After a break...

So... I got busy at work... busy watching tv on dvd (who ever knew Charmed could be as addictive as nicotine)... busy drinking after work... busy worried about being busy moving next month... busy reading stupid stuff on the internet and playing video games...

ANYWAY... finally, this week I made a little progress with both projects. This is currently the Georgetown kind of decorated, inhabited by one Christmas treasure troll, 2 free reindeer from DollsHouse Emporium, and a free milkman doll (?) also from DHE.

This reindeer enjoys sitting on the futon in the future home office, watching the tv. His favorite pieces of furniture are the Noguchi table (thanks, Mom) and the entertainment unit from Ebay. The other reindeer enjoys the improvements brought to the bathroom by the Chyrsnbon bathroom accessories kit. I especially like the toilet paper and holder and the little soap dishes. Weirdly enough, platinum nail polish makes a really good brushed steel effect on these plastic kit pieces.

This is an old postcard I had hanging in my kitchen, I think from one of those Dover postcard packs. (The Dover catalogs are really good for this kind of stuff, they're really cute if you group them in painted Ikea frames. I have the Erte fashion designs in my rl living room). Anyway, I love Stuart Davis, and I always liked this painting, so it will be the focal piece of one of the rooms. I have a Kandinsky one I got at the Guggenheim in NYC a while ago that I'll frame, as well. The coffee shop is somewhat progressing. At a show, I got some little fixtures (the soda machine and the syrup/ sauce holders). I finished the Chrynsbon chair kits. They purposely don't match.

This is the milkman chilling in the living room. This room has an awful configuration for furniture... which is pretty true to life in this kind of old house, I guess. I love the mirrors grouped on the wall ($2 from Michaels). The trim in this room is kind of crooked, but it's an old house, right? I still like the juxtaposition of stripey wallpaper and duo-toned walls. This room still calls out for some sweet panel curtains and a shag area rug, but at least it's got trim now.
The hallway got some trim and doors. The stairs are only tentatively in, bc of a mistake I made when building the structure originally. They don't fit in the slot! I'm going to tape and hide the wire behind some sort of large floor plant.
The kitchen got a fridge and some more fiesta ware and a strawberry shortcake. I love this fiesta ware, it is so delicate and pretty. The cake is really pretty, too. The fridge is a new design from one of the major mass produced lines, but it's sleek and moden. They make stoves, dishwashers, and laundry to match.

The bedroom got a little chia pet! It's on the bookshelf. Still needs a lot of books, art, and, of course, a dresser. And shoes.
Also, I got a RGT 333 Franklin Street Kit which I won't start working on until this house is done (HBS half off sale!), but this whole process will make that house even better. I don't know if I will bother wiring that one at all considering how finicky my lights are and how the tape is so difficult to even slightly conceal. But I have all kinds of cool ideas for it ( a modern- baroquey type thing with patterned walls and mismatched, updated antique furniture and very boho.) I know I definitely want "tin" ceilings.

Anyway... until next time.

New stuff!

A new set of bar chairs and a table for what will one day be the game room in the Georgetown... can't you just see it with some cocktail glasses?
An etertainment set I won off of Ebay, complete with a light up television. This is for the home office/ guest room.
See- now guests can sleep on the futon and wake up to watch the morning weather.
Some cakes I made out of polymer clay, a shelving unit from HBS, and a refrigerator magnet/ mini cappuccino maker (I know it's a bit big, but it still works)
Some Chrysnbon kits, the chairs are for the coffee shop and will be really mismatched and beaten down. The bathroom fixtures are for the Georgetown. Hopefully, these plastic kits will go together well (I even bought the right glue for them!)

I also got a bunch of trim (crown, baseboard, and chair rail) and some doors/ doorknobs to finish up the Georgetown interior.

Hopefully, I'll be able to get to work on both projects soon!

Other rooms

The house has 2 other rooms. The plum room is going to be a game room/ bar (I think the mini liquor bottles are so cute) and the orangish room is going to be a home office/ guest room.

For the guest room, I have a mini futon that I bought from HBS. It's so cute and it really folds out into a bed. I think this room will look really great with a mess of books and papers, perhaps a little tv... Maybe I should start working on my taxes so I can go shopping with my tax return!

Hallways

This house has a hallway on every floor, right in the middle of the rooms. Each of the hallways is painted in a khaki color and has hardwood floors stained in mocha.

The foyer is something I've been working on. I love the flagstone, unfortunately I can't cut straight lines for anything, but I think with the trim it looks ok. The flagstone is part of a sheet from HBS that was all white. I painted it with washes of acrylic and put a little chalk into the mix. The red light is also from HBS. It had an accident when I was placing the walls and the wires were ripped out of the ceiling. This is as good as I can get it to look right now.

