The Pierce Dollhouse

[havanaholly]

Unless you are an exceptionally careful painter who can paint window trim without splopping paint on your pretty wallpaper or painted walls and the transparent window inserts that are impossible to get clean if they're already in place on the house, you just might want to wait until you finish decorating, then paint/ stain your trims separately, then add the transparent inserts and finish assembling and adding the doors and windows to your house.

[KathieB]

8 hours ago, Brittney said:

this is my first dollhouse and I'm trying to do it right

Brittney, "right" is whatever works for you. If it brings you joy to work on the trim, go ahead and do it. You can save the pieces in baggies labeled with the contents. And think how happy you will be when you get to the trimming stage and it is all nicely primed and painted and just needs to be installed.  

[Medieval]

I chose to decorate walls before assembly. There are pros and cons to doing it this way. But you definitely will want to decorate the stairwell before gluing all that in. It's impossible after the fact. Holly suggested to me in the beginning to assemble the house in dry fit and trace where the floors and walls meet with pencil. This has helped greatly when decorating all the pieces before assembly because I can see where NOT to paint, wallpaper, or lay floor boards.  It helps too to take pictures of the assembled rooms to refer to later when making decor decisions. Since you don't need the surface area of the roof, I will get around to measuring mine and let you know for sure! One last thing, it also helps to look at peoples blogs on building the Pierce.  This one helped me interpret the instructions better because I'm more visual.  https://moreminis.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-pierce-dollhouse-revisited-blog.html

[Brittney]

I'm putting my hardwood floors down but I won't be able to open the doors how did y'all fix this problem should I cut out a little square of the flooring so my doors can open up.....

[Medieval]

I would sand the bottom of the doors, dryfitting to check for clearance. You could sand with a Dremel tool if you have one, but carefully. I practiced on the punchouts from my windows before I did the doors. It helps to have a vice, I learned.

[Medieval]

Also, if you haven't already, pay attention to putting the flooring too close to the edge of the floor where it butts up to the wall. If you will be installing baseboard you can even be a little short in those areas (I'm talking millimeters or 1/16") and your baseboard well cover the gap up. But you need to know how wide your baseboard is first. 

[Brittney]

54 minutes ago, Medieval said:

I would sand the bottom of the doors, dryfitting to check for clearance. You could sand with a Dremel tool if you have one, but carefully. I practiced on the punchouts from my windows before I did the doors. It helps to have a vice, I learned.

Will that make the doors look short on the outside? I was thinking about doing that too but wasn't sure how the doors would look.

[Medieval]

2 hours ago, Brittney said:

Will that make the doors look short on the outside? I was thinking about doing that too but wasn't sure how the doors would look.

Bring the flooring out to under the doors or place a transition strip across the doorway under the doors or put flooring on the porch too. I'm thinking to put floorboards on my porch or stone. I haven't decided yet.

[Brittney]

1 hour ago, Medieval said:

Bring the flooring out to under the doors or place a transition strip across the doorway under the doors or put flooring on the porch too. I'm thinking to put floorboards on my porch or stone. I haven't decided yet.

Thank you, I've decided to put flooring on the porch too!

[Brittney]

Hi everyone, I laid down my floors and did not like how it looked so I asked it all down, what's the best kind of stain and finish?

[Brittney]

I can't post a picture but I over cut on my stairs and hat to add pieces I don't like how it looks or the parts where the floor meets up together, I sanded off the shine and stain, but now I have to stain it.

[havanaholly]

I'm partial to Minwas, which I apply with a rag of the hubs' old teeshirts.

[Medieval]

Pictures would be helpful. You have enough posts to create an album of your progress. That way we can see and maybe offer suggestions. The stain you use depends on the house and it's style that  you are building.  Also, if you used popsicle sticks, not all of them are perfectly straight. I fill in the gaps with wood putty and score a slight groove (otherwise the floor would loose it's floorboard effect) sand well and then stain. So without any pictures it is hard to say.

[Brittney]

27 minutes ago, Medieval said:

Pictures would be helpful. You have enough posts to create an album of your progress. That way we can see and maybe offer suggestions. The stain you use depends on the house and it's style that  you are building.  Also, if you used popsicle sticks, not all of them are perfectly straight. I fill in the gaps with wood putty and score a slight groove (otherwise the floor would loose it's floorboard effect) sand well and then stain. So without any pictures it is hard to say.

