Been a long time gone...

I have been a long time gone from my blog, and for my followers I am sorry. I am still working on the Georgetown Brownstone dollhouse by Craft Products, but moved back home and dealt with all the hassles that entails. On the bright side with that move home I am revamping my life a bit and repainting my interior space, as well as getting my shop set up to be more conducive to my miniature work. Going from a... we'll say interesting paint job with wallpaper border put up when I was a teen to something a bit more calming, and I hope helpful to working in when I'm done. I will also I hope be taking up some carpet in half of the room, and installing some laminate flooring that looks like wood. This should be a lot easier to find small things on if I happen to drop anything off of the desk in my new work area. If all comes out according to plan I  will be sure to update with pictures.

Now the main reason for this blog is to follow along with my mini-making -- and I will get to the updates on the Brownstone now for all of you! For anybody new, please know that if you click on any picture it will enlarge to more easily see the details.  :) To the upper right you can see the wallpaper and flooring choices in place, the carpet and flooring is not permanently in on the second and third floors as I've yet to finish installing my lights and chandeliers. I love the paper on the third floor, as well as the bedroom, and living rooms -- all are vinyl papers that if they were to get dirty they can be easily wiped down, and they all have a bit of texture to them. A characteristic I truly love as most dollhouse wallpapers are just too smooth(similar to what is used in the upper half of the bathroom on the right of the second floor). The papers used for the kitchen and entry/foyer on the right of the first floor are both scrapbook papers, but I felt they were perfect in that they tie in with my theme of using creams and gold throughout to unify the house.

Funny stories in regards to the first floor -- I had the kitchen flooring completely finished and the same length as the living room flooring and couldn't figure out why it didn't seem right to me... of course this caused me to delay on installing it until I could figure out why it didn't seem right. This had me one evening perusing Pinterest and Googling brownstone style houses -- bang, hit me that most have some sort of foyer or entryway! This led me to cut off several inches of my kitchen floor as well as completely readjust the kitchen ceiling... but I love the addition of the marble for the foyer and the new foyer ceiling, b/c once my thresholds and trim are in between the rooms I truly believe it will make all the difference in making it more realistic!  :) 

 

In addition to the fun of changing/having to re-make the ceiling for the kitchen along with adjusting my flooring  for the kitchen, I also am having some extra fun with the interior door frame. If you were here for my first post about this build -- when I got the kit it didn't have any windows, nor did it come with any added details like a door on the inside of the front panel. After looking all over, I finally got lucky when a friend of mine decided to pare down her own collection and sold this -- which measurement wise and detail wise works perfectly for what I want it to. That is it measures perfectly with the existing door frame on the exterior of the front panel, however I realized the other night when installing wallpaper and seeing how it looked -- that you know what, it's got just enough depth to create an issue for the front panel to close properly. However, if anyone knows me they know I'm stubborn enough to not let a little detail like a .25" depth stop me! Nope, I have intentions of making a mold of this frame first(so if I mess it up I can make another easily enough), and then I'm going to sand the back of this down with the belt sander so it's no longer so thick in depth and will allow the front panel to open and close smoothly... I hope.

Other news the third floor still is in need of wainscot, I decided on board and batten wainscot with a bit of a twist -- which is of course causing me a number additional cuts to the norm, but I think it will be fun and different when done. The proprietress of this home finally has a name -- Ivy, and has told me she likes the general idea of old class with a few twists to update and keep it fun. We shall see if she likes it all when I'm finished, which I truly believe the interior will be with-in the next couple of weeks. The exterior I've pulled out my pack of Paperclay, and am gearing myself up to finally get the gumption to start sculpting bricks to match the sheets of bricks that are already applied to the exterior of the Brownstone. I believe I'm going to attempt that with the clay just rolled out and then sculpt the bricks in to match. However, while I have the clay out I also have another build that I have a stone stencil from Bromley that I'm going to water the clay down until it's a pancake batter consistency and then use that with the stencil. I've read and researched that if you make the watered down clay in a jar that you can seal it keeps for years -- I'm just hoping it really works well with the stencil. Which means I'll hopefully be posting pictures of a stone church here soon enough for you all as well. I'll give you the back story on that once I put it together again and start showing pictures. lol

That's all for now, as it is rather late but I hope everyone is enjoying the summer and enjoying their own builds! Hope to be back again soon with more picture updates of progress!