Furniture Goodies and Dry Build #2
Entry posted by Tilly Wants Cake
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Thursday a box arrived, full to bursting with furniture and accessories kits. She's had them in her garage since the 90s, and most haven't even been started! I was gritting my teeth after Christmas, trying to resist the urge to buy furniture for the unbuilt Buttercup, and was proud that I managed. Here is my reward for such strength of character! 
So back to the build...
Saturday was spent re-gluing and puttying the boards I'd cut to make the modifications to the front wall. When I ran out of clamps to hold the pieces down with, I fixed them in place with thumbtacks (I was working against scrap plywood). Items were glued over wax paper to avoid gluing my sheets to my work surfaces.
I had spent Saturday evening puzzling over what to do about that custom window I'd created. The casings and sashes didn't fit in any easily-trimmable way. I even measured out and considered cutting more standardized window openings to use pre-made windows from HBS, but the Buttercup has such a low ceiling height that I really didn't have many options, and I wasn't happy with the idea of mixing the fanciful gingerbread shapes of the house with more austere Victorian doors - and the pre-cut doorway was such that I couldn't buy a matching door for the house. In the end I decided to proceed as planned, and I'll be searching for basswood or plywood veneer for making new window trim for the outside from a solid piece of wood (basing the design on the window frames that came with the house).
Sunday found my glued/puttied pieces nice and dry, so I rebuilt the house in Dry Fit #2:
Everything went back together surprisingly well. The only part to give me difficulty was the roof. Odd, since all my measurements were based on moving the roof perfectly to avoid cutting shingles in half. Alas, the roof line now has a partial shingle on the front and back, as the opening for the front entrance ended up about 1/8th of an inch too far to the right. I also had to move the slot holes for the front the same distance (as seen in photo above). Other than that, everything went very well. You can see my (upside-down) sketching on the front window to decide on the frame I wanted. The bigger, lighter shaded area is the next-size up in standard window openings. BIG! The darker, smaller shading shows the window frame I intend to create.
The white shape inside is a paper mock-up of the counter I plan to get for the bakery.
In the prime example of good timing, the Bodo Hennig stove I ordered from the HBS sale arrived Saturday. I was able to put it in the dry build to see how it fit.
As expected, it fits nicely but leaves little room for other furniture outside of the counter area.
Tilly, what do you think?
Tilly: "Hmmm....."
Tilly: "Make the house bigger!"
I had a backup plan to build an alcove on this side of the house (mirroring the Bay window and using the same frame shape detail). The alcove would be the height of the first floor so that Tilly could also have a little deck above, leading off the living area. I began sketching the cut for the wall, allowing just a bit more than a quarter inch for the ceramic tiles I'd like to use on the walls around the stove.
And that was it for the weekend! I left the house standing in case I wanted to take any additional measurements, etc. I'll stop by Michael's crafts tonight for basswood, but I think I'll end up at Lowe's looking for plywood veneer for the alcove. I don't want to trust balsa wood for walls.
That's it so far! I don't know when I'm going to get back to it.. I have a lot of wedding-related tasks I need to move ahead on, and I really want to plug away at those this week.
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