Ty I will try to make an album!

[Medieval]

Let me know if you need help. You probably will need to shrink your photos for posting. Use the free online tool at https://picresize.com/ to get your photos small enough. It's easy enough I can do it, so that means everyone can do it. But if you have questions, just ask. ; - )

[Brittney]

12 minutes ago, Brittney said:

Ty I will try to make an album!

Idk how to make add pics, I was able to add the floor pic on my profile

[Brittney]

22 minutes ago, Medieval said:

Let me know if you need help. You probably will need to shrink your photos for posting. Use the free online tool at https://picresize.com/ to get your photos small enough. It's easy enough I can do it, so that means everyone can do it. But if you have questions, just ask. ; - )

Ty I do need to shrink them

[Brittney]

[Brittney]

2 minutes ago, Brittney said:

Ty I do need to shrink them

It worked thanks

[Brittney]

So I started off with the wood floors from hobby lobby and I put the floors down and then I cut out the stairs but I messed up on cutting out the stairs so I put little squares you can see in the picture, and I added the other wood slats and I didn't like how it all met up so I tried to put wood filler in there but it's none stainable wood filler so when I tried to stain it it wouldn't stain. Then I tried a pen that was Walnut colored but it ended up being too dark. It's was a minwax wood finish stain marker but it was way too dark so then there was darker lines on the floor which made it look cool like worn wood but I didn't want that because it was only in a couple spots so then it looked kind of rotten. So then I tried a Rust-Oleum would repair fill stick that was the same color as the floor but then it wasn't sticking to the spots that I needed it to stay on so I just decided to sand the entire thing down.... now I'm thinking I might have sanded it too much because there's going to be light and dark spots, so please let me know what you guys think I should do. I know if I sanded down now it won't look like tiny wood slats but I was thinking I can just get it to look like that again with a ruler and a razor.... I don't know the stairs really got me discouraged with all the extra patches I don't think I should have used these wood sheets and think maybe I should have cut them up and placed them like they do the popsicle sticks.....I don't know give me some tips please thanks everyone.........

[Medieval]

This is fixable. You have a some choices. One, take off the the flooring and start over. Probably the most difficult and most expensive. Two, make sure you get stainable wood putty. Smooth it all out, score in floorboard lines. Restain. Three, put another floor surface on over this one. Four, paint the floor. Paint will cover stain and you can get wood like colors. 

Don't worry about getting flush with edges that go up against the wall or staircase. A good baseboard will cover that up. So get close but not too close. I always start at the edge that will be wall-less.

It will be okay. You just got newbie jitters. I would go into panic mode at first too. Now, I stop and try to think what I'm going to do to fix it. I think you will find doing the 2nd floor less harrowing!

[Medieval]

One last tip...you started on the biggest floor. When trying something new, try it out on models. I made bricks on scrap wood before i started on the main house. Or pick the smaller part. I started flooring on the room to the left (my house's kitchen). Got my groove on before tackling the bigger area.

[havanaholly]

I have begun using the iron-on wood veneer strips from the hardware storee, cutting them into 6" lengths and splitting them into 1/2" and 1/4" widths.  I spot glue them into place with all-purpose white glue and iron the entire floor on "high" setting:

[KathieB]

Holly's iron-on veneer may be your best bet. It will give the effect you are looking for without adding bulk.

I would also consider painting for the same reason. Once the rooms are decorated, and with the judicious placement of rugs (and maybe carpeting in some rooms), the floors will not be as noticeable.

[Brittney]

7 hours ago, Medieval said:

This is fixable. You have a some choices. One, take off the the flooring and start over. Probably the most difficult and most expensive. Two, make sure you get stainable wood putty. Smooth it all out, score in floorboard lines. Restain. Three, put another floor surface on over this one. Four, paint the floor. Paint will cover stain and you can get wood like colors. 

Don't worry about getting flush with edges that go up against the wall or staircase. A good baseboard will cover that up. So get close but not too close. I always start at the edge that will be wall-less.

It will be okay. You just got newbie jitters. I would go into panic mode at first too. Now, I stop and try to think what I'm going to do to fix it. I think you will find doing the 2nd floor less harrowing!

What's the best stainable putty? I feel like if started over it will still have the meet up spots in the front... Thanks for the advice!!