No More Blue Farmhouse

We finished our basement because I didn't want it to become a repository for the "I don't know what to do with it" stuff. It was far too easy to just send it to the large vacant space below. A previous owner had had finished a bedroom and a bathroom, so we finished as second bedroom and then one large space as a family room/TV room and a craft/office area for me. At each end we have large 110 gallon aquariums, one marine tank and one fresh water tank that my husband (known as the Head Gardner or HG over at the my other blog, the Garden Spot) tends. The room is sparsely furnished with a sectional sofa and a TV.

Oh I forgot to mention the village of dollhouses, along with the tables full of miniature furniture and accessories for the blue farmhouse. I was moving tables about last night when the HG asked me what I was doing doing. I told him that I was adding another table to the village for when I finish the blue farmhouse, which will be very soon.  I am anxious to bring this project to a close, except I know that there will always be some tinkering and things to add. Is anyone's home ever finished? Don't we always decorate only to redecorate and remodel again? I am so very close to finishing the house, and I thought that I would catch you up.

This is the house as I brought it home from the antique/junks store. I began the restoration by cleaning up the interior.

Most of the rooms were lined with poster board-like paper that I stripped way to get to the bare wood.

The kitchen had been worked on--more than once. I don't think that the original builder completed the house or the second person had stripped out the original wallpaper.

The kitchen had more than one layer of wallpaper.

I didn't find the black at all appealing.

So much work and elbow grease.

 

The kitchen is primed and ready for wallpaper now.

It was looking better, but more work to get the walls clean, old glue removed, and surfaces smoothed down.

The house was fully wired, but not all lines worked

I was so new at working with this copper tape wiring, that I really didn't know what I was doing. I should have left much of the wiring intact, but I messed and messed and messed with it. Not all of the  lines that I added work, now.

Take this light in the second floor hallway, for example. In this photo it works. Then one day I plug in the lights and this light and others on the same line don't work. I used one of the pound-in plug-ins that failed twice.

There were broken windows, too. the house came with a shoebox full of left over pieces and odds and ends of wood pieces, thankfully. I was able to repair these windows with all but a couple of the original pieces.

These little opera windows on either side of the house and on the second floor front are a problem. The walls on both sided are double walls with dead space in between. So each frame requires a pane of glass. The window kits come with 3 pieces, two wooden frames and a window pane, but each frame required glass, so I am trying to figure that one out. 

This is the Peter Rabbit themed nursery. I tried to install a beaded an lighted chandelier, but again that  pound-in plug-in failed. Big mess. And the pretty chandelier that I made for bathroom was on that circuit. After paper and re papering the wall, I took out that electrical line. I will turn the nursery chandelier into a battery operated one.

I love the living room and kitchen. The hardwood floors purchased at Hobby Lobby turned out so nicely. I stained them, used polyurethane, and Johnson paste wax to get a nice shine.

I've had fun playing with furniture and accessories along the way. If you want to check the progress over the last year, go to 2015 links.

I spent a lot of time with the bathroom. You can see that it has only one wall sconce. 

The stairs were probably the hardest and worst of the entire project because nothing fit. 

The back of the house is now pretty well finished. I had to add trim to the raw edges to hide them, a rough plywood along with ragged edges on the wallpaper. Not perfect, but the edges are much cleaner.

TADA: No longer the blue farmhouse. I don't know what I will call the house now. Perhaps once I move back in (I've had furniture in and out, in and out, and again), I'll come up with a proper name.

There is just a little more exterior work to do. The front porch railing has been repaired and painted and I am now working on a screen door to cover the front door. There will be a final showing in a few weeks. Stay tuned.

I am so glad that you visited. This blog gets little traffic, nor to do I tend it as I do my gardening blog

--that's where all the action is. I have found that many dollhouse bloggers aren't quite as chatty as are the home and garden writers and that's okay since we probably spend more time working on our miniature projects than we do writing about them. We blog when we have great progress to share. 

See you soon when the farmhouse joins the village. We will have a celebration. I hope you join me then, too.  In the meantime, check out Normandy Life where Maggie hosts Mosaic Monday, a meme for bloggers to share their mosaics. Maggie lives in Normandy, so I enjoy reading all about her life there. Join us for the fun and to make new friends.