The Perfect House...

I'm going to apologize in advance for using this post to organize my thoughts, but I've been struggling with maintaining my enthusiasm for working on Rosie for the past few weeks and I'm trying to figure out why. 

When I first saw Rosie I thought she was as close to perfect as a dollhouse shell could get.  She was fully enclosed, had a realistic room layout, and would make a perfect addition to my ever-growing dollhouse collection.  It didn't really matter that the rooms were on the small side and that there weren't enough of them to include everything I wanted in one house.  After all, I had several dollhouse shells & kits and it wasn't a big deal if there wouldn't be room for a nursery or pantry in this house because I could have those rooms in one of my other houses.

I was very excited to begin working on Rosie.  I had no real plans for her and didn't really visualize what direction I would go with her decor, but that was irrelevant - she was going to be a beauty & that's all I needed to start this house!  Or so I thought...  It wasn't until I actually started inventorying her supplies and priming walls that I realized what sad shape the house was really in.  Feeling very discouraged and intimidated by what I had initially thought would be a good project for someone with limited qualifications as a miniaturist, I set the house on a table in the corner of my hobby room, vowing to "get back to this one" when I had a little more experience working on dollhouses.  With visions of *easier* and *better* houses to work on, I went in search of the new perfect house and promptly forgot about Rosie.

Almost two years later I found myself in a position of needing to downsize my miniature collection significantly.  While the reasons for this downsizing aren't important to Rosie's story - my reason for selecting her as the house I would keep is.

When I found myself in a position where I had to select one house to keep (okay, two, but the other house is not a 'forever house' and it's a story for another day)  I had to carefully look at all of my houses and determine which one would most closely fit my idea of the perfect house.  I needed to select one that had the best room layout, the one that had the most potential for the "wow" factor, and the one that I could pour all of my creative energy into.  A house that would not be a quick project, but one that I could work on for years, building experience and turning it into a real showplace.  The house where I could use all of my best miniature supplies and furnishings, the things I'd been saving for the perfect house.  In short, my "forever house".  The one I would never get rid of, no matter where life led me. The one house that I could be happy & content with, even if it turned out to be the only miniature house I ever owned and kept. 

Despite all of her imperfections Rosie won hands down.  Truth is, it really wasn't even a contest.   Of all the kits & shells I've ever owned or seen, Rosie had the most potential to be my forever house.  So after making my decision, I promptly gave away & sold all of the other houses and brought Rosie into the dining room, placing her on the dining room table so that I could begin working on turning her into the perfect house.

When I finally sat down to work on Rosie, the first thing I learned was that the second floor rooms would need some renovating if I was going to be happy with this house.  There wasn't really anything wrong with the rooms the way they were, it was just that they wouldn't work with what I wanted to do with them.  I had previously acquired a gorgeous bathroom kit that I had been saving for my forever house and the finished kit would look awkward in the bathroom as it originally was built.  Same thing for the room that would be a little girl's room.  I had always envisioned a built in bed and that vision wouldn't work with the way the room currently looked.  And last, but definitely not least was my concern over the second floor landing.  I wanted to somehow separate the actual second floor landing from the stairs to the third floor without compromising the realistic look of the second floor.

While I was able to envision what I wanted for each room, I wasn't able to make it happen.  I knew what I wanted, just not how to get it.  This is where my best friend Kelly comes in.  She has this amazing talent for looking at a room and figuring out how to get exactly what she wants out of it.  Somehow she is able to create floor plans and blue prints in her mind and knows how to take that vision and make it real.  I envy that talent.  So with Kelly's help new walls were cut, old walls were bashed and stairways were moved & the end result was a configuration of rooms that would do exactly what I wanted them to do!

Now, you would think this would've made me happy.  And the truth is, it did.  I was ecstatic, moving full speed ahead with my plans for the house, happily ordering wallpaper, spackling gouges in the wood and spending quiet evenings priming walls.  Until one day I looked through one of the doorways on the second floor and got a really good look at the interior hallway.  I had seen this hallway before, as the rooms were coming together, and had been very excited with the view of it through the various doorways.  It looked like a real hallway in a very old house, complete with turns, corners, nooks and crannies and I was beyond excited with how realistic it looked.  Until now...  Looking at the hallway through the eyes of someone that would need to wallpaper and decorate it, I felt a bit intimidated.  Okay, I felt a lot intimidated...  With all of the walls in place on the second floor, how in the world would I ever fit my hands into all of the small places, all of the nooks & crannies, to wallpaper and decorate & add lighting?  It didn't seem like it would be possible & I started feeling discouraged.  And as I continued looking at the house through those discouraged eyes, I began seeing all of the other faults and problems with the house again and started second guessing my plan to make this my forever house.

