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Five different views on building the Arthur

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The Arthur Dollhouse Kit Construction Blog

The Arthur Dollhouse Kit remains one of Greenleaf's most popular kits. You will find this blog useful for tips a decorating ideas as build your Arthur Dollhouse. The Best way to navigate this blog is to select a members name from the category are to the left. That will sort all the blog entries so that you will be looking at one persons progress as the move through their construction of the Arthur Dollhouse. Please Keep in mind that blogs are in reverse chronological

Team Arthur

Team Arthur

Arthur Dollhouse Kit finishing touches

Arthur Dollhouse Kit originally posted 6/1/05 I spent the morning making bathroom fixtures out of seashells, I'm thinking of crocheting a shell-stitch curtain for the rectangular window. The bathtub is a large half a bivalve shell with barnacle "feet" and a 3-pointed clear beadfor a water tap, with a tiny amber seedbead for the tap top. The lavatory is pure whimsy, I had a really neat cluster of barnacles with all sorts of holes & angles, I sanded the bottom smooth to glue

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I have this problem...

I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who loves starting a project and hates to finish it. That's become the problem with the Arthur. I really haven't done anything on it since my last blog entry... and I'm embarassed to check and see how long ago that was. B) Well, I gave myself an ultimatum... I can NOT start on the Westville until the Arthur is finished. The Westville will be for me and I'm brimming with ideas for it... and, just by virtue of it being a new project, it feels a whole lot

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the kit is here!

The UPS driver left the box on DH's truck's hood so he didn't have to get out of his truck, he was pulling out of the yard as I ran out to get the box. The first thing I did was to open the box to see if everything was there; one window's missing from the acetate sheet, but I have already thought how I'm going to bash this cutie and will make a replacement.I scribed floorboards & nailholes in the livingroom & upstairs floors & began to prime everything else. The "floorboards" have

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another Saturday's work

I am finally getting a chance now to upload the pictures of the work I did on Saturday.Geoff and I made another trip to the hangar. My main objective for the day was to get the door finished. Doors in die-cut houses are notorious for not fitting right, especially after you've painted on the edges. With my Orchid, I must have spent half a day trying to sand down the inside of the doorway to get the door to fit... very frustrating! It didn't occur to me at the time that I could use the electri

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little leaves, and lots of shingles!

Ever since I've been working on the Arthur I've had this idea in my head that I'd like little leaf embellishments on the shutters. Why leaves? No idea, except maybe because the green accent color is kind of leafy. I'm not usually into "cute" houses but because I'm not planning to keep this one, I'm giving myself permission to do things to it that I normally wouldn't. And who knows... maybe the Arthur will cure me of my disdain for cute houses!Last week I made a trip to the scrapbook store a

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porch and window trim

Finally, painting all those little trim pieces is starting to pay off!I love this phase of building a dollhouse... well, love it and hate it. I hate all the tedious trim painting. But when you start to glue that trim in place and step back to see how pretty everything looks - I wouldn't trade that feeling for anything!First of all, I finished my porch railings. I'm so glad I decided to "bash" this, even if it's a small change. I really like the colors, and the newel posts are surprisingly ea

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getting back on the horse

As expected, May turned out to be a very busy month for me and I didn't get to do any mini work for several weeks. But now I'm back on the horse! My Arthur is very close to being done. The biggest thing left to do is the wallpaper, and the roof and shingling. Other than that, it's all trim, trim, and more trim... which can take a deceptively long time!It has to be done, but painting all those little pieces sure gets tedious!A couple of weeks ago, before I went out of town, I painted the shut

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How does your garden grow

Here is the finished pictures of my house with Base. I'm thinking about adding some vines but I have not in over a week so this is how the Arthur is looking as of this morning. I use handmade clay flowers and the ferns are plastic but very thin plastic and look very realistic. The rose vine is actually 2 vines combined because one was not enough for the look I wanted.   Here are the rest of the pictures:

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Day 15 - May 7, 2005

WE ARE FINISHED! Although I still do need to go back and touch up the paint where we smacked it or knicked it with something. It did take 15 days to finish, but we can only work on it an hour or two a night, so it takes us a few more days than some others. According to Jimmy, it was a very good house to build and would be an excellent house for a beginner to build, because it does not have a lot of trim or architectural detail as some of the larger houses do. Jimmy says that people

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Day 14 - May 6, 2005

The house is mostly done, and today we have just been doing last minute stuff. I have put the gable trim on, and the front porch railing is on. We had a problem with the side porch supports -- they weren't long enough, and I noticed that everyone else's wasn't either. Jimmy simply taped it off and filled it in with wood putty.We also had a problem with the gable trim having gaps in it, so hubby filled in the gaps with caulk. I have not yet painted over it. Complements of LPCullen

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prep work and paint

On Tuesday night I managed to get the rest of the siding off. The last stubborn bits came up after I doused them with a vinegar / water mixture. I don't know if the vinegar helped at all to loosen the glue or if it was just the water, but in any case, I was able to loosen the last bits of trim and rip them off. The downside is, the house smelled like vinegar. The wood also turned an awful black color where the vinegar and water touched, but no worries, since that will be covered up.The after

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TA-DA!

