the welsh cupboard.

As it turns out, working on my dollhouse renovation has been the perfect winter project.  I love nothing more than staying in my cozy warm house, wearing my fluffy slippers and painting tiny things.  Especially in January when sometimes the temperature didn’t get above zero.

So although I didn’t actually have a spot in mind for this next piece of mini furniture when I purchased it, I knew it would be a fun painting project that I could work on to avoid going outside.

This is another Hobby Lobby piece.

I kinda wish they had a bigger selection of dollhouse furniture, because the pieces they do have are pretty good.  And they are quite inexpensive.  I don’t exactly remember what I paid for it in-store, but I just looked it up on their website and it was $4.49 there.  That seems ridiculously cheap and makes me wonder how they can possibly produce it for that price.

But anyway … I digress.

I started out by painting the inside of the shelf area with Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth.  Once dry, I chose DB’s Holy Guacamole for the rest.

I know this avocado (or pea soup green, if you prefer) color isn’t for everyone, but I really like it.  I’ve mostly used it on the insides of toolboxes, but I think it worked beautifully on this piece too.

But before we go further, I have to note that after completing the sideboard that I painted up for the dining room, and replacing the drawer pulls on that piece with some fun cup pulls, I decided to do the same with this piece.

So, if you’ll notice above, it originally had round knobs on the drawers and now (below) it doesn’t.

I just pulled off the round wooden knobs, and then glued the cup pulls over the holes they left behind.

And then, as I was sharing this updated look, I realized that I should also just dab a little of Dixie Belle’s Bronze Patina Paint on those two round knobs on the door to make them match.  Don’t know why I didn’t think of that sooner.

There, that’s better, right?

I’m not going to retake all of my photos though, so you may notice that I don’t have bronze knobs in any of the other photos.

The wording inside the upper part of the cupboard is from the I.O.D. Seed Catalogue transfer set.

If you aren’t familiar, this particular set comes with 8 pages of transfers with seed packet designs in varying sizes.

I grabbed just the wording from this one …

It worked out perfectly inside this cupboard.

After applying the transfer, I used 220 grit paper and lightly sanded some of the corners and high spots.  I’ve found that you really have to be careful to not go overboard when distressing these miniature pieces.

After sanding, I gave the piece a coat of Dixie Belle’s clear wax.  Then I took a step back and looked at it with a critical eye.  It needed something more to make it look a little less ‘new’.

So I pulled out the Dixie Dirt in Earth.

This is a powder pigment that you can use to add subtle shading to your painted pieces.

A little goes a long way, especially with miniatures.

I used a little brush to apply the ‘dirt’ to the crevices of my cupboard.  It’s a little difficult to see in the photos, but trust me when I say that it really does add dimension.

I hadn’t originally planned to stage this as a potting bench, but with the addition of the seed packet wording it sort of called out for it.  So I stole the rusty watering can from my fairy garden, and then I ordered a few miniature clay pots online (from MforMiniatures on Etsy).

I also tried my hand at working with some ‘printables’ again.  This time I purchased a downloadable file from LittleMaggieShop on Etsy.  I paid $2.99 to download a .pdf of tiny seed packets.  Then I printed them, cut them out, folded and glued them up and ta da …

The world’s tiniest seed packets!

I’m not precisely sure where this cupboard might end up, but I have an idea brewing.  You’ll just have to stay tuned until Monday to find out what it is.  But here’s a hint, it includes an option for shipping!

But in the meantime, what do you think of this Welsh cupboard makeover?  Leave a comment and let me know.

next winter’s project?

It’s probably obvious that I’ve been spending a lot of time refurbishing my dollhouse this winter.

So far I’ve finished the dining room

the main bedroom

the 2nd floor hallway

and the bathroom.

I’m also mostly done with the kitchen, just waiting on a last minute item to arrive before I share it.  The 2nd bedroom and the attic spaces are well on their way to being done as well.

And that leaves my friends and family asking ‘what are you going to do when the dollhouse is finished?’

That is definitely a valid question, and I have a couple of answers.

First, I don’t think the dollhouse will ever be ‘finished’.  For one thing, most of my rooms are really only minimally furnished compared to most dollhouses I’ve seen.  I still need some extras like bedside tables in the main bedroom, art for the walls, another piece of furniture for the dining room and so on.  For another thing, much like my actual house, I’ll probably never really be done.  I’ll always be tweaking things, adding new things here and there, changing things up and so on.  I plan to landscape the outside at some point too.

