The Newbury Begins

 While I still have a few odds and ends to tidy up on the Manchester, I've begun work on the Newbury from Real Good Toys. Let me introduce you the two story cottage with a French mansard roof.

As the box indicates, Real Good Toys introduced Batrie's  Newbury Dollhouse kit into its line, along a Batrie's other kits.When the company went out of business, Real Good Toys bought this company's houses and according to a post on the Greenleaf Dollhouse Forum, the entry suggested that Real Good Toys discontinued this house along with a couple of others from Batrie in 2016. If you like this house, you will find it still in box kits on eBay and other online venders, but shop carefully so that you don't pay too much. It would be a great first house project.

And if you decide to build it and, as I do, look on Pinterest to see how other's built it or search for bloggers who have chronicled their project, you won't find any. You will probably find 4 examples of this sweet little cottage, including the best example, by Robin Cary, one of our favorite builders. She named her's the Francais Chalet Champagne en Pierre. How romantic is that!

Not really planning on building another large house, I couldn't resist when I found this on FaceBook Market Place only a few miles away for $40. When I asked the young mother why she was selling the kit, she answered that she others in box and didn't have time to build this one. What a sweet deal

Still struggling to finish the Manchester, I vowed to set this house aside and wait on opening it up until the Manchester was finished--then I bought the garage.

Then one weak moment, seeing that sealed box sitting there, I caved and opened the box. All pieces were nicely packaged according to parts of the house, like all the window pieces were sorted by size in their own package, the porch pieces all in a package, and so on.

The instructions look pretty intimidating--don't they all though. 

Windows and walls for first floor. I shuddered at these slide-in wall supports. I struggled with  them so badly with that old San Franciscan that I finally gave up. These will be assembled to form on solid ground floor exterior wall that will be glued to the floor--well you will see. 

The walls are covered with lap siding--if that what it's called. Now an advanced builder might do faux stone work or egg crate bricks or some odd concoction to create a stucco exterior. I am not that brave or patient, so I'll paint the siding.

This kit provides pieces to build the front door, but I will upgrade it. I haven't quite decided on which door I'll chose for the front door--a nice one. 

Directions say to dry fit. Now that is the challenge because the first floor wall connected with slide-in joints is not very stable on its own. And that mansard roof with the sloping side exterior walls on the second floor is hard to hold in place, too. 

  So far all it's holding together. 

Lots of masking tape. 

It's not large house and the sloped wall reduce floor space, but still, I'm loving this house.

Of course we have to dig through our stash to test a kitchen floor plan.

It will a challenge to glue this baby together. I always relied on carpenter's clamps, but they won't work with this project.

I've laid all the pieces and tested the siding fit and played around with assembling a window, done some sanding, and used a box-cutter blade to square the rounded corners of the windows.

You can see here how the walls will slide into the post groves.

 

Instructions say to insert windows before walls are assembled.

I've glued the windows together, leaving the top frame piece  unglued so that I can paint the windows frames then slide in the glass then add the top frame.

I didn't have enough clamps to clap the window frames, so I secured them with masking tape while the glue cured. The instructions say to use rubber bands, but they were  too cumbersome to use.

To smooth out the glue joints, I used am emery board to sand things smooth and tested the window in place. 

  

Next day, I worked on the siding. I used a brush to smear the siding with Gorilla wood glue.

As you assemble the wood siding, look to see that first the groves all point the same direction--down with the narrow strip at the bottom that will over lap the wall. Not sure why yet. I am guessing that I will have to trim it off,  and as this photo shows, you can see that one piece will fit nicely into the one above. 

NOTE: the instructions say to start from the bottom and work up, making the bottom edge of siding flush, but I started at the top. Really does not seem to matter. The excess still needs to be trimmed away.

With the siding in place, I used a lot of little pincher clamps to hold the siding in place and to keep ti from curling and lifting. When I ran out of clamps, I use masking and blue painter's tape to secure the pieces in place.

The siding pieces don't exactly fit the window cutouts on the walls, so they will have to sanded or trimmed away a bit, yet the window casing will cover up the edges, so they won't show. 

So here is two day's worth of work. You will note that on the two main outside walls without windows I had to secure the siding pieces across the center to keep the edges from lifting. All the pieces need extensive clamping to keep the thin siding pieces from lifting. When I ran out of the little pinch clamps, I used painter's tape to secure a tight seal. The exterior side walls have 3 sections of siding, so I used tape the hold down the joints.

All the pieces will need a second coating. I'm using regular latex exterior interior house paint.

First I painted each piece with Kilz primer for smooth base paint foundation.

I purchased Ace Hardware's Clark and Kennington, a rich, creamy paint that goes on smoothly and cleans up nicely with water.

While I don't think a second coat is necessary, but I will sand lightly and give it a second coat. 

I am loving this blue

More to Come.

Thanks for joining me.

Ann