q is for quandie

I thought I should do a final wrap up post for my recent miniature project, the free-at-the-curb dollhouse.

But before we get to that, I think I need better names for my two semi-completed dollhouse projects.  So, from now on the free-at-the-curb dollhouse is going to be called “no. 42” …

and my original dollhouse, the one my dad made for me, is going to be called “the victorian”.

Now, I’m really torn about no. 42.  Am I going to keep it?  Or am I going to try to sell it?

I’m really waffling between those two options, and I think it shows in the finished product.  I furnished it just enough to make it impossible to price reasonably if I’m going to sell it, but I haven’t furnished it enough to consider it ‘finished’ if I plan to keep it.

So … yeah … I’m still on the fence about that.

But let’s see where I’ve ended up for now, sound good?

First up, the before.

I gave the exterior a fresh paint job and a few embellishments.

Then the interior before …

I updated all six rooms with new flooring and wall treatments, and I added some furniture to each room.  So here’s a breakdown of those costs.

The living room – $45.

The hallway – $2.

The kitchen – $16.50.

Oh, and by the way, I have added a new piece to the kitchen since I first shared that space …

I painted up a little Swiss cross stool to match the full-sized one that I have in my own house.  The stool cost $6.50, so I’ve added that to the original cost that I shared for the kitchen.

The blue bedroom – $38.

The dressing room – $41.

The rose bedroom – $53.50.

That’s a grand total of $196.  I should note that when I used items that I already had on hand, like the wallpaper in the living room or that fabulous cupboard in the kitchen, I did not include them in the cost.  I only included any new things that I purchased.

Of course, as you know, the original dollhouse was a curbside find, and thus was free.

So here’s my thought.  I’m going to list the dollhouse for sale furnished for $200.

But I’m also going to offer it unfurnished for $75.

That will cover the cost of the permanent improvements like the flooring and wallpaper.

The beauty of buying it unfurnished is that the new owner gets to furnish it however they like, which is really the most fun part of any dollhouse project.  I think $75 is a bit of a bargain, so hopefully someone else will too.

On the other hand, the beauty of buying it furnished is that you get all of the pieces that I created for each room including the perfect English sofa …

the cupboard in the kitchen …

the blue armoire …

and many more.

Let me give you an additional selling point for no. 42, the size.

At 24″ tall, 22″ wide and 14″ deep, it’s small enough to tuck on top of a cabinet or dresser, or tuck away in the corner of a room (or possibly at the foot of the stairs).

Another bonus for display are those over-sized windows.  You can see into the rooms rather well from the front.

I’ll be listing no. 42 on my “miniatures for sale” page, however, please note that I am not offering shipping on this one.  It’s pretty heavy and shipping it would probably be quite expensive.  But if any of my local readers are interested, please reach out via email to qisforquandie@gmail.com.

That brings me to my next miniature project.

This one needs a name now too, so I’m considering calling it the Christmas cottage because I think it will be fun to dress it for Christmas.  I know, I know, Christmas is 10 months away.  But this project might take a while.

My friend Sue gave this dollhouse to me.  It had been passed around in her family, but all of the various nieces, nephews, and grandchildren had outgrown it and no one wanted it, so she thought of me.

It needs a little work both outside and in, and I’m not planning to get started on it until after I return from a trip to visit my mom that’s coming up.  But stay tuned, there will definitely be more miniature projects to come!

In the meantime, how do you like the end result with no. 42?  Leave a comment and let me know.

The last room in the free-at-the-curb dollhouse is the living room.

Well, there’s also a downstairs hallway, but I didn’t do much there so I’ll include it in this post with the living room.  Especially since they share a floor.

So let’s start with that.

This is the Light Oak Gloss Finish Wide Plank flooring from Miniature Crush.

I really should have read the fine print (or even just the title) before I ordered it because you know me, I don’t love a glossy finish.  Also, I should point out that this sheet of flooring was $16.99.  The unfinished pine flooring from Hobby Lobby that I used on the 2nd level is $7.49 per sheet, so less than half the price.  Now, don’t get me wrong, the Miniature Crush flooring is definitely much nicer quality than the Hobby Lobby version, and if you like a glossy light oak wood floor, it’s perfect right out of the package.  It’s also peel and stick, so you don’t have to mess with glue.