But the 2nd answer to that question is that maybe I’ll do another one next winter.

After all, I see dollhouses at garage sales fairly often.

You might remember this one …

I purchased that one at the Nokomis neighborhood garage sales back in 2016.  I cleaned it up a bit, and then sold it on … I believe to my friend Amy.  I wonder if she still has it.

In May 2022 I found this little number

It’s definitely a very primitive sort of dollhouse, simply made out of a box.

I’ve kept this one and am using it in my potting shed so hold clay pots and such.

In 2023 I paid just $5 for this dollhouse, also at the Nokomis neighborhood garage sales.  Seems like Nokomis is a great neighborhood for finding dollhouses!

I spruced this one up a bit more by replacing broken shingles, having Ken create a replacement shutter for the lower window, and then giving it a paint job.

In early 2024 I found this dollhouse … doll barn? … while out thrifting.

I gave this one a makeover with some paint.

Then I added some fun details like some barn lights, a couple of stencils …

and that fun weathervane.

Those are just the dollhouses that I did bring home, there were others at garage sales that I’ve passed by.

I guess all of those previous projects helped me gear up to tackle my own dollhouse renovation.

And now that I know I can do fiddly things, if I see another dollhouse at a bargain price this coming summer I’ll snatch it up to become next year’s winter project.

How about you?  How do you keep busy over the winter?  Or maybe where you live you don’t need to have something to occupy your time while waiting for spring to arrive.  Leave a comment and let me know!

a swiss cross stool.

Back in early November my friend opK and I found a couple of garage sales to check out on an unseasonably warm-ish Thursday.  I didn’t find much to buy, but I did bring home this metal stool.

The sale I found it at really wasn’t your typical garage sale.  It was held in someone’s garage, but they had a lot of antiques and the prices were more akin to a shop rather than a garage sale.

But that being said, this stool was one of the few bargains they had at $10.

I was really drawn to the industrial look of the casters, but I didn’t love the primer grey spray paint job that someone had given it.

It was a bit blah.

So after a good cleaning, I sanded the seat top to remove any flaking paint and rust.  Next, after wiping away any remaining dust with a damp cloth, I gave the stool a coat of Dixie Belle’s Bonding Boss in clear.  It will inhibit any future rust, and also improve the adhesion of my paint.  I like to use the clear version when I’m planning to distress a piece.  I definitely don’t want to see white underneath when I spot sand to distress it.

Next up I painted the stool in Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky.  Then I taped off a Swiss cross, and painted it in Drop Cloth.

I used those holes in the top of the stool as a guide for centering my cross.  I also used a carpenter’s square to get my angles right.

I didn’t want the stool to look freshly painted, so I used some 220 grit sandpaper to sand back the paint in areas that I thought would be naturally worn over time.

This is where that clear Bonding Boss comes into play.

I finished the stool with some of Dixie Belle’s clear wax.

Now, you may have noticed that this stool is kinda short.  It’s not really the right height for sitting on it at a table, and of course it’s definitely not bar stool height.

Initially I thought that the height would make it perfect to use as a plant stand for a taller Norfolk Island Pine that I have.

But I quickly realized that there wasn’t much point in that Swiss cross design on the top if I was just going to put a plant on it.

In the end, this stool is really the perfect height for me to sit on while cleaning out lower cabinets, or while digging through my stash of scrapbook paper that I store on a lower shelf.  So for now I’m just going to hang onto it.

What do you think of this simple makeover?  Leave a comment and let me know.

 

the bathroom furnishings.

We’ve become an Amazon Prime society, conditioned to expect that anything we order online should be here within a couple of days, right?

I’m finding that shipping times are all over the place when it comes to dollhouse items.  I will say that miniaturecrush.com delivers my orders with Amazon-like speed.  They do have a small advantage in that they are located in Savage, MN which is just a little over half an hour away.  But they also get their orders into the mail a.s.a.p.

Then there are smaller, more custom orders like the mirror I ordered for the bathroom.

I ordered it from Emily Grace Minis (via Etsy).  It took 12 days to arrive, which I know is perfectly acceptable, but it felt like 12 weeks!  It was totally worth the wait though.  It’s perfect in my dollhouse bathroom.

As I waited, I was working away on a few other furnishings for the dollhouse bathroom starting with this little cupboard that was shipped to me promptly from Miniature Crush.

After removing those little gold knobs from the drawer and taping off the plexiglass, I scuff sanded the piece to prep it for paint.

I had to chuckle when I noticed that there were measurement notes written inside the drawer area.

