When not attending to garden tasks what other things have filled your day?

Nice job. Your dollhouse has under gone a lot of changes. Really interesting to see how much you have changed the design of the house. Lots of details and no I’m not on a forum for them . It will probably go to my great grand daughter. If she ever gets here…

 

I love the Lundby dollhouses.

A couple of years ago, I got a small shadowbox to put together. It was three tiny stacked rooms with a small roof on the top. I wanted to put the bathroom under the roof, then the bedroom, then the living room, then the kitchen on the bottom. I think the rooms were something like 4" x 6" X 6" tall. No room for a staircase. But I wanted to decorate it with Lundby furniture because I thought the size would be perfect.

O. M. G. No one told me how much that furniture went for these days. I thought I'd have a heart attack at the prices. So the shadow box went to a friend who is using it for knick knacks.

 

Thank you. I still can't really decide if it should be a Spanish adobe house or a 1950s split level. Just to finish it off quickly, I might opt for Spanish because I can plaster all the walls. If it goes to a split level, I'll have to wallpaper it.

Either way, it will have to sit until November or December. I still have so much out in the yard to do yet, so I'm only going to work on it when the weather starts keeping me inside.

I still need to fill in the cracks with wood filler, sand it, prime it, and then electrify it. I like the decorating part, but none of the other parts.

You may not be interested in doing this, but those Duracraft houses, as you probably already know, slide the siding down between the edging. It makes it very difficult to run ceiling and flooring molding around the room because the edging isn't flush with the interior walls.

But if you check with a local wood shop, they may have 1/4" thick wood you can cut with an exacto blade. I have the Duracraft Heritage house (still in its box) and I'm going to "fill in" the walls between the edging with either that wood or some cardstock so make the walls flush with the edging. If you use wood, it can also help to keep the floor above up as well.

But if you're going to do that with that house, that will be a major project. You have 5 bay windows, with 6 pieces to be cut for fill ins for each window. That would be 30 pieces for just the windows alone. I wouldn't have the patience. But it is an option.

 

@rodentraiser
Split levels didn't usually have wallpaper. Plasterboard walls painted. I know cuz my cousin bought one in the late 50's.

 

Hello rodent my vote for the finish on your dollhouse is Spanish adobe…then the roof tile will be Mexican tile style. I’ve never seen a spanish adobe finish on a dollhouse . Of course if one googles a Spanish adobe hacienda one will pop up. And adding electricity inside is very detailed. You’re designing your own dollhouse which is quite unique. Using balsa wood is easy to cut and shape for custom implements. Maybe mini fairy lights will come in handy. Some interesting ideas you have . Or maybe those mini motors used to spin x-mas ornaments can be utilized to spin a mini Xmas tree with lights. There is a lot of mini dollhouse furniture and accessories available, it’s mind boggling the amount of different things to decorate them that are available.

Winter garden prep for the garden is a buzzzy time and soon we can take a long winter break. Your newly designed and planted garden is really coming along .

 

Well, there goes my yellow bathroom! LOL

I wanted realistic barrel tiles on the roof and unfortunately, those are very pricey. And there's a lot of roof there.

There is a wallpaper - a real life one, not in miniature - that has a design like adobe stucco walls. I may paper the entire house in that (might repaint it) and then tile what I can't paper. Electrifying isn't a problem. I already have a ton of stuff for that and I use Cirkit's electrical tape wire. I also have dozens of outlets and even a couple of lights.

There is some plastic fencing that looks like wrought iron and when painted black, you couldn't tell it was plastic. I'm using that for the stair rails and for the outside stair rails as well.

I've been collecting miniature items since the 80s and I have boxes and boxes of stuff to choose from. I also have some tiled pattern wallpaper I can use in the bathroom and some tiled patterned flooring that can go in the kitchen.

I just don't have that much stuff for a Spanish house. I have seen some very Mediterranean looking furniture here and there, but I've never priced it.

Now if you look closely at the front door, you might notice it's a plank door for a log cabin. What I'm going to do with that is cut out a square in it for a window and then twist paper clips to make a cover for the window, spray paint those black, then glue them on the door.

The other option is a French door with an intricate wood insert in the glass that I can paint black to look like wrought iron.

I've never done a Spanish house before so it's going to be a long learning experience.

 

Why not use spackle or drywall compound or salt water flour mix add a touch of sand for texture mix, make your own stucco for the exterior of the dollhouse. Use a small artist spackle knife ( or whatever works for you) to apply the stucco texture on the outside of the house and or inside walls- ruff or smooth. Add color to the stucco any tint you want for the outside / inside. Also add rounded Mexican style fireplace smooth stucco finish, as an interesting focal point. A lot of homes in Mexican style haciendas have furniture made from small mesquite tree limbs - twigs found out in your garden, and or building your own furniture and or smooth coating with stucco to match the fireplace using stucco blend. Cork sheets and white paper birch bark that peals from trees this time of year also used for interior design materials on walls or even add a mini garden.

I think I read you are involved with a dollhouse web site they can offer many suggestions to make barrel roof tiles and other suggestions & materials you might be interested in using.

 

@Pacnorwest Artists gesso would work better than spackle because spackle shrinks as it dries. Gesso comes in a plastic jar and has a binder in it to stick to any porous surface without cracking.

 

So right Anniekay.

 

MSN puts a lot of scaremongering posts on the internet.
One last week over the week-end, was about renewing, "Blue Badges," which they said could take 12 weeks.
This concerned me, as I can't remember when I renewed my wife's badge last year, which expires on 12th December, but I don't think it was that early. Not a big problem, as at the moment, we only need it for her trips to the doctors or the hospital. She's not recovered enough yet to be able to go shopping.

So on Monday I phoned Trafford Council, who told me it wouldn't be twelve weeks, but could be as long as five or six.
So I applied on-line for it. Gone are the days when I had to take her to the Town Hall to have a new photo taken. Everything now can be done on-line, photographs, photographic proof of identity, proof of entitlement. etc., a very easy procedure.

On Tuesday I got an e-mail to say the badge had been approved and I needed to pay the £10 required for it, again I was able to do this on-line.

The new badge arrived by post this morning!

 

So pleased to hear that it got renewed swiftly and without any issues @Doghouse Riley .
We haven't had to renew my brother's this time as he's now in a care home and they have a small fleet of specially adapted mini buses. Due to his disabilities he now can't be driven anywhere in ' normal' cars, even with adaptations in place.

 

Oreti and DHR nice to hear your parking permits for the disabled are easier to accommodate your needs.

 

Running out of space so I've had to stash away the first round of the little hats I'm making for the charity challenge . Now I have vacancies for the 2 lot as and when they get knitted.


Here are some flowers that I made last year.....knitting certainly helps me survive the dreary wet days of Autumn/ Winter.

 

Excellent knitting @Oreti

Went out with a friend today, he showed me the last surviving Fordson Major Crane tractor that was specially made for the old paper mills near Faversham



He's planning on pulling it out of the hedge and taking it to the workshop.

 

. I had a Fordson Supermajor 1953, same age as me. No crane but pallet forks in front and I had a levelling scraper for on he PTO in back and a bush hog as well. I loved that tractor !!