I mean, this house has definitely seen better days.  Every time I think I've repaired the last section of delaminating wood, I find another area that needs repair.  The hinged exterior walls are all warped enough that they don't shut properly when they are attached to the house (I have them currently removed) and these enclosure walls are one of the things I liked most about the house.  The interior stairs need major repair - all of the spindles will have to be replaced because the originals were broken and many were missing.  Normally this wouldn't be that big of an issue, but with the change in the second floor and the new stair configurations, the new spindles will not be glued on to the same side of the stairs that the old spindles were.  Which creates a problem in staining the stair treads because the old stair spindle holes are unsightly...  And of course the problem that started all of this negative thinking: how will I ever be able to access or see all of the hard to reach spots to wallpaper and decorate the hallway in a way that I'll be happy with? 

The more I dwelled on all of these issues, the more discouraged I became with the house.  I had made a mistake.  This wasn't going to be my forever house after all - there were just too many problems with the house - problems I was not equipped to tackle... 

While in the midst of this negative mindset I stumbled upon a picture of a dollhouse called Nob Hill.  I immediately fell in love with the house and found myself thinking that a house similar to this would be the *perfect* one.  There would be enough rooms to have all the different rooms I wanted, a hallway could be built into the center of the house, giving it a realistic room layout, and I could start from scratch - with new wood - and build it from the ground up, making it exactly what I wanted in a house!

I started to get very excited about the idea and even went so far in my planning as to seriously consider giving Rosie away to the first person that would take her, keeping her windows and doors for this new perfect house.

I spent several days plotting & planning this new house and Kelly went to work designing a floor plan for it.  I was so excited at the prospect of finally having a house I could be truly happy with that I even considered buying a table saw and learning how to use power tools so that I could help in the actual building of the shell.  I spent all of my free time thinking about this new house and babbled on about it to anyone who would even pretend to be interested in hearing about it.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I have a tendency to be a bit obsessive...

I stopped working on Rosie completely, and started trying to envision all the plans I'd had for her being used in a new house instead.  A funny thing happened when I did this.  With the new house still in the 'idea' phase, I began finding fault with it.  I decided that Rosie's windows & doors wouldn't look right in it after all, so I would need to find different ones that would suit it better.  I couldn't settle on room sizes for the new house either.  I thought the rooms in Rosie were on the small side, and I thought bigger would be better for the new house.  But how big would be big enough and what would be overkill?  How much room did I really need anyways?  And then I found myself struggling with the idea of having square and rectangular rooms in the new house.  Rosie's rooms had more twists & turns and were very appealing.  How could I give the new house that kind of appeal? 

The more I thought about it, the more I started questioning the idea of getting rid of Rosie.  She really was a beautiful house - imperfections & all...  Maybe I could keep her and just stick her in a corner somewhere until I was ready to work on her again...  Perhaps I could go ahead with the plans to create a new forever house and just keep Rosie around for *someday*.  Maybe I could just have two forever houses...

Which brings us here to today.  When I ask myself what I truly want, I know that I don't really want (or have the time, energy or resources for) two forever houses.  I only want and need one.  I know myself well enough to know that I could be content with one perfect house.  I'm not talking about "perfect" in the literal sense of the word - I simply mean a house that's perfect for me.  A house that I can work on and be happy with the way it is turning out.  A long-term hobby project that I'm doing for no other reason than it makes me happy.  Something that will make me smile when I look at it and say "I did that".  Something created out of my vision for what it could be. 

A house just like Rosie.

I've learned something important today.  Rosie's imperfections and complicated floor plan aren't the problem.  I am.  Rosie is absolutely capable of being everything I want in a 'forever' house.  The only thing stopping her from becoming one is me.  Or more accurately, my insecurities and lack of faith in my ability to accomplish what I want to do with this house are all that's preventing Rosie from reaching her full potential.

I need to learn to be happy with what I have.  I need to stop looking for the 'perfect' house and start having confidence in my ability to achieve it with the house I already have. 

I can do this.  I can take this warped, delaminating dollhouse shell with all of its difficult to reach corners and many imperfections and turn it into my idea of the perfect dollhouse.

With a little bit of self-confidence and a whole lotta glue anything's possible!

Bashing Rosie

Because Rosie is going to be my "forever" house, the one that I put all of my effort (and time, money, etc) into, I have a lot of grand ideas for her.  Some might think the ideas are too grand and complicated, considering my lack of experience & talent when it comes to miniatures - but hey, if you're going to dream - you should dream big.  At least that's my philosophy!

Rosie is going to be a grand Victorian with all the elaborate trim befitting a house of her style.  Think "shabby chic" before it turns shabby.  Picture a house that is pink, frilly, feminine and filled to the brim with roses and you'll get an idea of where I'm heading with my plans for this house.  She's going to be an over-the-top painted lady!

