Yesterday was spent cleaning in preparation for my best friend’s visit tomorrow. It was raining outside most of the day, so it was the perfect day to tackle this sort of thing. Since I am a procrastinator by nature, I seem to function at my best when I’m under the gun. (I’ve had many years of writing papers at the last minute!) It’s amazing what you see when you look at your home through the eyes of an incoming guest. Yikes.

I am the type of cleaner who does the surface level cleaning weekly – dusting, vacuuming, swiffering, cleaning up the kitchen, etc.  But deep cleaning and I don’t have a date all that often. It’s looking pretty good here. Today: the dreaded bathrooms, my least favorite thing to do.

So tell me, why did I, in the midst of all that cleaning, finally start to work on the new dollhouse project? Am I nuts? I think it was because I was on a roll energy-wise. However, I had just finished cleaning up the entire workspace here in the office and there I was, making a mess.

Okay. This particular kit – the Fairfield – is old. I got it several years ago on eBay. It’s made of plywood pieces that have to be sanded after you punch them out of a sheet of plywood. They’re a pain in the tush. A couple of the pieces I’ve worked with so far were slightly warped.  In other words, this is the kind of project that has me cursing much of the time that I’m working on it. Yesterday, I put together the base for the house.

This is the underside of the base. At times, the instructions were a bit confusing to yours truly.

That’s the top. The house will be built on that base.

Greenleaf (the maker of this dollhouse) now has some half-scale kits that are laser cut – which, believe me, is much more accurate. My Fairfield, judging from what I’ve read on other blogs and the Greenleaf forum, will need lots of sanding and tinkering to make sure everything fits together well. Will I have the patience for it? The jury is still out.

But I do like a challenge. So, we’ll see.

So you can get an idea of the much smaller footprint of this house:

It fits on my table with lots of room to spare.

I want to share two fascinating articles with you about minis:

A French Museum devoted to Miniature Film Sets

Syrian Refugees Are Recreating Demolished Monuments in Miniature

One more note: As this election season proceeds and I write the occasional political commentary, I welcome discussion in the comment section, as always. But I am going to have to institute a few rules.  We must treat each other with respect. And we are not allowed to yell. By yelling, I mean writing in all caps with lots of exclamation marks several times within a comment or, as I’ve seen at times, in whole sentences. That, my friends, is the equivalent of yelling online and in emails. I warned someone about that yesterday and, in the future, I’ll delete any comments that I deem disrespectful.

Is it subjective? Yes. Decisions will be made according to my strong feelings about common courtesy and respect.

(All caps to emphasize a word every once in a while because the commenter doesn’t have the option to use italics is a different thing.)

Okay.

There is a book review up on Just Let Me Finish This Page today: John Connolly’s newest, A Time of Torment, which is being published today.

Happy Tuesday.