Just like I often find on full-sized furniture!

Next I painted the inside of the cupboard in Dixie Belle’s Cottage Door and the outside in Drop Cloth, and added a topcoat of their Big Mama’s Butta.

Then I lined the drawer with another of the Tim Holtz Worn Wallpaper Scraps.

I also decided to swap out those original round gold knobs on the drawer for some of the same cup pulls that I used on the sideboard in the dining room (they are also from Miniature Crush).

But this time I added a little of Dixie Belle’s Gilding Wax in Gold to them.  As you’ll soon realize, I decided to go with gold finishes throughout the bathroom.

I also ordered a new toilet online, along with a handful of smaller items for the bathroom from Factory Direct Craft.  That order took even longer to arrive than the mirror, but I did finally get them.

A few of the mini’s that I ordered from Factory Direct Craft went into this cupboard including some t.p., a little jar of q tips (because I had to have q tips, right?), and a box of first aid supplies.

Which brings me to the toilet.

Comically enough, this is the most expensive item I’ve purchased for my dollhouse to date at $67.50.  Ridiculous, I know.  But I searched high and low online for a realistic looking toilet in a style that I liked and this was the best option I found.

But even at that price, I didn’t love it when it arrived looking like this …

(photo from Factory Direct Craft website)

I felt it was a bit blah.  The silver piping and handle looked like painted plastic, and the rest was just too white.  Also, FYI, the Factory Direct Craft website claims this item is made of porcelain and it definitely is not.  It’s plastic (possibly 3D printed??).  But I figured I could work with it.

I painted the toilet seat black using Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky, then I painted the pipe and the handle in their Bronze Patina Paint.  I added just a little of the green activation spray from the Patina Paint line to the pipe to give it some realistic looking corrosion.

I purchased some gloss spray clear coat to add a little shine and make the toilet look more like porcelain, but I’m going to have to wait for a little warmer weather to add that (I don’t like to use spray paint inside the house in winter).

Next up, the sink.

You may remember this dresser that I painted up back in June 2022.

Well, I decided it would be the perfect base for a bathroom sink.  It was much easier to accomplish this in miniature since it doesn’t actually have to have plumbing 😉

I found a flat bottomed sink at Miniature Crush and then just added it to the top of the dresser.

Then I used a little more of that Gold wax to make the faucet gold rather than the silver that it came in.

Now, you may have noticed that my bathroom doesn’t have a tub or shower.  The thing is, I really wanted to use that little cupboard in the room, and there wasn’t space for both that and a tub.  Plus, more importantly, I couldn’t find a tub that I liked that wasn’t even more expensive than that toilet!

So I decided that since this is my dollhouse, I can do whatever I want.

And in this case, that means no tub or shower.  However, my friend opK gave me this little metal tub a while back, so I painted the outside of it in Drop Cloth and added a re.design with prima knob transfer to it.  I also painted the inside in Dixie Belle’s Copper Patina Paint, but you can’t really see that while it’s hanging up.

I hung it from a teeny tiny hook that I also added Gold gilding wax to.  I added a gold hook to the bathroom door as well.

The hooks are from Miniature Crush, and I glued them in place with super glue.  I wasn’t sure how well they would hold, but so far so good.

Unfortunately, the wall sconces on either side of the mirror don’t actually light up.

The would be much cooler if they did.  But no, they are just made out of plastic and I have them attached to the wall with some tacky wax.  So maybe at some point I’ll swap them out for something else, but for now they are good enough.

And with that, I’m calling the bathroom finished.

Here’s a look back at the ‘before’.

And here is the ‘after’ …

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let me know.

never say never, wallpaper edition.

As I like to remind myself all the time, never say never.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve sworn that I will never, ever wallpaper again.  Yet here I am.  Wallpapering.

To be fair though, this time I’m wallpapering in miniature.  First it was the hallway, and now it’s the bathroom.

I found this fabulous mini toile wallpaper at Miniature Crush.  I actually ordered enough of it to wallpaper the main bedroom of the dollhouse, but as you’ve seen, I didn’t actually use it in that room.

On the bright side, ordering too much wallpaper in miniature doesn’t break the bank like it would if it was full sized.  This stuff is only $3.75 per sheet.

To prep for the wallpaper, I first painted the walls, trim and wainscoting in Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth to create a blank canvas.

