puttin' up walls.....

Well, I have to start this blog with a note of sadness. My blade on my band saw broke today. The really sad part is that I am pretty sure that I won't be able to find a blade for it here in Belize. It was hard to find one for it in the States. I know this probably doesn't mean much to most of you, but that band saw worked as hard as I do. It is the one tool that stayed plugged in at all times in my work shop. About 95% of all the cutting I do, I did on that saw. I will miss it! From now on, I will be cutting by hand.

On to happier things....

I've got walls!! Well, at least some of them anyway.



^Here is an overhead view....

and here is an explanation of what you are looking at V


Kind of cool, huh? I'm still working on laying the floor, but this thing has gotten big now and I couldn't reach. So, I'm going to finish what I can reach from this side (which is the back side), then I'm going to have to turn it around. At this point, turning it is going to require help.

So, let me show you some other angles.



This is the master bedroom to the right (where the floor is), and the master bath will be to the left. On the distant right (before the end wall) will be the master balcony with a glass door leading out to it.



This is the second bedroom. The plywood I used for the back wall was rather nasty on one side. To me, that means it needed wallpaper!


This is the wall between bedroom 2 and 3, looking in to bedroom 3.

and this is looking into the closet in bedroom 3.

Things are progressing as you can see. More to come tomorrow!! Until then.........

Movin' on up.....

The beginnings of the second floor have started to happen.... at LONG last!


Yup, that is the sub floor for the second floor of the doll house! I was starting to think I was never going to get to this point. Don't you just love how I hold it down tight until the glue dries. You just stack a bunch of heavy crap on top of it. LOL


This is the start of the floor in one of the secondary bedrooms. I'm going to try and do the floors a little different in each room. We'll see how that turns out.

This one is the floor in what will become the master bedroom.


Here you can see the two rooms together. Cool, huh??


And my last picture for tonight is looking down into the stair case.

Well, tomorrow I'll take all the crap off of the top of it, and really get the floor going, so more and better pictures tomorrow night! Until then.....

Some final touches on the ground floor...

To the naked eye, not a whole lot happened today, but progress was still made.



I finally got the range hood in place. Pardon my tape. LOL I wanted to get those last minute large pieces in before adding the cross supports which I did right after....


Now that these supports are in, I spent most of the day figuring and measuring and marking. Tomorrow I hope to be putting in the base for the second floor. Whoo-hoo! I'm excited! I am ready to start on a new level.

Not much else to report for today, so, until tomorrow when there will be lots more pictures and something to actually report on....

547XHGCNSHES

547XHGCNSHES

Not an exciting day....

Today was one of those days when nothing seems to go right. It was super hot and the humidity was through the roof and our water was out all day. Well, that followed right through to the dollhouse. Nothing wanted to dry today, and the glue refused to set up. It took me all morning just to get the upper cabinets to hold together long enough to get them sanded, then trying to install them was a whole other challenge! I ended up having to put big blocks of wood in there to hold them up and wedge them into place until they could dry.... which wasn't until this evening. Having all that in there made it impossible to do much else. I did get the drop ceiling in, and the "cans" for the two can lights, but beyond that, not much else happened. Maybe I'll have better luck tomorrow. We can hope.



Until tomorrow.....

Working in the kitchen...

Today was all about the kitchen.


As seen here, a refrigerator and kitchen sink were added.

Although it is near impossible to tell in a photo, I used a textured paint on the outside of the refrigerator to simulate a texture used on real refrigerators to hide fingerprints.

The kitchen sink was carved out of wood, then spray painted with a chrome paint, sanded, then repainted. The facet and handles are made out bent aluminum pipes.

Here is another view of the kitchen, which includes the double back doors that I did manage to get doorknobs on today. Whoo-hoo!

And the one final picture that I just thought turned out pretty, and shows off my dish washing liquid. I made that while everything was drying. It just seemed like the fun thing to do ….. and something a little different than just the house.

I hope to get the ceiling in the kitchen tomorrow, and maybe the upper cabinets. We’ll see.

Until then…….

The word for today was trim.....

Although it doesn't look like much progress was made today, that is not the case. I spent a vast majority of the day today reinforcing and trimming out the outside, the stairs base and the kitchen.


As you can see the front got a face lift. I finally have stairs and a threshold. I know, there is still no front door, but I still haven't decided for sure what I want it to look like. I have a few ideas, but somehow, they just don't seem to fit the house. It isn't super important for right now anyway. It doesn't HAVE to be there until the whole house is in the finishing state anyway. When I find the perfect door, I will know it. In the mean time, I have added window ledges to the outside of the front windows. I'll have to put some beautiful potted flowers there when I'm done.

I'm liking the "stone" stairs. It gives the feeling of stability. I plan on using the same "stone" look to the plywood parts of the outside of the house as well.


The back of the house also got trimmed out today. These were the windows that were still held in by tape yesterday. I probably won't do anything about steps until this is all mounted on it's final base because I am going to want to do something a bit elaborate for the back yard (cause that's what I like to do), and that will include the entrance into it.



Now, zooming down into the kitchen, you can see a few changes have been made there. I am going to add a slightly dropped ceiling in there, so that lighting can be set into it, and the wires can be hidden. The ceiling will be framed out with the trim that was added today. Once the ceiling is ready, it will be dropped into place and glued in, but I want to get more of the details such as a sink and stuff done first.


This view allows you to see the face of the trim for the ceiling, as well as the trim around the edge of the wall, and the oven stack, that the ceiling will rest on. It should have a enclosed and "finished" look once the next floor is added.


This view focusses more on the breakfast bar trim.


And the final picture this evening shows more of the bar trim and the trim at the base of the stairs.

It's not there yet, but it's sure coming along!
Until tomorrow.....