Remodeling a Duracraft Heritage Dollhouse part 7 ...... months later

 I confess, I'm sick and tired of reworking this house. I'm one of those people who, when a dollhouse or roombox is done, don't want to go back and do anything else to it, just sit back and enjoy looking at it. Therefore, I am taking a complete break from the Heritage and work on something else for a while.

Anyhow, this is what it looks like right now. I liked the color, so I just freshened it up with a fresh coat of paint. I did add a garden, though. The porch brackets still have to be replaced.

The mossy green grass was cut off a sheet of some kind of artificial moss for hanging baskets I got from the craft store.

One of the arches on the porch snapped, and after I fixed it, it snapped again, so I had to cut a new one.

Below are two pictures of what the house used to look like before the garden.

I pretty much gutted the inside, and removed the big staircase. 

Where did it go? 

It's now an invisible staircase and it's supposedly hidden behind the new pantry shelves in the kitchen and the roofed in area next to the bathroom.

Now, if I had been willing to remove the wing and the entire right hand wall of the main house I would have had room to make a staircase to fit in there........but who'd want to do that?  Certainly not me.

So all the staircase you can see is the little bit hanging around in the dining room, adding a bit more visual interest. It'll look good when the railing is in.

I didn't like the awkward unmatched angles in the ceiling of the right hand room, so I decided to make a new wall with a large archway. I've stuck in some pieces to show how that'll work. 

The entrance to the flower papered bedroom and the attic stair are hidden behind the wall. That's another invisible staircase, by the way.

I also redid the third floor to look more like a proper attic. The ceiling was way too low for rooms, anyway.

This is the kitchen and bathroom wing. I still need to add a ceiling to the bathroom.

Below is the living room, or as I prefer to call it, the parlor. I added more wall space by making a narrower door to the dining room and moving it back.

I don't remember how much of this I posted in previous blog entries (it was months ago) but the floors are made from stained bamboo placemats. I've had the mats for years, finally did a house where I felt they belonged. 

I had to remake all the windows and the front door, none of which open. 

I had to make and remake the wall between the parlor and dining room three times, primarily because of warping issues. Once I glued the final one into place I noticed irregularities in the finish whenever my worklight shone on it, drove me batty, so I unglued the wall, took it out, and decided to hide the imperfections with a mural. Crazy, huh?  Actually one of the walls of the bay window slants a little, so the mural helps disguise that.  

In the bedroom I changed the little alcove window into a door, and also changed the entry into the bedroom. The idea is that there's a little hallway leading from the other room.

You may notice that the baseboard is askew. At present it's only attached at one end. 

Here's what happened.....

I knew that wall was slightly crooked, but I didn't think it mattered much, it wasn't really noticable. However, when I went to glue in the baseboard it wouldn't stay in place unless I held it down. Now who wants to hold a strip of wood for 10 mintes hoping it'll stay in place when you let go? Not me.

The solution? I drilled a hole through the baseboard and the wall the same diameter as a toothpick. Then I applied glue to that end of the baseboard and to the toothpick, and shoved the toothpick through the baseboard and the wall. Later I checked to see if it would hold when I pressed the other end of the baseboard into place and it did.   By this time I'd had enough of this project and didn't feel like doing any more, so I decided to put it away till I felt like finishing it.

THE END ...... for now.