For my first wallpapering attempt, I think I did pretty good.  I’ll admit, I didn’t bother to line up the pattern at the corners.  That was pure laziness on my part, and truth be told I regret it.  It wouldn’t have taken much more effort to line that up, and I certainly had plenty of paper.

I also left a tiny gap in one corner.  Drat!

But, keep in mind, these are close up photos of a very small space.  In real life these flaws aren’t nearly as noticeable.  And once I get the bathroom ‘furnished’ I don’t think they’ll matter at all.

Next up I needed to do something about the floor.  Unfortunately it had been damaged and needed to be replaced.

I did find a very inexpensive flooring option at Hobby Lobby.

That bright white really made the Drop Cloth on the wainscoting look way too creamy though.  And you know me, I’m not a fan of bright whites, I prefer a more subtle white.  So I ordered another option to see if I liked it better.

This flooring is from itsybitsymini.com.  It’s a peel and stick style ‘wallpaper’ with a matte finish.  Therefore it is completely flat (not embossed like the Hobby Lobby flooring), which I think is a bit less realistic looking.  None the less, I prefer the look of this one over the Hobby Lobby floor.

Even with this new flooring,  the Drop Cloth on the wainscoting was still a bit too warm.  So I got out Dixie Belle’s Saltwater Silk paint and painted a test swatch on the wainscoting, but it was way too bright of a white for me.  Then I got out the Fluff from the chalk paint line, still too bright.  Finally, I pulled out the Endless Shore from the Silk paint line, and I decided that was just right.  It’s really just a tiny bit brighter than Drop Cloth, but that was just what I needed.

By the way, I’ve written a blog post comparing the Dixie Belle chalk style whites

and also another comparing the Silk line whites  …

so check those out if you are wondering how all of these shades of white measure up.

Once I had the paint color and the flooring figured out, I decided that I needed a little something in the area between the wallpaper and the ceiling.  The original bathroom had a wallpaper border there, but I decided to do something a little bit more unique this time around.

I dug through my transfer stash and pulled out the Cosette transfer from I.O.D.

You may remember that I’ve only used the inner circle of text from this transfer (I used it on that Christmas toolbox).

So I still had those lines of text from both the top and bottom of the transfer.  And the 2nd line from the top was just about a perfect fit for the border area of my dollhouse bathroom.

And I absolutely love it there.  It works beautifully with my toile wallpaper and my French Country vibe.

And that brings me to the radiator.  A while back I mentioned that I want to paint the radiator in the q branch (a.k.a. my home office) gold.  Naturally, that will have to wait for summer because I can’t paint it while it’s hot.  But how about a gold radiator for the dollhouse?  That I can do now.

The radiator is plastic, and honestly a little cheap looking up close.  The white plastic had really yellowed over time.

So I gave it a good scrub with hot water and Dawn dish soap.  Once dry I taped off the silver and black piping, and then gave it a quick spray with Rust-Oleum gold spray paint.

Oh my goodness, isn’t that a 100% improvement?

I love it!  It definitely no longer looks plastic.

So, now that I have all of the ‘bones’ in place, next up is furnishing the bathroom and I’ll be sharing that on Friday, so be sure to stay tuned!

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

lilliputian books.

A while back I shared some dollhouse furniture photos where I used a Gulliver’s Travels book as the background.

I’ve always loved the look of that book’s pages with the title in that large font at the top.  And obviously it’s the perfect choice for the background in pictures of miniatures.

The cover of the book itself is quite beat up and not good for much in the way of either display or to use for staging photos.

Markings inside indicate that this book once belonged to Concordia College …

and also to Harding High School.

It’s actually quite difficult to find pages in the book that don’t have sections underlined or notes in the margins.

In other words, this book was definitely very well used.  I’m pretty sure it has little monetary value, so I don’t feel bad about dismantling it.

One of my readers (hello Monica!) made the suggestion that I use some of those book pages as wallpaper in the dollhouse, but I have to say that I was already thinking along those lines myself.  I just wasn’t sure exactly which room to use them in.

But ultimately I chose the 2nd floor hallway.

I will admit that my application of the somewhat fragile book pages to the walls leaves a little bit to be desired in neatness, but I think it makes up for it in charm.

I cut the pages to fit as well as I could and then applied them using Mod Podge as ‘wallpaper paste’.  I did not add more Mod Podge over the top of the paper like you would if you were decoupaging.  I just used it on the back.

I’ve added a small rug from The Modern Dollhouse to the hallway …

As well as a chair that I painted up.

