Kitty Fashions

Lolly learned how to knit this past week.  I had tried to teach her to knit several years ago but it didn't really take.  This time, I showed her how to do two stitches and she took right over.  She picked it up way faster than I did.  She's made several cowls for her cat, Callie, and a patchwork blanket.  She's got a line of hats in mind, and a ballerina outfit I believe.  Fortunately, Callie is fairly tolerant.

The Front Is (Mostly) Done

All the siding, windows, and trim are on the front of the house!  The front door was tricky and took me awhile to decide what to do.  Why is that, you ask?  Well, the door openings on the plans use Bauder Pine doors.  The house pieces were all cut ages ago to match the plans.  However,now Bauder Pine no longer exists. Houseworks doors are too narrow.  In fact, I looked up every 1/2" scale door I could find on the internet and couldn't find any wide enough. I considered redoing the whole front wall with an opening to fit a Houseworks door but I had already put a Bauder Pine door on the back.  I didn't think it would look right for the back door to be wider than the front door, even though you don't ever see them at the same time. In the end, I decided to make the door from scratch. How does it look?

The removable walls were also tricky.  The plans don't explain how to do the corner trim.  At this point, the corner trim is glued to the front wall with a space on the sides so when the wall is put in place the trim will cover the sides too.  In order to allow for a big enough gap to cover the side walls the only about 1/8' of the trim could to be glued to the front.  I don't know how well that is going to hold but I didn't want to use a wider trim.  I could have glued the corner trim to the front and then cut another piece to cover the sides but that would have left a seam.  If I had to do this over again I would try making the removable walls a little wider so the corner trim could be glued on flush and would cover the sides.  It might be hard to tell from the photo, but I used 1/2' corner trim.  I cut the part glued to the front wall to 1/4" to match all the others corners of the house.  I left the sides at 1/2" so it would be wide enough to cover the sides.  I might have to go back and redo this at some point if this doesn't work.

There is a gap between the trim and the walls so the side walls can fit in there.

A Porch with a Horrible Window

I have decided that choosing the Puritan for my first miniature house project was a REALLY BIG MISTAKE.  I should have started with, oh I don't know, a one room cottage.  Or at least a small kit house that came with all the components.

Over the past week or so I have been working on the porch.  I got all the siding on and painted.  Today I started working on the windows.  One of the things that makes this plan complicated is the fact that there is a triple window on the sunroom.  Since there aren't any triple windows to buy, I had to bash it.  I had a double window and a single window.  I cut one side off each.  The wood splintered when I cut it and the pieces did not fit together well.  Also, my double window was a smidge shorter than the single.  It looked terrible!

After some thought, I decided to cut off the top layer of trim on each piece.  I cut a new piece to replace what I cut off and to cover the gap.  Then I cut the pieces that went under the window off and replaced them with one solid piece.

There was a big gap on the inside that I had to fill with wood filler.  Hopefully once it's all painted it won't look too bad.