I have Graves disease and sometimes I just feel "not so good". Because today just so happen to be one of those days for me, I only did a small thing. I made burning embers for my fireplace.Let's get started!!! First off, you can not burn your self First off, you need 1 Red Straw, 1 small tree branch, a tooth pick, Train ballast, Clear "Liquid Nails" (or clear silicon sealer) and a Smal piece of wax paper.First, take the straw and

Guest

Guest

trim, or, mumble, mumble, mumble

Cutting out trim is SUCH fun on Monday AM with osteoarthritis, but those who know how stubb, er, singleminded I am will know that as soon as I do my bit of venting I'm going back in there.I figured out why I was so confused about the interior rectangular window trim, there are only two pieces of side trim, so I needed to remake it anyway; at least, if there are two more pieces I haven't found them yet...I started three ziplock freezer bags, one for the interior trim, one for exterior trim &

Guest

Guest

weekends over

well I tried to get some things done on the Arthur but RW just wouldnt allow much.but I did make some progress.the first photo is of the window trim...I stained all of it. this house has started a picture and now I have to see if I can finish it.can we say Gingerbread house?my shingles and shutters will also be stained.very glad that the rooms are square...will make for some easy wallpapering now that I have a picture in my head.2nd photo is the new porch and foundation.somehow the walls just do

Guest

Guest

this weekend's progress

So, I finally took two pictures of what I've been up to this weekend. (And let me say that the new camera takes NICE pictures. I'm still sorry I broke the other one, but not that sorry!)Overall, everything has been fitting together nicely. I have had to enlarge some slots with my utility knife, and there are some cracks that will need to be filled with wood filler. The bottom of the front wall just wouldn't meet the floor no matter how hard I tried (but it did lock into place on the side wal

Guest

Guest

The Foundation Is Started

I have finally started on the foundation and only have the back part left to complete. I added Creative Paper Clay ( www.paperclay.com ) to the foundation and sculpted stones to give it an authentic look of real stone. The trick comes in with the painting which has not started yet because I must wait for the clay to dry.To add the clay, first I add some wood glue to the object I wish to paper clay. In the pictures, I used my chimney. The second step it to roll the clay to the thickness of pie do

Guest

Guest

new camera!

We got a new camera this afternoon but I can't use it just yet. The battery needs to charge first. But I should be back with pictures very soon. (And this time I won't keep the camera dangerously close to where I'm working!)In the meantime, I am all the way through step C (currently gluing the top part of the front wall on). This house really goes together quickly!Compliments of fov

Guest

Guest

stained glass & major interior work done!

Hi-ho, the paint's drying on the upstairs ceiling, the rectagular windows are in & framed on the inside, and all the exterior windows & door are masked for the non-siding treatment. I have a stained glass window after trying in vain to wrestle with Liquid Lead, which is more of a partially "set" nontoxic acrylic goo that does NOT flow... Fortunately, because I 1) use acrylics straight from the tube & 2) add things to them to achieve desired effects I have a stained glass window tha

Guest

Guest

the instructions say decorate first

Nothing happened yesterday, we did river clean up in our kayak & today I'm sore all over. Perfect for waiting for glue & paint to dry!I painted the bathroom walls almond and papered the bedroom walls. There is no interior trim for the rectangular windows so I have painted the front of a corner of posterboard I'd already marked out interior trim on, I'll cut it out when the paint's dry. Wainscot wallpaper strip are drying on the bathroom walls, I used a strip of prepasted border in a s

Guest

Guest

moving right along

Turned out gluing the wooden blocks onto the underside of the foundation back wall was the way to go. Once that was glued on, the side walls went up fairly easily. I did that last night, and this morning glued on the bottom part of the front wall. It's drying now. Still can't take any pictures because the camera's toast. When I knocked it off the workbench it fell on the lens... it'll still take pictures but they're really fuzzy! Geoff (my boyfriend) and I are going to take a trip up to Co

Guest

Guest

Porch Completed

Here is the picture of the almost completed porch. I just noticed I have 2 more porch posts to add but for the most part, it is completed. I only have to paper clay the chimney and foundation. I will save the shingles for last.The instructions for putting the porch together seems a little vague to me and MORE pictures would help. I did not assemble mine correct when I look at the picture on the box and compare mine to the picture (and I thought I was following the instruction perfectly till the

Guest

Guest

×
×
  • Create New...