This is painted in a base coat of Dixie Belle’s Coffee Bean, followed by a dry brushed coat of their Burlap.  I also painted the seat cushion with a wash of Burlap (about 50/50 paint and water).  Then I added a re.design with prima knob transfer of a horse to the seat back.

And that brings me to my tiny books.

I happened across a downloadable file for creating some aged looking books (on Etsy, here), so I decided to try making some.

Once the file was purchased and printed out, I cut out all of the various bits.

To turn these into books I simply cut some heavy cardstock to size, then glued together stacks of the cardstock that would be thick enough to fill the book covers.

Then, I just glued the covers over the stack of cardstock.

That works great for books that you plan to just stack up, or put in a bookcase with the spines showing.

But I also wanted to create some books that would lie open somewhere.

For those, rather than gluing all of the layers of cardstock together, I glued some of the printed inner pages to the inside so the book could be left open.

Initially I thought I would called these finished at this point, but then I decided to add some of Dixie Belle’s Gold Gilding Wax to the edges of the ‘pages’.

To be honest, that’s probably a detail too small to be noticed by most.  But it only took a minute to do, and I already had the Gold wax out for something else that day, so why not?

I have a wall of bookcases to fill in the tower room of my dollhouse, so I think there will be quite a bit more bookmaking in my future.

In the meantime, what do you think of my book page wallpaper and my lilliputian books?  Leave a comment and let me know.

everything’s coming up roses.

 The shop where I sell on consignment, Reclaiming Beautiful in Stillwater, MN, recently asked if I had any floral toolboxes to bring in.  I always find it difficult to figure out what to bring in to sell this time of year,  the holidays are over, it’s too early for garden themed items, and I’m not really into Valentine decor.  So I really appreciated this little nudge in the floral direction.

I also did happen to have a floral toolbox on hand.  This one

I’m not sure why this one didn’t sell last year, but it has been listed on my ‘available for local sale’ page for months.

I also decided to go ahead and paint up a 2nd floral toolbox to bring in while I was at it.  So I pulled out one of the toolboxes that I brought home from my recent trip to the ReStore.

To prep the toolbox for paint I first sanded it thoroughly.  This one had a bit of rust and flaking paint, so I wanted to remove as much of that as possible.  After then giving it a good cleaning with Dawn dish soap, I gave it a coat of Dixie Belle’s clear Bonding Boss.  That will slow down any further rusting, help prevent the existing rust from bleeding through my paint, and help the paint adhere to the slick metal surface.

After waiting 24 hours, I then painted the inside of the toolbox in my favorite pink, Dixie Belle’s Cottage Door, and the outside in my favorite warm white, Drop Cloth.

Once the paint was dry I pulled out the Rose Botanical transfer from I.O.D. and started laying out my design.  This particular transfer includes 30  individual images of roses in four different sizes.

I ended up using eight of the roses on my toolbox, trimming off leaves here and there and layering them over each other to fit where I wanted them.

The wording on the front of the toolbox is from the I.O.D. Cosette transfer.  You’ll see some more of that wording when I get to the dollhouse bathroom, which I hope to share soon.

For the top of the toolbox I added a large bee from the re.design with prima French Labels Middy transfer.  The wording beneath that is from the I.O.D. Label Ephemera transfer.

So, in other words, I cobbled together bits and pieces from a few different transfers to get this look.  And I also added a re.design with prima classic vintage label inside the lid.

To finish off the toolbox, I sanded the edges to distress them a bit, then I used Dixie Belle’s clear wax on the outside and their flat clear coat on the inside for added durability.

As I was finishing up the toolbox I was thinking that it would be a nice size to hold all of my supplies for working on miniatures.

So that’s how I staged up my photos.  But I won’t be keeping this one for that purpose, I brought it into the shop instead.

As I was pulling together my things for the shop I remembered that I also had a few other pretty floral pieces.

So I also brought in this suitcase.

As well as my Rose Botanical books.

And this rose themed cupboard door.

So if any of you locals are suffering from cabin fever after our recent cold snap (18° below zero was a bit much for both me and my car) and you want to get out and enjoy the warm up this weekend (yes, the mid-20’s feels positively balmy after -18° and can be called a warm up in January), head over to Stillwater.  Not only can you stop in at Reclaiming Beautiful for a hit of some florals, you can also just head down the hill and check out the ice and snow sculptures at the World Snow Celebration which runs through Sunday.

As for the rest of you, what do you think of my rose covered toolbox?

As always, thank you to Dixie Belle Paint Co for providing their products used in this makeover.

furnishing the main bedroom.

