dollhouse — Page 104

Hummingbird Cottage

December 4, 2013 at 9:06 am by Claudia

Life at Hummingbird Cottage, for that is it’s name, though it hasn’t been mentioned for a while. It was decided long ago by the readers of this blog.

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Oh boy, it’s cold outside! Perhaps it’s the perfect time to knit or crochet, all snuggled up on the vintage Christmas in Connecticut-y sofa?

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Or maybe it’s time to grab a copper pan and make a hearty soup while basking in the heat of the ever-warm Aga? Ummm! It looks and smells delicious.

But not having a working refrigerator is frustrating. One has to buy fresh food daily. Very European.

dollhouseornaments

Or maybe this cold day brings thoughts of Christmas. Perhaps it’s time to haul the ornaments down from the attic?

Of course, there’s construction going on within the walls of Hummingbird Cottage, as well. The sound of hammers and saws is ever present.

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The gutted bathroom has new tile and wallpaper. Beadboard has been installed. Moldings and a chair rail have been added.

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It’s more than a little annoying that there isn’t a toilet. Or a bathtub. Or a sink.

But that’s what happens when you’re renovating. Thank goodness you have kind neighbors who graciously give you a key to their house and use of their bathroom.

You have been sleeping on the sofa in the den. Your bed hasn’t arrived yet.

But then again, you chose to live in the cottage while it was being renovated. So, there you go. And besides, the sofa is very comfortable. It’s just not a bed.

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The floor has been painted in what will be the craft room/office. But the walls are a blank canvas. This room needs the most work.

What to do?

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Light the fire, make some hot chocolate, and grab your well-worn copy of Anne of Green Gables. Snuggle against those pillows and lose yourself in the adventures of Anne on beautiful Prince Edward Island. Ahhhh! A lovely way to spend a cold and blustery day.

Happy Wednesday.

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How to Make a Hardwood Floor for Your Dollhouse

November 29, 2013 at 9:53 am by Claudia

I shudder at my temerity in presenting any sort of miniature tutorial. But then I remember that a lot of you are just like me. We’re women who love the idea of having our very own dollhouse to decorate. We’re not miniaturists. We just want to putter and play. So, without further ado, here is a little tutorial on putting in a hardwood floor in your dollhouse. Every room in the dollhouse, save for the bathroom, has one. I’ve used a wood stain in some of the rooms and a painted floor in others.

When I was ready to install my first floor, I went to a restaurant supply store and bought a big box of coffee stirrers. However, when I got them home, I quickly realized that they were too narrow for the dollhouse. (Anyone need some coffee stirrers?)

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So I went to Michael’s and bought some wooden sticks. The stick on the right is the size of a popsicle stick. The one on the left is tongue-depressor sized. I used that one in the bedroom.

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Using my favorite tool, the Easy Cutter, I cut off the rounded ends of the sticks. (The Easy Cutter is a must have if you’re going to be cutting wood to make moldings or baseboards or flooring. Or just about anything. You can find one at Miniatures.com.)

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Then I paint or stain the sticks. It’s important to do this before you install your floor. If you wait to paint the wood until after it’s installed, you run the risk of the floor warping.

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Then you begin the layout. (We’re working in the office/craft room and I’m choosing to go with a painted floor.) As you can see, I stagger the sticks just as you would in laying a real-life hardwood floor. This is the painstaking part of the process. I glue down the first row of sticks, then cut shorter lengths to fill in the spaces near the wall. Basically, I sit there and glue, cut, and glue again. (It’s messy – I find myself peeling dried glue off my fingers for several hours afterward.) It’s really like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

I rescued this dollhouse when I found an ad for it on Craig’s List. There was water damage on the downstairs floors. It also wasn’t assembled correctly. I fixed what I could but short of taking it all apart, there were some quirks that I had to live with. See the area on the left where the wall and floor should join? They don’t. So I have to make some adjustments as I cut the wood for the floor.

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Sometimes I have to tweak the size of a stick – either the length or the width- to make the pieces fit together. Then I go back and touch up any areas of the floor that show the raw wood. I haven’t done that yet.

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And there it is.

It’s slow, methodical work. This floor took about three or four hours to install, from start to finish. On the right you can see a stained wood version in the den.

There are faux-wood versions out there for those of you who are not interested in this sort of painstaking work. I wanted the real thing, however. And I wanted the look of floors installed long ago, that are slightly uneven, with gaps here and there. That’s the look in my real-life house, as well.

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In the kitchen, I laid the floor in the opposite direction so there would be some contrast with the adjoining living room. It’s painted white and ‘aged’ with some gray.

Do you see my new light over the table? It’s a battery operated LED light that attaches to the ceiling with a magnetized base. Ingenious. When I want to turn it on, I can simply pull it from the base, flip a switch, then reattach it. I may paint that base. We’ll see.

Santa, I need a macro lens for my camera.

They aren’t cheap. I don’t think Santa will go for it.

Do you remember this chair?

