Sanding

A bit of wet-dry sending takes care of various molding artifacts. Also, I see the underside has some crude molding of wood grain. I am very tempted to cut that out and replace it with actual wood. This was supposed to be a quick project though...

Packard Engine

The engine is pretty much done. Working under magnification, it's never quite right though.

Parkard Boattail Speedster

New project in the wings...

Tiled Entry

The tiles are balsa, with some Gesso for texture, and a couple colors of paint.

Dollhouse Disaster

Well this sucks...

While assembling some larger walls I bumped the dining room light enough to break the fine wiring.  I can fix this, but I had to cut away part of the carpet and pull through more wire.

Then, while disassembling the light itself, I dropped it.  I was sitting down and it hit the floor, not more than a 2 foot drop.  But by some freak chance one of the bulbs broke! This is pretty amazing, this little piece has an infinitesimal mass, and the bulbs are glass, but pretty solid. The suppliers of this stuff should really switch to LEDs.

Anyway, there is is. Now I have a hole in the rug that will never be perfectly hidden, and I have to get another bulb for the light.

This saga highlights a problem with this sort of kit. The whole thing is really designed to just be assembled and painted easily, "out of the box". It's all tabs and slots and could easily be just put together in a day.

But if you want to do any detail, it gets awkward. For example, a detail like a fragile ceiling light should be added last so this sort of thing wouldn't happen. But you can't really do that. I think if I did something like this again, I'd cut off all the tabs and cut some of the wall/floor pieces into smaller sections so that rooms could be done one at a time while still leaving easy access to other parts. for things like paining, baseboards and other trim.

It's disappointing.  But that's OK, I didn't really have any specific plans for this thing anyway. It's really just an experiment.

Doll house Kitchen Floor

Turning to the rooms on the front side, I'm using yellow linoleum for the kitchen floor. I first sanded the burlap side with some very course sandpaper to make the stuff thinner and easier to work with. That worked pretty well.

I used a paper template for the shape. With most of the burlap gone, it cuts fairly easily, with a sharp new blade.

Light!

Lights on, nobody home...

The Dining Room Ceiling

To make the second bedroom floor, or actually the dining room ceiling, I put a small hole in the center, cut a groove that will be hidden under the carpet, and installed a light fixture. The wiring will follow a tab out to the outer wall and later be covered up by siding.

Hope it works...

Upstairs at The Doll House

Here's some red carpeting for the second floor bedroom.

Hotline

I found this sitting for free on the sidewalk yesterday. It's old, but it has been retro-fitted with the "modern" phone jack style. Interestingly, the area code on the label is 801. Around here, old phones would all be 503.