Finita est. The eave trim is masked in place to dry, the glue is dry & tape's off of everywhere else, and if the weather's pretty tomorrow I'll take it out for finished front picture, & if it's not I'll do it with the flash. Then I can take the roll for processing and add the pictures.The roof might've fit more flush if I hadn't decorated first (as the instructions suggested), but it fit well enough to reinforce with the heavy stapler, which I also did at the corner seams and where the

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the roof is shingled!

The roof is shingled (and covered with masking tape until the little rascals finish drying); DH says the ripples make the shingling job "look real"; isn't he just so sweet!So I decided I have to paint the eave trim to match the roof & peak trim. I sort of wish I had painted the porch trim to coordinate, but think it would've been too much of a good thing. It's going to a lady who loves purple in all its glory & the complementary color to purple is yellow, hence the exterior color schem

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Day 13

Gggrrrr! Somebody please remind me that hubby always mixes stuff up. If you want him to turn right somewhere, you better tell him to turn left! Moral of this? Well, he told me that the "interior" window trim was the "exterior" window trim and the "exterior" window trim was the "interior" window trim. Yes, that's right, I put most of my window trim on only to have to take it back off because it was wrong. Oh well. And, hubby and I are having "creative differences". He wants a color other than yel

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roofing

Hi-ho, this is fun! The roof actually FITS!!! without too much whacking with the hammer. The porch roof is shingled and the glue is drying on the front roof. I'm not too sure why the front roof is in two pieces since they fit together so it's logical to glue the seam; hope I won't need to reinforce the seam with a strip of wood since I don't really want to make beamed ceilings upstairs and that's the only way I could make a seam brace work. Not too sure how it's going to look until it's fini

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Day 12

Not much got done today. Been waiting on hubby to get the shingling done, and now he is finished. He created a "cap" at the top peaks with the shingles, which I think looks pretty neat. Here are pictures of the finished roof. Jimmy isn't real thrilled with the shingles because the minute the glue touches them, they start to curl up. Which means, he has to put a couple rows on and tape them down and wait for them to dry, put a couple rows on and tape them down and wait for them to dry, ...Complem

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the roofing is left to do

I have the porch trim installed, I have one piece of trim left for the short side railing (I had five pieces for some reason & no, it's not a sill; I used all those (inside the house). I looked high & low for the "embossed 'L'" the instructions referred to for porch post placement, but there wasn't one (or two) so I eyeballed it. Having the porch roof on helped with post placement.I have shingled the upstairs front, the last two courses of shingles are drying as I type and then the hou

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finished

I finished the construction of the Arthur yesterday.I had loads of company so I didnt get a chance to blogso here goes.I finished the shingles and put on the parts of fussy trim I liked.I have the last 2 windows ready to put in I just wont do it till after I finish the decorating in the bathroom and the kitchen.this is what I liked about the kit.....at first I had my nose stuck in the air because it was a "small" house but as I worked on it I developed a stong liking of its charm. it has great l

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Day Eleven

Sorry I haven't gotten much done! Yesterday I battled a sinus infection and did nothing! I came home from work and went straight to bed! Today I am feeling a lot better, and I got quite a bit done. Hubby has finished the siding and I have been painting trim, staining stuff, and putting exterior window trim on. Of course, this was done under the strictest supervision of Chloe. I also do have all the wallpapering complete. Somebody remind me to wallpaper

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Nothing is as simple as it seems

I hopped out of bed this morning all ready to start shingling the front of the house, upstairs, and took a really good look at the pictures in the instructions. Hmm, the porch roof comes above the "seam" between downstairs & upstairs & I am slap out of spackle, AND I'm going to have to install the porch to see how far up the upper front wall I need to go before shingling. Of course, I'll have to spackle some more and then "wash" the "stucco" with the yellow/ yellow ochre mixture. So I

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un-siding

I just did an impetuous thing.I spent about an hour tonight applying a few strips of siding, waiting for them to dry a bit, and then applying a few more. As I was waiting for the glue to dry I got to thinking how much time applying this siding was adding to the building process, and how I'm sort of on a deadline because we're all supposed to be building this Arthur at the same time, and how many hours this was going to add to my project -- hours that could be spent in other ways. The more I th

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Base is on

I have added the base to the Arthur house and I added paper clay around the base floor and the back foundation wall.Here is a close up of the back wallThis is the sideThis is the front Shot with a brick and stone walkwayNow I have to add flowers and I'll be done!Complements of My Mini Shop

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Day Nine

Today I finished up wallpapering the livingroom and began preparing to wallpaper the second floor. I start with the bathroom. I am looking at this little angle here, and thinking this is gonna be a little tricky. I start with the outside wall first, and then move to the inside wall. I will wallpaper the front wall last. I begin examining the bedroom to be wallpapered. Got to looking at that angle in the bedroom and decided I probably should have w

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