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This was an inexpensive chair; I spent about $3 for it. It came with the usual dark, shiny wood and was one of the first pieces that I painted. That white fabric, though pretty, wasn’t the look I was going for. Yesterday, I finally looked though my fabric and found this pattern:

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Be still my heart. This little sweetie will reside in the bedroom. Note the wide-plank floors. They were made with the tongue-depressor sized sticks. My thought was that the third floor was an attic that had been made into a bedroom and the owner simply painted the existing floors. Oh, there’s a method to my madness.

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Thought you might like a pinnable image. If you click through to Comments, you’ll find a Pinterest button at the bottom of the post.

I hope you’re all enjoying this Friday after Thanksgiving. We ate too much. But it was good!

Happy Friday.

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Three Things

November 26, 2013 at 8:34 am by Claudia

A Favor

Dear friends, may I ask a favor of you?

I have ads on this blog that generate a small income for me. Small is the operative word here. You see, that income only comes when a reader clicks on this blog. It doesn’t come from an email subscription to this content or from a reader. I am thrilled that so many of you read this blog in a reader or via email and I know that each of you has your preferred method of content delivery. I’ve done my best to give you as many options as possible. But in doing so, I can also lose potential income if readers never click over to this blog.

I love writing this blog. I’d do it for free and did, for many years. But I now write and compose a post every day. I do book reviews. I try my best to provide good content. I’ve invested in a camera for better quality photos. Keeping this blog running requires a monthly financial commitment on my part.

When you get your email delivery of the day’s post or see Mockingbird Hill Cottage in your reader, could you occasionally click over to the blog itself? Like everyone else, we have our financial challenges. If you can visit the blog itself, it sure would make a difference in my income. You don’t have to click on the ads, nor would I ask you to. Just visit the blog. A simple click….easy. Thank you.

The Dollhouse

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I spent several hours wallpapering the dollhouse bathroom the other day.

Oy.

It’s messy and, at times, frustrating. This particular room was not, to put it kindly, assembled as tightly as it should have been by the original owners. Sounds like real life, doesn’t it? So there are quirky things to work around.

I chose this pattern because I wanted to make more of a statement in the bathroom. It also came in aqua and that was my first choice, but I have a lot of aqua in the house already, so I went for this golden yellow.

DHbathroom2

The window and door need to be trimmed out. I’m waiting for more trim and molding to arrive in the mail. I also have a sink/vanity coming, but it’s on backorder. I don’t know how much exploring, if any, you’ve done on websites that sell miniatures but here’s something I don’t get: so many of the bathtubs and toilets available have flowers painted on them. Why? I don’t see that in mini refrigerators or stoves or kitchen cupboards. So why in the bathroom? I’m not kidding, I’ve been looking at fixtures for over a year and 90% of what I see is slightly out of proportion and flowery. When is the last time you saw flowers painted on a bathtub in real life?

Oh, and mini refrigerators: boxy, unrealistic, slightly out of proportion. Another source of frustration. I would love to see a mini refrigerator that looked like a SMEG, for example, that had the curves of a slightly retro look. I’ve seen a couple of tutorials on how to make one….but I’m not necessarily good at that sort of thing. If anyone out there has a suggestion, please pass it along!

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I hope my trim pieces arrive by tomorrow…it would be nice to work on the dollhouse over the holiday. In the meantime, I just may put in a wood floor for the office/craft room/studio, which is the only room that I haven’t touched yet. I’ve got some ideas for that space.

Mixed Feelings re: Thanksgiving

It’s just us for Thanksgiving this year, as it is most years. Our families live in Florida and Michigan and Illinois and California. We debated whether we should cook a Thanksgiving meal. Yes, Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks, but we give thanks every day. I think there is a lot of undue pressure to have a big feast, spend lots of money and be surrounded by family. Not everyone has family or can be with family members at this time. Many people are alone. Many are hospitalized or in nursing homes. Many are homeless. And this year, with certain store chains having made the choice to be open on Thanksgiving, many people will find themselves having to work on what should be a holiday. (Don’t get me started.)

Holidays are lovely but, frankly, they can be too much. Too much hype, too much pressure to do what everyone else is supposedly doing, too much pressure to be with family, too much everything. I have mixed feelings about all of it. Maybe this is due to being apart from our loved ones on Thanksgiving and Christmas for so many years. Maybe it’s due to the fact that the holidays can be very hard indeed for those struggling with loneliness or addiction or depression. We have a Norman Rockwell idea of Thanksgiving and Christmas and, while no one loves Norman Rockwell more than I, I question just how real that idea is for most people.

All that being said, I know that Thanksgiving is a meaningful time for many – a time to be with family or friends, to dine together and give thanks. After deciding to not go through all the hoopla this year, yesterday found us driving around running some errands. Don suddenly said he wanted to buy some Tofurkey (the vegetarian version of turkey) and cook it on Thanksgiving. That led to a discussion of mashed potatoes and biscuits and a vegetable…..so I guess we will be having some sort of feast here at the cottage.

The weather looks to be very messy and potentially dangerous out here in the East. I think I’m glad we’ll be at home.

Happy Tuesday.

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Hummingbird Cottage

How to Make a Hardwood Floor for Your Dollhouse

Three Things

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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