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A couple Jane Harrop kits - a bench for my entrance and a castle for the kiddies bedroom, a Christmas tree just like the big one I made for my Mummy last year, some cutting boards and some tiny beach huts to paint for a mantlepiece or somewhere. Some wrapped presents, parcels and a tiny tissue box from Mini McGregor. A gorgeous stitched cushion from WHB Miniatures - had seen this online before and it is fabulous in person, so tiny it is hard to tell they're stitches! They do 1:12 too, well worth it if anyone needs a cushion and doesn't want to stitch it themselves. I finally found a 1:24 Christmas tree and some tiny candy canes from Life of Riley. Yay! Best stand was Ella-Rose Miniatures (Etsy) (Facebook) where the 1:24 gingerbread house, snowman and gonk came from. Just full of colour and whimzy, I loved it! She has some fun Christmas trees too, though none in 1:24th and sadly can't afford it anyway! Also got a 1:144 house kit which I may make and give my mother-in-law for Christmas. Trying to inspire her to take up her dollhousing again. Took her to Miniatura a few years ago, but didn't manage to get the house waiting to be decorated out of her spare room corner. Also got a rainbow cake, and two teddies with party hats, but they're wrapped up packed away for stockings.

So, after a year plus of a "quick build", it is finally finished. Since being furloughed because of Covid, I had the time to finish up the cottage. It was a fun build and I am proud of the way it turned out. My sister was visiting last week from Missouri, and when she saw it, she fell in love with it. She is not one for miniatures, but all she could do was stare at it and look at all the details. I knew then she had to bring it home with her. I really had no place for it. It was a labor of love, so who better to give it to!

Been there, and given away some houses. I recently got a almost free Grandville for cheap, assembled. Knowing how rare, I took it. Luckily, I have a walk up attic, so there it sits. One day I will get to it, probably rebuild it so I know it will stay together. Finds like that are hard to pass up. I have cleaned out my stash of other kits, but, hmmm, go figure, it still grows. I just recently acquired a very rare Opening Scenes Wuthering Heights kit. It us the house from the 1930s movie. It's an addiction, go with it!

Some of the copper plumbing fittings make nice mini-size cookware. Iron-on wood veneer can be split and cut into mini "boards" and laid as flooring. I buy flat white interior latex paint (soap & water clean up) a quart at a time to use as primer as well as to mix with acrylic paints from the tubes to get custom paint colors. I get my Titebond wood glue at the hardware store. Sandpaper, small diameter round and square wood dowels and the occasional sheet of 1/8" plywood for any major kit bashing I need to so. Of course, the occasional tub of spackle or joint compound; these are pretty much my usual purchases at the hardware store, although I have also run across useful hand tools like my mini hand drill/ pin vise, bench vise with magnetic padded grips, and 1" paintbrushes.

Bashing sounds more brutal than it really is. It is the art of remodeling miniature houses. Move a staircase, add or remove a wall, add or remove a dormer, change scale, add on a wing, etc. Basically it is changing the basic layout to suit your own vision.

I'm going for it. Agreed to finish the exterior of my French Quarter house and trade for this one. This chateau is OOAK, finely made, and has some pretty costly interiors whereas, with all due respect to RGT, my French Quarter is just a modified mass-produced house. I can always do another if I feel I must (likely won't happen). Not sure when the transfer will take place. I went through some things and found I had more of a head start on furnishing than I thought I did so that helps. Quite a lot of extremely dark Bespaq mahogany pieces and another set in "White Oak" (it's a very weird finish), both of which I detest, so I don't mind one bit painting those! Some Country Cottage-style upholstered pieces and hand-painted case goods I think will work nicely mixed in here and there. I won't distress anything so far as to look derelict but this chateau definitely won't be filled with Louis the Pick-a-Number gilded finery. Anyway, I'm excited!

Hi, On the whole in their basic form mdf houses (eg RGT) go together much quicker than plywood houses (eg Greenleaf). The walls and floors tend to slot into place and hold each other in place while the glue dries. The two I put together could be done (undecorated) in an afternoon. If you want to decorate, then time depends on what you want to do. Simple painting just requires time for the paint to dry. The thicker MDF walls tended not to warp much when I painted mine. Wallpapering takes a little longer to measure and stick/dry. Outsides - again milled siding will be relatively quick to paint, cutting strips of siding to paint and glue on will take relatively ages, days rather than hours. Roof - painted quick, shingled slow. I love the plywood tab & slot houses much more than the MDF ones (I find them more interesting, easier to bash (change) and lighter to carry/move), but they take longer to put together. If you don't have much time cause you need it finished soon, painting an MDF one might be the way to go; if you don't have much time each day, but it doesn't matter that it'll take months of an hour here or there, then choose the house that you like the look of best - the Greenleaf ones can be done a little bit at a time. If you're keeping the house you can always go back and renovate and update it when you have more time 😉 Who's the house for? If a child, MDF ones tend to be a bit more robust to be played with by little children. More careful older children and adults will be fine playing with thinner plywood houses.