Now that the shiplap is in place, it’s time to furnish the main bedroom.

I’ve mentioned before that my in-laws had misplaced most of the dollhouse’s original contents.  But there was one piece of furniture still in the house, the bed from this room.

And that’s kind of cool because I still like this simple four poster canopy bed (most of the other original furniture is no longer my style).

The bedding however had gone missing.

But that’s OK because I purchased that sewing machine a few months back just so that I could create bedding and such for the dollhouse.

Well, as it turns out, I needn’t have bothered with a sewing machine.  Pretty much all of the tutorials for creating dollhouse bedding that I’ve found just use glue rather than a needle and thread.  Who knew?

I’ve also learned that the common kitchen sponge works well for creating a miniature mattress from watching YouTube videos.

So when I was in the grocery store the other day I picked up a pack of 4 for $1.99.  I didn’t notice that they had curved edges until I got them home.  But that’s OK, they were easy to cut and fit to a piece of cardboard that I was using as the base for my mattress.

After gluing the sponges to the cardboard with Tite Bond Quick and Thick, I then simply cut a piece of fabric with an inch or so extra around all four sides.  I wrapped that extra fabric around and glued it on the bottom using hot glue.

Speaking of fabric, I had a couple of remnants that I wanted to use on this bed.  I’d found a very small piece of brown and cream ticking at Hobby Lobby for .97, and I found some interesting horse hunt toile fabric while thrifting a while back for $2.

So I cut a piece of each of those fabrics to size, glued three edges together with the right side of the fabric facing in, and once the glue was dry I turned it right-side out.  Then I gave it a quick press with the iron to flatten it out a bit, and also folded in the remaining seam and gave it a quick shot with the iron.  Then I just glued that shut.

At this point I will say that I think I achieved a neater looking finish when I actually sewed the seams for the bedding on my previous project v. the glued seams on this one, mainly in the corners.  But technically it did work to glue them.

I placed the coverlet on the bed, folding the top edge over by about an inch so that the ticking striped underside was visible.

I then used hot glue to attach the bedding to each side of the bed itself.

I made a couple of pillows for the bed, also just using glue.  One is just simply made out of the ticking fabric, but for the 2nd one I used a scrap of drop cloth that I stamped using one of the I.O.D. Ephemeral Type stamps.

That one was a bit of an experiment.  I was just playing around trying to figure out how I could incorporate some of those stamps into dollhouse items.  I stamped the drop cloth, rolled it around a piece of foam, glued the edges without turning them in, and then trimmed the glued edges with pinking shears.  Easy peasy.

And that’s the bed done.

Next up, I ordered this armoire from Miniature Crush.

It opens up to reveal shelves.

After giving it a light sanding to smooth out any rough spots, I started by painting the interior in Dixie Belle’s Cottage Door.

Then I lined the back with more of Tim Holtz’ Worn Wallpaper Scraps.

I cut some small bits of fabric from an old piece of bark cloth and an old floral apron that I had in my stash.  Then I just folded them and dabbed some hot glue in each layer to make them lie somewhat flat.

Now, I’m aware that the pink interior doesn’t really work with the overall neutral color scheme in this room, but for the most part this armoire will just sit in place with the doors closed.  So I enjoyed adding a little pop of color inside.  Maybe it’s my secret little homage to the original pink color of the room.

Next up I painted the exterior of the armoire in Dixie Belle’s Dried Sage.  It was originally meant to be an undercoat, because I then put two coats of Drop Cloth over it.

But in the end, I didn’t love the Drop Cloth, so I went back over that with the Dried Sage.

After sanding to distress, I added two bees from one of re.design with prima’s knob transfers to the doors.

After sealing the piece with some of Dixie Belle’s Big Mama’s Butta, I used a small brush to apply some of the Dixie Belle Earth to the corners of each panel.

This is a powder pigment that you can use to add subtle shading to your painted pieces.

A little goes a long way, especially with miniatures.

But that bit of shading adds a lot of dimension to miniature pieces.

One last quick painting project for this room (for now) was the radiator.

My dad put a few plastic radiators into the dollhouse here and there, although not in every room.  This one was originally in the hallway, but I have another plan for that spot so I moved it into the main bedroom.

But first I painted it with Dixie Belle’s Bronze Patina Paint.  To give it a super realistic look, I dabbed just a tiny bit of the green activating spray onto the bleed valves.

And with that I’m calling the main bedroom ‘furnished for now’.

