The Beacon Hill Dollhouse Day 1

Well, it sure has been a long time since I used this blog!  But since I've decided to make a ridiculously large and complex dollhouse to fulfill all my girlhood dreams of property ownership, this seemed like a good time to dust it off. 

I'm building the Beacon Hill Dollhouse by Greanleaf Dollhouses. Ideally, it will look like the photo below when it's finished... except that I am me, and it is going to look spoopily old and run-down and possibly abandoned/haunted. Weathering and distressing the house will have the lovely side effect of covering any mistakes I make! 

The Beacon Hill Dollhouse Kit, Greenleaf Dollhouses

I've started the assembly of the first floor of the dollhouse, and by "start" I mean I managed to get it mostly punched out. You see, the very first sheet of my kit was only partially die-cut, so that the cuts go maybe halfway through the ply, making it pretty impossible to actually punch these pieces from the sheet. I spent a pretty frustrating hour finagling the floor out of the sheet with a hand saw, when I realized it was like 10:30pm and I probably shouldn't be using a power drill next to my landlord's bedroom. 

I could (probably should?) see if Greenleaf will send me a replacement sheet, and I've heard they are pretty good about that sort of thing, but there's something viscerally satisfying about doing this the most pig-headed and difficult way possible, so I'm going to keep on keeping on.

Failboat Dollhousing 101

Following my husband's brilliant suggestion, I'm using the bottom half of the shipping box as a work-surface/tray to keep the house in. I know I won't be able to do everything inside this box, but it will make putting everything aside at night a lot easier.

Wood bits organized "neatly" in cardboard boxes

Similarly, I have all the sheets corralled in these cardboard boxes, with the sheet number labeled on the edge in painters tape so I can glance at the tops on the sheets and find the one I'm looking for. Pieces that fall out of the sheet get labeled with what they are and what sheet they come from and thrown into the box on the right. As these build up I will start shoving them in labelled ziplock bags, but for now there are only a couple of them.

I'm off to go buy blades for my jewelry saw, because I can't get all those pesky tabs out of the floor with a craft knife, though I tried pretty hard.