However, for me the Hobby Lobby version saves me the next step, which was to lightly sand down that glossy finish and add a color wash using a very watered down Dried Sage from Dixie Belle.

Brush on, then wipe off the excess until you’re happy with the look.  The flat finish of the Dixie Belle paint really toned down both the shine and the yellowish color.

Once dry I added a coat of Dixie Belle’s clear wax for protection.

It was much easier to fit this floor because as you’ll remember, the ‘guts’ of the dollhouse can be removed.

So I was able to pull that out, peel off the backing and stick the floor down, and then put the ‘walls’ back in place.  Easy peasy.

Actually, while I had the ‘guts’ removed, it was also super simple to ‘wallpaper’ the hallway using some more of my Gulliver’s Travels book pages (I did this in my dollhouse project last year too).

I just cut the book page to size and adhered it with Mod Podge.

I added a framed vintage photo to the wall.  The photo is from my stash of old family photos, but it’s one where no one was able to identify the people in it.

The wood frame is from Michael’s and came unfinished.  I painted it in Dixie Belle’s Coffee Bean.

The chair is one I painted up last year as part of a dining set.

I have the set listed for sale on my ‘miniatures for sale‘ page, but so far there are no takers.

Also, FYI, purchased four of these sets from Hobby Lobby last year for $10 each but now they don’t seem to carry them anymore.  I did find the set on Etsy for $26.95 plus $6 shipping, but somehow paying more than 3x as much for it seems wrong to me.

Anyway, I’ve temporarily placed one of the chairs in the hallway, but I may have to come up with something else for this spot so as not to break up that dining set.

The ‘sisal rug’ in the hallway is another rug that I printed myself on canvas.

Back to the living room.  I used some leftover pieces of black and white toile wallpaper on the upper half of the living room walls.  This was leftover from wallpapering the bathroom in last year’s dollhouse project.

Then I painted some wainscoting in Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth for the lower half of the walls.

The wainscoting was also from Miniature Crush, and I have to confess that I didn’t quite have enough to finish the back wall and since the sofa mostly sits in front of it, I didn’t bother.  I just left that back wall painted.

I’m sure most of you are familiar with my printed rugs by now.  I used one in the blue bedroom of this house, and last year I used one in the purple bedroom of my first dollhouse.

I wanted something similar for the living room, but in shades of grey, so it occurred to me that I could simply print the rug using the black and white setting on the printer, rather than in color.

And it worked out perfectly!

As for furnishings, I shared my perfect English sofa in my last post.

Now … full disclosure … I made an attempt at creating a tufted ottoman to go in front of the sofa and it was a dismal failure.  Maybe I’ll try again one day, but for now I’m just placing the coffee table from Temu in front of the sofa.

I purchased the coffee table unfinished.  To finish it, I applied some of the Sweet Pickins Dark Oil Wax using a small brush and wiping away any excess.  It worked quite well except in spots where there must have been excess glue.

I also created something to hang on the wall.

I used a small bit from the Roycycled Label Masterboard decoupage paper .  I decoupaged it onto a thin sheet of balsa wood.  Then I cut the square ends off some chopsticks, painted them in Dixie Belle’s Coffee Bean and glued them on to the balsa wood to create a frame.  Super simple.

I adhered it to the wall using Tacky Wax, so it’s fully removable or adjustable.

With that I’m calling this project ‘done for now’.

I’ll wrap up this post with a breakdown of the money I spent on the living room/hallway combo.  Well … as for the hallway, that would be a whopping $2.  I already had the book pages I used on the walls, the sisal rug and the little chair.  The only thing I spent money on was the picture frame at $2.

The living room was a bit pricier, I spent $12.99 on the wainscoting.  The wallpaper was left over from my last project.  I printed the rug myself on canvas that I already had on hand too.  The sofa was $26 and the coffee table was $6.  So around $45 total.

I’ll be back next week to recap the entire project, and to share what’s coming up next, so be sure to stay tuned!