I salvaged a discarded vintage alarm clock face from my friend opK to hang over the fireplace.

By the way, normally that fireplace insert lights up and looks like it has glowing embers.  Unfortunately, I am now unable to get any of the electrical to work in the dollhouse.  Mr. Q suspects there is a short somewhere, but to fix that would require ripping out floors and/or ceilings to get to the wires, and that’s not going to happen.

So all of the lights are out for now, I’ll save that problem for another day.

The armoire is in place.

I moved the trunk, or blanket chest, from its temporary position in the dining room to the foot of the bed.

I also moved the dress form that I painted up a few months back into this room.

You’ll notice that I don’t have any bedside tables yet.  I have a plan to try and make a stack of miniature suitcases to use on at least one side of the bed, but that project will be a bit down the road.

I also have some battery operated bedside reading lights on order.

I definitely need some artwork for the walls too, but that’s the sort of thing that I can work on over time.

But for now, what do you think of the mostly completed room no. 2 of my dollhouse reno?  Leave a comment and let me know.

fiddly things.

I have to be honest, I thought there was a pretty good possibility that I’d get started on my dollhouse renovation and realize that working in miniature was just too fiddly for me.

And then the dollhouse would become one of those projects that gets shoved aside and never finished.

I think that’s partly why I gave it away in the first place.

But I’m beginning to realize that I can do fiddly things, so I decided to tackle adding some shiplap to the dollhouse.

I started by ordering some wood strips from Miniature Crush.  After they arrived, I gave them all a light sanding with 220 grit paper followed by two coats of Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth.

When creating a faux shiplap wall you intentionally leave a tiny bit of space between each board, you don’t butt them up tightly together.  So you need to be sure that the edges of the boards are painted because it looks obvious if they aren’t.  Therefore, it’s easier to paint the boards before you install them.

Another important step before installing faux shiplap is to paint the wall first.  Because again, it might show through those tiny gaps in the planks of wood.  Especially if your wall has a color on it, or in this case, some floral wallpaper.

That brings me back to the ‘before’ photo of the dollhouse’s main bedroom, which is where I’m putting the shiplap.

Phew!  I really loved some horrible shades of mauve in the 90’s.

Yep, I definitely needed to cover that up first.  So I gave the walls, trim and ceiling two coats of Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth.

Since I was only going to shiplap one wall, I decided I needed a little bit of contrast between the color on the other walls, the shiplap and all of the trim, so I added just a bit of Dixie Belle’s Dried Sage to some Drop Cloth to darken it up a bit and then added that on just the walls that would remain bare.

Then it was time to install the shiplap so I got out my tiny step ladder and my tiny hammers and got to work.

LOL, OK, the actual tool I used was one of these.

This is called a multi angle miter shear cutter, and it worked beautifully for cutting my shiplap.  I didn’t have to cut any fancy angles, just straight cuts.  But down the road I may need it for some angles.  You can find one of these for less than $20 on Amazon, FYI.

I also didn’t really use a tiny hammer and nails, I just used some Titebond Quick and Thick glue to attach my boards to the wall.

I shiplapped (not a real verb, but it works here) the back wall as well as the fireplace surround.

OK, I have to admit that the corner near the bottom is a bit wonky.  But that’s far more noticeable in this photo than it is in person.  Plus, to do this ‘right’, I should have removed the base board, added the shiplap, and then replaced the baseboard over it.  But ain’t nobody got time for that.

Plus, I’m a beginner.  Everything doesn’t have to be perfect, right?

Also, I should note that you can buy 1:12 scale shiplap paneling in sheets, but I think it would be more difficult to cut a full sheet of ‘paneling’ to fit an existing wall.  Whereas these strips were quite easy to cut using my new tool.  In addition, I think shiplap looks more legit when you have staggered seams like I’ve created on the back wall (although in real life you’re supposed to caulk those seams).

What do you think of my fiddly shiplap job?

Not too bad?

I want to encourage any of you who are thinking about tackling your own dollhouse renovation to consider starting with a shiplap wall or two.  It was fairly easy and a real confidence boost when you realize that you can do fiddly things after all!

Be sure to check back on Wednesday for the full reveal of the main bedroom.

another windfall of toolboxes.

To avoid suffering from serious garage sale withdrawal, my friend opK and I headed out to do some thrifting last week.

We stopped at a couple of Goodwill stores, where we found precisely nothing.  Why has Goodwill gotten so bad these days?  It seems like even when you do find something interesting, it’s priced too high to consider.