While I think that the original design of the Lawbre Shadowcliff is beautiful, in looking at the house and formatting my plans for it, I knew I was going to have to make some big changes to the rooms on the second floor.  In the world of dollhouses, these structural changes are known as "bashing".

Originally the rooms on the second floor were all square.  I needed to change the walls inside the bathroom a bit to accommodate a bathroom kit that I really want to use for this house.  With my wonderful friend Kelly, who is not intimidated by power saws and has a great eye for seeing how to make a room come together (she should've been an architect!), we've come up with this floor plan for the bathroom:

Also on the second floor there will be a little girl's bedroom.  I love the look of built-in beds and want to try my hand at making one for the little girl's room, so we bashed the square bedroom to look like this:

The floor plan for the little girl's room is almost identical to the floor plan for the bathroom.  Just the dimensions are different.  You can't see it in this photo, but the little girl's room is on the back side of the house, adjacent to the tower - so there is a tower room area to the left of this photo that is also part of this room.

The library will be on the second floor - in one of the front facing rooms.  It is staying almost as it was intended originally.  The doorway has been moved slightly & the back wall has been moved in a bit:

And finally on the second floor we have the small room / stairway leading up to the third floor. This area is still a work in progress.  We still need to cut a wall to partially enclose this room to close it off from the hallway.

Once this is done I can begin working on the interior of the house, figuring out the layout of the lights.  I'm a bit nervous about how I'm going to be able to decorate the hallway on the second floor... With all of the room modifications there are lots of turns and small areas that may be difficult to access once the walls are in place.  I'll have to brainstorm a bit and come up with a plan before all of the walls are glued into place.

La Vie En Rose

Also known as the Shadow Cliff by Lawbre.  I stumbled across La Vie En Rose about two years ago on Craigslist.  A gentleman had posted the house for his wife, who had purchased it more than twenty years ago and then promptly went on to other hobbies.

I, of course, was absolutely thrilled with the opportunity to own a Lawbre dollhouse!

The house came with the windows, exterior doors, exterior trim, stones and, well, according to the included inventory shipping sheets, it came with everything the original purchaser ordered except the pocket door (and wall) that goes between the living room and dining room.

When I picked her up I thought she was perhaps the most beautiful dollhouse shell I'd ever had the good fortune to own!  Once I got her home, however, and took a close look at her & went through all the supplies that came with her, I realized that the poor house had definitely seen better days.

 Some of the wood on the walls is delaminating, one of the porch posts is broken and feels like it is disintegrating, I don't think that all of the stationary walls are perfectly square, much of the wood feels overly dry, most of the spindles on the interior stairs are busted in a way that they will need to be replaced, several of the window frames are in pieces and the exterior hinged wall panels are all a bit warped and don't shut or hang properly.  Must've been wearing my rose colored glasses when I initially saw her, hence the name La Vie En Rose, which translated means "life in pink" or "through rose colored glasses".

I can't take credit for the beautiful name for Rosie (her nickname because let's face it, La Vie En Rose is a mouthful!); I was struggling with what to call her that would make her mine.  I knew that I wanted "Rose" or some variation of rose in her name because I intend to carry a rose theme throughout the house, but beyond that I was at a loss. I asked for help on the Greenleaf forum and among the many wonderful suggestions that were shared with me, La Vie En Rose was offered up.  While intrigued with the name, I wasn't completely sold until I came back to the draft of this post & re-read how I described initially seeing her through rose colored glasses.  Then I knew, La Vie En Rose was her name all along, she was just waiting for me to figure it out!  Sounds a bit crazy, perhaps, but other miniaturists will understand.

At any rate, while it's definitely going to be more work than I anticipated to turn Rosie into a showplace, I still think I got a great deal on the house.  I just hope I'm up for the challenge!

Welcome to "It's a Small Life"

Whether you've found yourself here purely by accident or followed a link I sent to you when shamelessly self-promoting my new blog, welcome!  I hope you will stay awhile and share a bit of my enthusiasm for dollhouses, miniatures and all things small.

I'm starting this blog to document my progress with my dollhouse.  Since discovering the wonderful world of miniature blogs I have thoroughly enjoyed reading other miniaturists adventures with dollhouse miniatures.  I have learned so much reading those blogs & thought it would be fun to try one of my own.

Starting a blog is not a new thought for me, I've been considering it for some time.  Initially I was hesitant to publish a blog because 1. I know nothing about creating a blog and 2. While I love dollhouse miniatures, I'm rather slow in working on my own and by no one's definition could I be considered a talented miniaturist.  So I was rather intimidated at the idea of putting my own blog out there for all the world to see.

Then it occurred to me that even though I hardly know what I'm doing in the world of miniatures - I do have something to offer...  If I document my adventures while working on my house, at the very least others who read the blog will have the benefit of learning from the multitude of mistakes I am certain to make along the way!
 
Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you'll return and follow along as I blog my adventures in dollhouse miniatures.