Ann's Dollhouse Dreams

I've been spending a lot of time in the bathroom these last few days. The Manchester bathroom. Yes I know, every post I say that I'm going do the wiring. Well that hasn't happened yet. On a whim, I decided to design the vanity for the bathroom, instead. It's not yet finished, but here it as, almost done. I'm trying to decide if I should order a second sink. This one came from ShapeWays, offered by Paper Doll Miniatures. 

I got the brilliant idea that maybe I could design a pair of those cool round sinks that are mounted on top of the vanity, so I dug out my Fimo polymer clay and tried. I ran out of patience and decided that I love the 3-D printed one, while wondering if I had such a printer I could maybe....No.

                

I am getting better at measuring and accurately cutting each piece and as long as the Cricut Maker cooperates I have good results. Occasionally  we eat at Village Inn that offers jelly for the toast in these great little totes. I'll trim off the edges and wrap them in twine to make little tote baskets.

   

                            

I decided to dress up the drawer fronts with raised panels. Using Julie Warren's method to bevel the edges of the panels, I used 120 grit sandpaper to bevel the edges, counting the passes to get uniform beveled edges.

So, the vanity is mostly finished. I still have to glue on the raised panels, mount the sinks--I have to order a sink--, and paint the vanity.

AND THEN. . .

I decided to rebuild for the 3rd time the entertainment center. This was my first attempt. I rejected it because of the airiness of the design.

Not only did I have problems getting the glue to adhere, but I had a lot of problems cutting accurate dimensions for the pieces. As this photo demonstrates. It just looked sloppy. I watched an artist build a dresser on Youtube who used wood filler to close up the cracks, so this piece can be salvaged.

So, I rebuilt and wrote about the white entertainment center, which I really liked, but the more I looked at it the more I didn't like the way I installed the "glass" shelves. The braces for them just overwhelm the the entire piece.

So I removed the fireplace and started over.

I had planned on going to town Thursday, but it snowed, so it was a great day to build a new entertainment center. It was cold Friday and the roads were probably bad, so I worked on the entertainment center another day. 

I redesigned it, adding raised panels to the cabinet doors,  making the cabinets taller for a bolder look and add some decorative trim to frame the fireplace, but boy did I have problems cutting the frame for the fireplace front. I just could not get the dimensions accurate and because I was using 1/16 basswood, the narrow frame kept breaking. And then the wood slipped on the worn purple cutting mat, causing the machine to mis cut.

I spent most of today trying to get that frame cut the right size.

FINALLY!

I removed the fireplace from Entertainment Center 2 and installed in the this one. The blue light stopped working, and while I have a second one, I didn't add it.  I had to cut wires to removed the battery pack from the other cabinet, which left barely enough to rewire the lights for the new piece. I was running low on patience.

So what to do with the old one? It was almost time to fix dinner. Someone else in the house was hungry. Still I had to play around with the rejected piece, thinking that maybe it might be used in the bathroom. With a little sanding, the vanity fit in the entertainment center, which opened up a lot possibilities for a new bathroom plan.

The bedroom does not have room for any sort of furniture since I cut a door in the wall for the addition, limiting wall space to none in that bedroom, so I've been trying to figure out how to include a dresser, and then today I thought "Maybe a wardrobe" after watching Julie Warren's tutorial on how to build one.

So here are the various ways that I can repurpose the entertainment center. Which one do you like?

A larger bathroom with a huge built in cabinet. Lots of storage.

As a closet with sliding doors in the bathroom?

Or maybe on the bedroom side as a closet? I'm actually liking this.

I thought about adding another wall and created a walk in-closet.

The bathroom can be a very large, roomy space, or it can easily become too cramped if I add a large closet, so I don't think I'll be doing that.

Even if I put the the "closet" on the bedroom side, the bathroom still loses a lot of floor space.

But I seem to be leaning toward the free standing closet or a wardrobe with sliding doors on the bedroom side, making a rather cramped bathroom. 

So that's what I've been doing all week. It will take me forever to finish this house. In a few days, I'll have been working on for a year. I shouldn't feel too badly about that because I'm building most everything from scratch. 

And what have you been doing?

Thanks so much for visiting. Go 2022! We are off and running.