So Many Little Pieces!

I really have been busy over the last month with a number of projects and life, of course.  And here's a big one that I finally tackled in February...embellishments on my dollhouse. 

Let me start by addressing the obvious...yes I am 29 years old and building a dollhouse.  And while this may seem weird (which it probably is) let me just clarify that I grew up with my granny have a beautiful, wonderfully detailed dollhouse.  She sold it in a garage sale (tear...wish I would have known she was selling it) but then decided to purchase a kit to build a new one.  Well since purchasing the kit she's had some health issues and decided to move into a smaller apartment and take on less projects.  I am so much like my granny, it would be quite concerning if she wasn't such a badass.  For instance, my granny would always go shopping with us and if we found something we really liked she'd say "oh don't buy that, I can make that."  Since becoming an adult (which is a stretch) I've found myself frequently saying the same thing.  I don't have kids, so usually I'm telling my fiance "can you believe they are selling this for $50, I could make this!" 

Well another wonderful trait of my granny was her extensive collection of crafting supplies and her desire to start a million projects and have them all going at the same time.  Now you know where I get it from.  Anyway...when she decided to move she had this wonderful dollhouse kit complete with a barely started dollhouse (we're talking just the base) so I stepped in and adopted it with the goal of finishing the dollhouse within the next few years to be able to show it to her. 

I adopted it about 6 months ago...and I've pretty much been kicking ass on it ever since.  I hit a few lulls, like when I had to shingle the roof and nearly lost my mind, or when I decided to put electrical in it and then freaked out that I was going to burn it down.  Well one of those lulls was finishing all of the little decoractive railings on the outside of the house.  That was until February when I attacked it like a beast and went to town on railings.

First...let me show you some of the pieces I was working this (so you can understand why I avoided it for a while).

Those little bitty dowels were about half the size of matchsticks.  Oh and everything comes in natural wood so to paint it you have it (1)sand each piece, (2) paint each piece, (3)resand each piece, (4)paint each piece a second time.  It took about a week just to get it all painted in the evenings after work.

Then I had to glue them and try to get them all lined up as evenly as possible before attaching them to the house.  But look..it came out so good!

I'm taking my time with this little house so that it will really be a family heirloom passed down to my kids and grandkids.  If I have all boys then one of them better like dollhouses, dammit.  But so far it has electrical (which I can have pictures and explain on a later date) and wallpaper, and now lots of little details and railings on the outside.

Oh, and one of my favorite things is the table it's on.  Chris made it for me - we grabbed a pre-cut sheet of Plywood from Home Depot (don't tell my grandpa I went to Home Depot..he hates them after a very bad experience and we can no longer utter the words Home Depot in front of him, true story) and then some pre-manufactured legs (about the height of a coffee table).  I also got a small chunk of astro-turf that we glued on the top.  Then Chris trimmed out the table top and we attached the legs...and now I have a really nice place for my dollhouse to live!

See...and you thought I've just been slacking over the last month and a half.