I got several calls today from the suppliers I work with. 3,300 bricks will be arriving at Tina's Dollhouses at the end of the week with 4,000 more on back order. The wood supplier, Magnum Wood, just received a shipment and will be ready to custom cut the base trim pieces, and I have 4 different stains for the parquet flooring. I have all next week off from work, so my only problem will be deciding what to work on first!

I figure the first thing I will need to do is build the framing for the base trim and "yard." The trim will be 9.5" from the surface that the house is placed on. It will have two grooves routed out of the lowest section on the front and sides of the base for reaching underneath the base and picking it up. The back will either remain uncovered or have a thin panel with two more handling cut-outs. It will be finished with a mahogany stain. I will probably build the support framing out of 1" X 2" boards. They will provide the support for the yard and provide an additional anchor for the house to the rest of the base. It will also have two hinged panels on the back-one for transformer storage and the other for the circuit breaker. A co-worker suggested running all of the house connections to a "breaker." It will basically look like a power strip, but instead of a row of plugs, it will have wires bracketed into place with a small toggle switch for each room. I don't know if this will work for the house, but I'm going to look into it.

The next step will be to finish the brick work in the basement and around the two inches of the exterior of the house. The house will essentially have "2 ft" elevation from the ground. This allows for one window in the basement.

Hopefully I will have the secret room finished before this weekend. All that is left is connecting the sections of wall to the base, cover the framing with a few 1/16" panels that have already been stained and gloss coat them. The final step will be to paint the upper portions of the wall. The only problem at this point is my wife's color selection. I want red walls and she wants antique white or cream. The contrast will be nice (its the same as the bathroom in the MacKenzie), but red seems more appropriate for sipping brandy and smoking cigars. Maybe if I find pics of the style I'm aiming for she might see the light and change her mind.

I guess I'm encountering the opposite problem that I had with the MacKenzie. I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to accomplish the finished product, but I had plenty of time because I didn't have much money and ran out of materials often. Now I have great ideas, but more materials than I can keep up with, so not much down time to plan or work on smaller components of the house. I would really like to build the refridgerator, cabinets and parquet flooring, but working on those components would just delay the rest of construction and I wouldn't have any place to put them until construction reaches the areas that they are intended for.

So much to do and so little time. . . .