The second floor landing has its bannisters up. I bought a pre-assembled set which was a big sanity-saver.

The top floor landing is going to be a hallway/art studio. My mom got me the little art table, and I made the bookshelves out of balsa, scrapbook paper, and paint.

The bedroom

This is the bedroom so far, I love the bright green walls (I want to paint my real life bedroom this color!). I actually made the bedding with some clearance and sale fabrics from JOanns, and I don't even sew. You can accomplish alot with ribbon and glue. The comforter is actually padded like a real comforter; I glued flat makeup spnges to a piece of magazine paper and glued the fabric around it. Most of the items are once again from Dollshouse Emporium (they have reasonably priced modern miniatures and the best selection of modern lamps out there). The purple chair is from Ebay, it is a Raine Rake A Seat chair. I need to do a great deal of decorating in here, including some wall decor and a dresser of some sort. The issue with these rooms are that they are all longish and narrow, so the dresser is going to have to be pretty small.

The beginnings of a living room

So far, the living room is kind of a mess. The blue tape blob is a light I hardwired when I was learning how to tape wire the house, so I kind of had to paint around it. The room still needs all of its trim. There isn't alot of space, so I don't know if I can fit everything that I'd like to fit.

The walls are 3 different colors (tan, fuschia, and a striped and glossified piece of scrapbook paper). The couch and ceiling light are from Dollshouse Emporium, the fireplace is a cheap wooden one that I painted and added some mosaic stones for the hearth and a painted brick latex sheet to the interior walls. The mantle is covered with marble effect paint chips from Lowes which were then coated with decoupage gloss. The cow print chair is from ReacJapan, bought on Ebay (can't say enough about the Designer Miniature collection!) The floor is a Houseworks wooden sheet stained with a mocha wood stain. I've started stiching some toss pillows, and I'd love some black and white photos on the wall and a shag area rug. Just wait until you see the lamps for this room.

The kitchen, so far

Ok, so maybe the kitchen looks a little more 70s than modern, but perhaps we can pretend that it was redesigned 30 years ago and it's imaginiary inhabitants really dig the green and gold grooviness of the whole thing.

The patterned wall is a pice of Martha Stewart scrapbook paper, the fixtures were a Christmas gift from my lovely boyfriend (from Dollshouse Emporium). The chairs are Bozart, and the various little things were either gifts or bought at the dollhouse show we attended in October. I particularly love the mini Fiesta-ware type dishes (thanks, Mom) and the little liquor bottles set out on the breakfast table. The floor is a clear vinyl sheet with a 3D pattern you can paint any which way you like (puffy paint works well for grout with its pointed tip). The sheets (it took 2 of them) were from HBS. I still need a fridge, and a wall phone. And lots of food.

The bathroom, so far.

The bathroom is on the top floor, and has since acquired a door. The modern bathroom fixtures are from Dollshouse Emporium, including the silver lights. The ceiling light is from Ebay, I think. The platform is made out of a corner from a chocolate box covered in one of those vinyl sheets. The mirror is from Michaels (like one dollar for 2 mirrors.) The ceiling was made from DAP lightweight spackling and textured with a sponge and painted white. It really hides wiring mistakes!

I'd like to add some towel racks and lots of toiletries. I also plan on making some little Mark Rothko-esque paintings and framing them.

RGT's Georgetown Dollhouse... the beginning.... A Modern Dollhouse Voyage

Perhaps I'm a dork, or living out some sort of strange second childhood, but late last summer I decided I needed to build a dollhouse, complete with working lights, tiny food, and all sorts of fun, little things.

I bought a Real Good Toys Georgetown kit from my local dollhouse store, and had my boyfriend lug the 60 pund box up my steps where I left it in the box for at least a month, confused by the instuctions.

I had big ideas for this house, though.

There are 2 things I wanted to accomplish. The first was I wanted it to look like a house in my neighborhood, a sort of run down area of Pittsburgh that was once a fancy, city suburb. The houses are all brick, with long porches and columns.

The other thing I wanted to do was make the house modern, or at least contemporary on the inside. I love all kinds of 20th century design, and I wanted my dollhouse to reflect how I might furnish my dream house now. Unfortunately, modern and contemporary miniature items are few and far between.

The following pictures are just some of the steps I took when finally constructing the house. Each one of my bricks in painted individually (which I did while watching seasons one through 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Dying the shingles dyed my hands for about 3 days (even though I wore gloves) and eventually I decided to ditch the original porch posts and some of the railings because they came out so crooked.

Finally, after months of work (don't even get me started on wiring the @#$%ing thing!) the house currently looks like this on the outside:

Except now it has some porch lights. Anyway, next time I'll show what I've done to the inside.