I happened to glance over at the cover of Perfect English Farmhouse the other day …

And I couldn’t help thinking that the sofa on the cover of that book was similar to the sofa that I had ordered from The Modern Dollhouse for the living room of the free dollhouse.

It’s not exactly the same, but similar.  Could I replicate the look from that book cover photo using paint?

I started by watering down some Dixie Belle paint in a color called Putty.  I probably ended up with about a 50/50 mix of paint to water.  The extra watery-ness helps the paint soak into the fabric of the sofa.

I taped off the wooden legs, used a brush to apply the watered down Putty to the fabric, and then left it to dry for several hours.  It will take quite a bit longer for this to dry than your typical painted surface.

Next, I dry brushed Dixie Belle’s Ecru over the Putty.  I totally meant to take photos of each step, including this one, but as per usual I got involved in the project and totally forgot about taking pics.

Once the Ecru was dry, I taped off some thin grain sack stripes and then dry brushed those in Dixie Belle’s Barn Red.

After taking the tape off the legs, I applied some Sweet Pickins Dark Oil Wax to them using a small brush, wiping away any excess with an old t-shirt.

Finally, I added some of Dixie Belle’s clear wax over the fabric.

The next step was to add some pillows similar to those in the inspiration pic.  After once again searching miniature fabrics online and not really finding exactly what I wanted, I wondered if I could print my own.

After first accidentally ordered printable canvas which wasn’t going to work at all, I found this cotton printable fabric on Amazon.

Then after an hour or so of scouring the world wide web for the perfect image of the fabric I wanted, I finally found it on a wallpaper site.

I sized the image by pasting it into Excel, and then just clicking and dragging to the size I wanted.  After printing it, and then letting it dry for at least 15 minutes as per the instructions, I peeled off the plastic backing and had the perfect scrap of fabric to make into a throw pillow.

Once again I used Tacky Glue to make the pillow cover, I glued it up with the right sides together leaving an opening at the back.  Then I turned it right side out and filled it with rice which is something new that I tried.  It looks a bit more realistic than using polyfill.  Once the rice was in place, I glued together the opening.

I ended up making just the one pillow.

I may go back and make a couple more down the road.

In fact, I’m actually going to make another sofa too.  I like how this turned out so much that I finally feel like I’ve found the right look for the living room in my first dollhouse.  And I think I found an even better option for my next re-creation of the perfect English sofa …

This one is also from The Modern Dollhouse and is called the White Chesterfield, and its shape is even more suited to copying that inspiration piece.

But what do you think?  Did I meet my goal of copying that perfect English sofa with this first one?

Leave a comment and let me know.  And then come back soon to see the rest of the completed living room in the free-at-the-curb dollhouse!

A few weeks back one of my readers suggested that I check out Temu for miniatures (thank you for that suggestion Sue).

I’d certainly heard of Temu.  Quite a few of the miniaturists that I follow on YouTube get things from Temu.

I’d never really checked them out though, mainly because they have a reputation of being somewhat shady.  The product quality can be hit or miss, it can be difficult to return things, and shipping can take a long time.  Worse yet, their cybersecurity is somewhat questionable and that’s never good when you’re purchasing online with a credit card.  They’ve also been know to copy (a.k.a. steal) designs from other sources, but then the same has been said about Hobby Lobby and even Target.

But their prices are quite low, and I really liked the look of the particular item that Sue had shared with me, so I decided to go ahead and give them a shot.

Here’s what I ordered:

Well … most of it anyway, I’m still waiting on two more pieces (and I placed my order on January 12).

For the most part, I’m happy with the quality of the pieces I’ve received.  The unfinished furniture looks pretty good, just a few rough edges here or there.  But that’s typical of these unfinished pieces.

The little carton of eggs is a tad oversized in scale, plus the color of the eggs is a bit off.

They are a little too orange.  I plan to try giving them a paint job to make them look more realistic.  But I only paid $1.62 for them, so I can’t really complain.

Ironically, I had just ordered a dresser from The Modern Dollhouse before I ordered from the Temu site.  I paid $15 for it, and it did not include knobs.