Last Saturday I attended my first meeting of the Midwest Miniature Guild after joining in August at a miniature show. I had a wonderful time - everybody was very friendly and seemed to think it was great to have a new member. There was a display of projects that club members had done, a "free table", a catered lunch, a business meeting, and then what they called a "garage sale." The garage sale turned out to be a number of tables of dollhouses and miniatures from collections of members who had passed away or members who just had lots of excess miniatures, dolls, fabric, lace, lighting, etc. they wanted to sell, So, a garage sale that was ALL MINIATURES!!! Prices were unbelievably low and I got some really cute things. Spent all the money I had on me and went home happy knowing I had found "my people." The meeting was in New Brighton, Minnesota (suburb of St. Paul) and the Midwest Miniature Guild covers Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota. Highly recommend if you live in those states.

I think it's mostly the camera angle and the default wide angle that the iphone uses. The railing is Houseworks 1/24 scale, but because I preferred to have a small space below the lower railing, I raised it by 1/8 inch, so the overall height of the railing is 1 5/8 inches so 3 foot 3 inches. The railing at my real house is 3 feet, so it should be close. The bench is 2.5 inches wide (so 5 feet), and the seat of it is a tad shy of 11/16th inch - so 16.5 inches high, which seems reasonable. The table is 1 1/8 inch high, so 27 inches, and has a small top - only 1 inch (so 2 feet) - so it's a little small. The seats are 13/16ths (19.5 inches) high and 5/8th (15 inches) wide which seems in scale. The slightly higher railing may accentuate the slightly shorter table, but in person, I think it looks ok. Here's another picture with the front rail removed to see the scale and hopefully at a better angle!

does this house come with a bar of gold?

Thank you I saw him Two days ao, he was wonderful, everything I could have hoped for and then some, furst surgery is in November

Thanks so much for all your help! I finished up the railings, and they turned out great! I did have to place the individual spindles, and using the spacing method you suggested worked great! I worked on top of graph paper too, in a jig box, to help keep everything straight. They aren't glued in yet, but here's how they are looking, gently placed! The upper deck is slightly warped, so the gaps will be corrected once I fix that.

Every Tuesday at 7 pm Eastern time I Zoom chat with 5 friends -- 3 from college, 2 from high school, octogenarians all. Sometimes it seems as if there are 2 or 3 Tuesdays in a week.

Behold, if everything is here, it's not one but TWO kits I'm getting ! The one I bought and wanted is a laser-cut Brimbles, and the other he's giving me for free because he needs to make space since he's moving. I think the 2nd one may be a half-scale Fairfield, but that box was more damaged so I'm not too sure. Guess it'll be a surprise ! And just in time for my birthday ~

Even N scale is too big?? **clunk** head>desk In that case, I believe I have been overthinking this problem. I have a large painting in an ornate frame that I cut out from a museum postcard. It's 6" high but on a back wall, unless you reach in and touch it, you seriously cannot tell it isn't a 3-dimensional frame. Any minute detail is going to be lost in 1:288 scale anyway. Did a quick mock-up in Photoshop starting with a photo of tree bark. I'm thinking I'll just print this, wrap it around a dowel, stick it in a far corner and call it done!

Proof of just how out of my depth I am! I mentally converted to what 1/12th within 1/12th would be, but not 1/24th. What would that be anyway, 1:288 scale? Good luck decorating inside of that! At this point I'm thinking I'll just keep a lookout for a nice thick branch about an inch in diameter (equivalent to 24" in 1/24th of 1/12th??), cut it about 1.5" in length (3-feet high at that scale?), and then just glue some N-scale windows and a door onto it. Not even kidding. Hearts for all of you, thanks for the help!

Turned out great! Lovely details throughout and I LOVE the stained glass. Kim

Mardee, if you click on the "shop" button at the top of the page it will take you to the Greenleaf store where you and your granddaughter can look at photos of the dollhouse kits and let her choose the one that calls her name. Letting your cursor hover on the picture of a house shows the interior. I have built one laser cut kit, the Lighthouse, and the only issues I had were dealing with the soot on the edges and the kit went together so fast that it was built before I wasableto do the bashing I had planned for it.

