Sunday, February 19, 2012

It has begun!

Now that I have completed The Heritage, I have decided to take on one of the BIG houses, the Beacon Hill (BH).  The first night was spent sorting the parts and making sure everything was in the kit by comparing to the schematics (that I had to order and wait for).  Fortunately, everything was there from what I could tell!  The lady that I bought the kit from had started, but only put together a couple of pieces of the foundation.  That is a relief!  Now I know that the mistakes with be all mine!  LOL

After getting everything cleaned up from the Heritage, I started with a blank table and my basic supplies.  This time they suggested using a glue gun.  So I dug out my little glue gun and found some glue sticks.  I have ordered a bigger gun for later in the project and for future houses.  Can I just say, THANK GOODNESS FOR GLUE STICKS????? SO far, I can tell that this type of glue will hold nicely and will cool and set within seconds, versus having to wait hours between parts with the white crafting glue.  Obviously I will need the white glue for other parts of the house, but this was a massive time saver!

The first thing I did was to R&P (remove and prepare) all of the pieces to get the basic construction done.  Before putting anything together, I made templates of each piece, laabeled as to what wall, floor or ceiling they were.  I did this to make decorating with flooring and wall coverings easier.  This is just one of those things I had to learn the hard way!  Decorating after construction was not so easy.  But then again, neither was decorating while constructing.  The way the directions read for BH, the basic construction is essential in the first 3 steps.  Let's see how much cussing and grumbling I do later on with this method!





A couple of hours of making templates and a couple of hours putting the basic construction together finished up my first day working on this beauty!

Friday, February 3, 2012

Welcome!

Well, here we go!  A little background . . . the Beacon Hill is my third dollhouse construction.  I rescued the kit from a woman who got the first two steps done and quit.  Unfortunately the instructions are not in the kit, so my first step is to get the instructions to continue!

I had always wanted a dollhouse when I was a little girl.  Now I dont have room to keep my dollhouses, but plan to do nice things with them.  The Beacon Hill is a project I hope to build and sell to someone who can appreciate the detail work that I put into my houses.  I also have the Garfield Kit to put together.  In addition to those kits, I have two beautiful antique houses that were constructed but not completed.  One of these is enormous and is set aside for my daughter.  The other I hope to finish (lots of work needs to be done on it) and donate to a little girl who doesnt have much for Christmas.  The final house I have is in a kit, extremely old (the instructions were typewritten and falling apart) and without pictures of the finished design.  I have researched and found the pictures, but the kit is so old it needs nails to be put together.  Thank goodness I have purchased a miniature nail gun!

Thanks for coming to visit and watch as the blog grows along with my houses!  Pictures will be coming soon, I promise!