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Start of Magnolia build.


rbytsdy

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Well I decided that the Magnolia was my new niece's house after all, and I set about thinking about color schemes. I have been thinking very hard about colors (almost to the exclusion of anything else!) and settled on my "Mother-of-Pearl" for the main color fairly early (I just got done with a yellow house so I am a bit yellowed out!), but then I was thinking about what trim colors I could do with a white farmhouse. Did alot of googling, found a rendition of the Magnolia in white by http://nanasminis.com/houses14.html which is very classic with its minimal dark gray detailing but I wanted more of a French Countryside look so I started thinking about greens. (I decided that I can't do French blue because my niece's sister has the Willowcrest so there is already a blue dollhouse on the premises!) I like olive greens and off-greens so I decided to mix my "Green Tea Leaf" to lighter and darker shades to do the trim detailing.

I found some wonderful French Country interiors here: http://www.homedit.c...esign-pictures/

I love the wallpapers in these pics, and they inspired my wallpaper choices for this house.

I have decided to try to take more build pics; sometimes people ask me what all is involved in building a dollhouse from a kit, so maybe I can use these pics to impress upon them how much time and preparation I really do spend on a house...!

Punching all the die-cut pieces out:

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Sheet 4 was my nemesis. In fact, I am going to have to make the side balcony door casings from basswood because they WOULD not be extracted. I had to practically rip out the "rear base" piece and dremel it down to size because the die-cut was so bad...

Sanding:

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I use grit 100 or thereabouts for large structural pieces (that usually have the worst splintering), 180 or similar for mid-sized structural pieces, and 220 for window trim and things like that. When I first started out, I sanded and sanded to try to get a super-smooth finish, but over the years I realized that this will never happen with die-cut edges and in fact I was sanding all my edge away, so now I just aim for moderately smooth. The edge finishes take care of all that anyway.

I have actually punched out and sanded everything through step C, "assembly of house structure", because I wanted to do a proper dry-fit before I started gluing anything down. The instructions want you to glue all the windows and trim on, but it is alot easier to do this on the interior after the wallpaper is installed, and I wasn't going to do that before I had a dry-fit to see the layout.

After sanding, a dry-fit:

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During this dry-fit, I noted that the pieces that have to slide into one another (front wall + first floor in particular) are pretty tight so I will make sure that no primer gets in the way to make this fit even tighter.

Primer:

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I used to use Kilz oil-based which gives a very nice smooth finish, but it is very tough to sand down and that is important to me, so now I use Kilz water-based and sand it down really well with 100-grit after it's dry. I prime to prep for wallpaper, ceiling paper, and flooring, since I lay my flooring on cardstock templates to glue down.

Wallpaper: Well I couldn't get my printer to work and was so frustrated by that, that I almost took off this morning to Michael's to try to find some papers that look like those in the link above with all the beautiful French Country interiors! But hubby's printer worked fine, and I had found some great designs inspired by the website.

Free printable "vintage scrollwork scrapbook paper": http://vintagescrapb...book-paper.html

Stripes and checks from Jennifer's printables: http://www.jennifers...rintables1.html

The scrapbook sheet is what I have in mind for the kitchen floor; I found it at Michael's, and it is labeled "pattern paper", "ambrosia / fresh-squeezed / amb-1420", by basicgrey.com.

I printed out the printies on cardstock and lay them out to spray with matte spray finish (I had been using Patricia Nimock's Plaid but I found that Mod Podge works just as well):

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I always spray twice as per the can instructions now. Once I tried to take a short-cut and spray once, but the paper smudged and taught me a lesson!

Here you can see that I have the sashes laid out and painted (once; they need sanding and spackling and re-painting), as well as something I am thinking about for the exterior window trim (I just can't get into those curvy trim pieces that the Magnolia has), as well as my trim paint mixes:

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