Because you're a typical miniaturist and you cannot resist tiny things.

Wow, those Crocs look so realistic! Lots of interesting stuff at that site. This is a nicely finished RGT Bungalow. The seller sounds a little grumpy though. 😆 https://inlandempire.craigslist.org/for/d/rancho-cucamonga-classic-bungalow/7389087679.html

Hey everyone! Finally completed the rug I was working on before the hospital saga. It's that leaping deer one from the 20th century miniature book. I replaced the orange with another shade of brown though. Hope to have a picture up soon. A few nights ago I started another rug, this one a discontinued one from Janet Granger called Hannah, which fits the theme. It's also shades of brown, kind of abstract and geometric to go with the other rugs in the project. At the rate I'm working, I'll finish that one quickly, maybe within two weeks. Tonight's dinner menu includes Italian sausage and spaghetti. Oh how I missed it while I was away! Physical therapy is also going well. And, next week I see a new doctor. I also have some new jewelry supplies to play with. Yes, my pretties, I'm very busy lately!

Vicki, I'm a visual learner so sometimes the instructions are no help at all, so I do the dry fit until I either understand what the instructions are trying to tell me, or I find another way to get to the same destination. Occasionally I have had to put the entire house into dry fit before it looks right.

I have a house that won't fit through any standard-sized interior door. What a nightmare. It resides in the garage, gathering dust. I can't post pics of it, sorry; I signed an NDA. A talented craftsman built a full-on 1:12 replica of a Victorian house museum and then donated it to them. 7,000 hand-laid bricks and by my calculation (multiplying pieces per square inch) over 100,000 pieces of parquet. Guess what, Victorians had narrower doors than the modern day, and they couldn't even get it indoors! It languished in storage for a few years until a docent offered to give it to me. They really should not have given it away (hence the NDA), but it was a stone around their necks. Stupidly, I gleefully took it only to find out it would have to live in my dining room or living room because I didn't measure first!! Not going to happen.

I build mine in a dedicated space and then move them where they're going to go. I have also moved mine a few times. I built a couple of them whilst traveling in our RV.

@shannonc60 Awesome!

Artply Highland https://www.ebay.com/itm/174966293133?hash=item28bccdc28d:g:G90AAOSwNK9hXOz5 GG Products (early GL) The Country House https://www.ebay.com/itm/203638214620?hash=item2f69c88fdc:g:kTMAAOSwlIBg6JUY Dura-Craft Columbian https://www.ebay.com/itm/334168209465?hash=item4dcdfa3839:g:-S0AAOSwuNhhWNlR Artply Worthington https://www.ebay.com/itm/265341096251?hash=item3dc78fd13b:g:TXAAAOSwiRlhWMhh Dura-Craft Tudor https://www.ebay.com/itm/294432372458?hash=item448d8976ea:g:53kAAOSwvhZgqa35

I want to thank havanaholly and KathieB and I’m sure a few others for the “crinkled brown paper bag” used instead of sandpaper to give a baby-butt finish to a wood project I’ve been working on. I wasn’t getting the perfectly smooth surface I wanted and I was advised not to use steel wool and then I had an epiphany.....Holly and Kathie’s paper bag trick!!!! Thanks.

Use agood sturdy weight smooth paper and a small diameter dowel to shape your plates, and with a couple of coats of clear nail enamel your slates ought to look just fine!

Only the parents get to use the bathroom, everyone else is Out of luck. Thanks for the pictures. Now I can rest easy!

I haven't seen that project before. I missed most every post last year. Wasn't a good year! It's very cute and has great ideas. I'd have to scale those ideas down to 1/12th of 1/12th though, as it will be a dollhouse inside a dollhouse. That's adorable, I like it. I'm pretty decent with paperclay, I could probably pull off faux bark. Michael's has wood disks about 3" in diameter, the right size for the floors. The exterior walls could be thin, bendable plywood or even just posterboard. Grandt Line doors and windows for N-scale or HO-scale model railroad buildings might work. I will have to give this some thought. Okay, a lot of thought. Any scale apart from 1/12th and I am fairly lost!

Sadly not 1:144, but this 1:48 stump kit could be something to do in the future! You could get a 1:144 house kit and paperclay it to make the stump appearance on the outside....or just paperclay the illusion of a house.

Welcome to the little family, Jenny. Mineejv/ Joanne is one of our members who works in 1:144 scale; a number of us do (I'm not one, I have dabbled in 1:24 scale and have a few 1:48 kits I'll try some day). Have you tried card stock for your furniture?