jdodyd

Happy New Year to all from the frozen north of Minnesota.

Right now I am building a RGT kit called "County Tudor" that has a front opening. I haven't done the hinges yet for the door and that looks like it might be tricky to do to get the front to hang evenly. One advantage is that furniture placement is pretty easy since you don't have to work around windows (the windows are only on the door side.) A disadvantage is that the rooms are quite dark because of having no windows. I agree with havanaholly that front-opening dollhouses are much more characteristic of English styles. As far as displaying back-opening dollhouses, I have one on a old kit

I have a RGT "Simplicity" dollhouse - the floors are fitted into grooves similar to your house. The width of the walls and the slope of the roof look like typical RGT houses. The front door and 2nd floor window/shutters are identical to the ones on my house (and I have an old RGT catalog that shows them.) The dormer windows are identical to the ones on RGT houses. On the other hand, the first floor three-sided windows don't look like anything RGT makes and the placement of the stairs is odd (RGT houses typically have staircases directly in a line going up.) Having three, rather than the two

I will get the vaccine as soon as my health provider offers it to me. Until then, I will social distance, wear a mask when out, and stay home and finish the Tudor dollhouse I'm working on and then drag out my big "Worthington" kit (now hidden under the couch) and start on it. That's my plan and I'm sticking to it.

I just watched a six-minute preview of this show. I found it streaming on Amazon Prime and then had to download the HGTV app. It is called the "The Biggest Little Christmas Showdown", showing Friday night, Nov 27, 9/8c. It is Christmas-themed with the three teams of contestants with two people each had a month ahead of time to prepare for it with partial builds, then they have 12 hours in a Santa's Workshop-type of setting to finish their work. Oddly enough, the first challenge is for a Christmas-themed Hawaiian cottage. Not quite what we do here but it looked interesting enough to be wor

Possibly could be a fiberboard dollhouse from Rich Toy Company or Keystone. Vintage from 1940's or so.

I've done several houses very realistically and enjoyed doing it and the final product. But my heart belongs to my Christmas-themed house lived in by cat and bunny figures, furnished realistically but with an animal family enjoying the holidays with friends.

From my experience with building 7 dollhouses, the Shenendoah was by far (by an order of magnitude) the most difficult. The RGT and Greenleaf kits are a breeze by com;parison. I got stuck for a year or so on the stairs and had to have a lot of help with the roof. Good luck.

Don't be scared - The Shenendoah was my first house also - mixing the powder and using the template strip was very easy and turned out nicely. I don't remember if I mixed color into the chimney stucco, but for the fireplace I tinted the mixture black with some gold and copper stripes and was happy with the results. Trust me, if you put all those logs together, you can certainly do the chimney and fireplace. Good luck.

Make sure you sign your own and your daughter's name and details of place and time of your build (on the underside of the bottom of the house) for future owners.

As Holly says, there are no "no-nos" in dollhouses and miniatures. In fact, the variety of the visions among people in building and decorating is one of the things that makes being a member of the community here so interesting. Just experiment with different solutions and tape them in place and then decide what look you personally like best.

This is a good question and one I that I have run into also. I used baseboard molding painted the same color as the stairs on one stairway and just a thin strip of scrap wood stained the same color as the stairs on another. Either way I notice it when I look but I'll bet nobody else does.