My Ashley 1:48

Now the fun begins. Hubby took all the kids to visit his parents for spring break, so now I have the house myself. I already covered the kitchen table with plastic, and I laid out all the pieces. After doing a quick dry fit of the first floor, I decided to just forge ahead and start to prime everything. The pieces are beautifully cut. They don't need any sanding at this time, although I may need fine sandpaper in between paint layers. I am using a stain blocking primer because the edges do show darkening from laser cuts. The stain blocker so far seems to be working very well. Fortunately, it is not obscuring the laser cut siding detail.

I did doublecheck to make sure that I did have the floors/ceilings oriented properly, so I was not painting the floors white and staining the ceilings. I have decided to stain the floors, although I may cover some of them with some flock paper to simulate carpet. I also will probably do something to simulate tile in the bathroom, but I haven't figured out what yet.

I haven't gotten as bored painting the trim as I usually do. Part of the reason is because I'm still marveling at intricacy and detail. This is going to be one neat house! The other reason is that since nobody else is here, I can put my music on and sing along at the top of my lungs.

I am making slow but steady progress. I have approximately one hour, if that, each day to work on the dollhouse. At this point, painting is taking a lot of time. There are lots and lots of small parts. Pretty much everything is primed, and I started to paint the trim. I did put the foundation together. I have also stained and varnished the floors. For some reason, I have not done anything with the staircases. I need to do that in order to be able to put the first floor together, which I hope to be able to do soon, so I better get on the ball.

Now that my family is home, I have less time to work on my dollhouse. I also had to clear off the kitchen table, and I am now working on the corner of the dining room table with poor lighting.
Inherent in this type of dollhouse design, there are spaces in between the wall panels around curved aspects. As you can see in my photos, I have put small pieces of trim in these spaces. This gives it a more finished look, and it also provides a nice contrast. As you can see, I've done this so far with the first floor but not get the second. You can also see that I need to touch up some of the paint. What's nice with a dollhouse this small, I can pick up the dollhouse and hold it to touch up things, and this makes it so easy.
So far, putting this dollhouse together is very easy. It does take a little bit of wiggling to get the tabs to go into the slots, but other than that, things fit perfectly. So far, I have not had to do any sanding.

After a brief hiatus, I'm back at work. I shingled the porch roof and the first towertop like structure. I cut the shingles from a gray Sparkle scrapbook cardstock.  I used a fiskar cutter to cut 3/8 of an inch strips. I then marked intervals on the back for the shingles, using the Laser shingle etches on the roof as a guide for the size. I cut small triangles to make these look like octagonal shingles. Of course, I forgot to take photos of this process, but when I get to the next roof, I will do that. On the flat roof, I was able to use the glue stick to glue the shingles down. However, with the tower roof, this didn't work very well. I used plain old Elmers glue all for this, and it seems to be doing the trick.

i've started papering the third floor walls. This time, I remembered to paint the edges before I put the floor together. I also remembered to edge the roofs and floors further up, so now I won't have to do it after I've already built the structure, realized they weren't done, and then had to go back and very carefully paint the edges without wrecking anything else. At least when I had to do this, I was able to put the whole dollhouse in my lap to get good painting angles. Yet another advantage to a 1:48 structure.  However, I'm sure that once I get the whole thing together, I'll still find areas that I missed.

I love the purple and violet colors for your Ashley. I have never tried a purple color for a house, and I really like yours.  This is one of my favorite houses from Leonard. Can't wait to see your finished house.

What type of paper do you use for Shingles?

Ohhh, I have never tried using finished paper. Is there a stock number, product number, or something that you could use to search for the same paper online?  You might find it at another JoAnn or Michaels, and perhaps they could ship it to you.

A random pattern might work, or you could use the color you have on the turrets, and then the second color on all the roofing.  You could shingle over the small roof you have finished. 

I am sure you will be able to figure it out, and it will look great.
Good Luck
Kristie