But we also stopped at a Habitat for Humanity ReStore and that’s where I found a windfall of toolboxes.

You may remember that back in May of last year my friend Kathy gave me an entire trunk full of metal boxes, so I decided that the collective noun for them must be ‘windfall’, you know, like a murder of crows or a school of fish.

Well, OK, this windfall of boxes wasn’t quite as big a score as that pile from Kathy, but it was pretty good for a frigid day in January.

I was quite happy to come across these because I’m down to only having smaller tackle boxes and lock boxes in my stash.  I’ve been wishing I had some larger toolboxes to work with, and now I do.

The blue one is probably in the worst shape.

It has quite a bit of rust both inside and out.  But I love the shape of it.

The Homak toolbox is in slightly better shape, and I like the metal handle (v. the plastic one on the blue toolbox).

Both of those were only $5, so right in my price range.

I generally like to pay $10 or less for my toolboxes, but I splurged on this last one at $15.

If my friend Neal is reading this post, he’s probably cringing a little inside at the thought of me painting this one.  It’s a vintage Craftsman toolbox and he says there are serious collectors of these out there.  But I will be painting it (sorry Neal).

A few of you have commented in the past that you can’t seem to find toolboxes where you are, so maybe check out a ReStore if there is one near you.

Aside from the toolboxes, I brought home just a few things from another thrift store we visited called Restored (not to be confused with the Habitat ReStore).

I grabbed this stool.

I definitely didn’t care for the 90’s country vibe, but I knew I could do something with it.  The sunflowers had to go, as did the forest green color.

After sanding off the sunflowers, and scuff sanding the rest of it, I gave it two coats of Dixie Belle’s Sawmill Gravy.  Then I went through my transfer stash and came across an old re.design with prima transfer, back when the I.O.D. sisters were designing for them.

This transfer originally had a lined border around it, but that didn’t fit my stool quite right.  I trimmed that border off and then did just a little re-arranging of some elements so that it would fit.

Once the transfer was applied, I sanded the edges to distress and then added a coat of Dixie Belle’s Big Mama’s Butta to protect the finish.

I couldn’t pass up this coat rack made from a drawer front from an old spoon carved dresser from the thrift shop either.  The price was right, the bones were good, so I just needed to give it a little bit of an update.

After removing the hooks, I scuff sanded the surface and then added two coats of Sawmill Gravy.

I went back to the old stash of transfers again and found some bits and pieces of the long retired Seeds transfer (also an old redesign with prima transfer).

This transfer hadn’t held up well in storage, so I had to discard some sections and then cobble together just the bits that were still usable.  But it worked out perfectly for this drawer front.  It always feels good to use up something that has been in the stash for a while, doesn’t it?

After applying the transfer, I added a topcoat of clear wax and then just added back two of the original 4 hooks.

Today’s q tip:  transfers deteriorate over time, especially if they are not in a sealed package.  They will dry out and either come loose from the transfer sheet (which is what happened here), or they will just become less sticky and more difficult to apply.  These older transfers came in a flimsy box rather than a tube or as a flat sheet like they do now and those boxes really allowed them to dry out.

I also purchased a handful of smaller items while thrifting over the last couple of weeks.

I’ve given most of them a makeover already.

I simply added one of the I.O.D. Traditional Pots transfers to the tall white pot.

That transfer set comes with white, black and blue transfers.  This is one of the blue ones.  I love adding the blue ones whenever I find a pot with a blue edge like this one.

The glass jar came with a kind of blah label (sorry, I didn’t get a photo of it), so I soaked it off and added a different label.

Well, technically that is not a label.  It’s from the Roycycled Label Masterboard decoupage paper.

I don’t do a lot of decoupage projects, but this paper was just too good to pass up.  Look at all of those fabulous labels.  I also put one of the labels on a bottle that I had on hand.

And then I put one on the square metal container from the thrift pile.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take into account the slightly transparent quality of the decoupage paper.  In hindsight I probably should have painted that container first.  What do you think?

The last item remaining from thrifting is this little ‘greenhouse’.

I plan to paint it, and will probably add wording of some kind to it, but first I have to deal with the broken finial (one finial is intact, one is broken off).  I need to find a replacement for that, so we’ll have to come back to that one.

Meanwhile I need to get back to my dollhouse project.  It’s taking up all of the space on my workbench (a.k.a. my baby grand piano), which makes it difficult to do other things … like paint toolboxes!

Here’s a sneak peek at the room that’s coming up next week.

So be sure to stay tuned!