I only paid $7.74 for a similar dresser from Temu, and I won’t have the additional expense of adding pulls or knobs.  As you can see, the Temu version is going to require a little bit of sanding though, and it’s also slightly larger.

I may also be removing those knobs and replacing them with something better anyway, we’ll see.

I also ordered a set of 20 mini cutting boards for $2.61.

And actually, these are more ‘to scale’ than the set of three that I shared on Tuesday.  As a reminder, I purchased those at Michael’s for $4.

The unfinished coffee table that I purchased from Temu is going in the free-at-the-curb dollhouse.

I’ll share how that turned out with you soon.

Finally there is the item that motivated me to order from Temu in the first place, and that is this chair …

Isn’t that lovely?

I was really hoping it would be the right scale, because the description of it says it’s “1:8 – 1:12” scale.  For reference, Barbie doll sized items are usually 1:6 scale, my dollhouse is 1:12 scale. So it is a tiny bit big, but I think it still works.

Here it is next to the bedroom fireplace in my dollhouse.

The description of the chair on Temu also simply said that it was made out of resin, so I was really hoping it wouldn’t look too ‘plastic’.  I’m guessing that it’s 3D printed and sometimes 3D printed items lack in realism.

However, the cushion is covered in actual fabric, rather than also being made of resin.

Of all the items I ordered at Temu, I paid the most for this chair at $20.10.  But I do rather love it, so that still feels like a bargain.

My one complaint about Temu is that despite going into my account and turning off all notifications other than those related to shipping, I am still getting a barrage of emails from Temu with subject lines that say “ATTENTION REQUIRED!” and “Purchase will be returned as CREDIT!” which makes you think it’s something important that you need to follow up on.  Instead they are just trying to get you to buy more stuff.  So if that’s the kind of thing that is going to bug you, then buyer beware.

Anyway, as you can see I have quite a few miniatures to get painted now!  But first, I’m going to try to escape the cold with a trip to Florida.  Last week we hit a low of -22° F and a ‘feels like’ temp of -45°.  It’s definitely time to head to a warmer climate for a few days, so my sister and I are headed to Florida for 4 days at Disney World followed by a 5 day cruise to the Bahamas.  Well … it’s supposed to be a warmer climate but Florida is expecting their coldest weather in 15 years this weekend including windchills in the 20’s.  What?!  Oh well.  That’s still 65 degrees warmer than our -45°, right?

I do have some blog posts pre-scheduled for the next week or so though, so be sure to stay tuned!

But before I go, how about you?  Have you ever ordered from Temu?  And if so, how was your experience?  Leave a comment and let me know.

You know you are a Minnesotan when it -10° outside, but it’s sunny and there’s no wind, and when you walk outside you say to your husband, ‘it’s not too bad out here’.  True story.

But we’ve definitely been in the deep freeze here lately, which means that it’s the perfect weather for staying indoors and painting small stuff like these cutting boards that I purchased at my local Michael’s store.

I thought that perhaps I could take some of my ideas used on full size cutting boards, like this one for example …

and shrink them down to miniature size.

So after sanding them to remove those rough edges, I painted each one in a different paint color from Dixie Belle.

The colors, from lightest to darkest (left to right), are Ecru, Putty and Truffle.

Then I used my roll of skinny tape to tape off some grain sack stripes on two of the boards.

This tape is only .23 inches wide making it perfect for working on miniatures.  I purchased it at my local Menard’s store, but you can probably also find it online.

  I painted the stripes using a small brush and contrasting paint colors.

Once dry, I sanded the boards again to give them some age, and then added some knob transfers from re.design with prima.

The round cutting board has a rooster from their Farmhouse Delights set (now discontinued, but you can sometimes still find it online).

The transfer on the square board is also from that same set.

The rectangular board was a bit too narrow for most of the knob transfers, so I just trimmed out some wording from one to add to it.

I love how they turned out.

I ended up keeping all three of these for my larger dollhouse.  However, I did order more cutting boards to paint up, but more on that in my next post.

In the meantime, what do you think of these?  Leave a comment and let me know.