Not Yet Done, But Dusted!

I honestly can't remember how long it has been since I brought the Storybook Cottage dollhouse down from the shelf for dusting and repairs. My memory being what it is, if I didn't blog about it, I'll never really know for sure! It is obvious from the state of things that it has been a good, long while. My! How time flies...

Entombed in dust, the palette looks much more pastel.

The first task in getting this poor dollhouse finished was to assess the state of things. The gutters and a few of the "metal" roof's standing seams had completely given up and were lying across the garden path! I'm so glad Rose has been staying with Kairi and Roxanne! I'm sure she would have had a heart attack at the sound of this thing coming down!

The dust depth test was a shameful moment! At least I can partially blame the real life renovations for creating an excess amount of dust throughout the entire house. Seems like I am constantly dusting and vacuuming something! I just hadn't made it around to the dollhouses in a while.

I was really afraid of what I'd find when I turned the dollhouse around to look inside. Luckily, it wasn't too bad, considering...

But how do things become so wrecked when the house has been sitting on a shelf and no one has been home??? Do I have partying elf squatters that I don't know about? I better go check on the treehouse! Wayne has been known to keep questionable company every now and then. 

At first glance, the kitchen appeared to be in chaos! On closer inspection, thankfully, it was in pretty good shape! I was actually surprised that I didn't find empty red Solo cups, ping pong balls or Cheetos strewn on the floor! 

Wouldn't it be great, though, to discover evidence of the good kind of elves? You know, the kind that sneak in at night and help shoemakers and such. Ones that like to dust and straighten things up! 😊

The bathroom looked dilapidated, at first, with the medicine cabinet and sconce lying on the floor. But otherwise, things remained where I'd left them.

The only thing in the bedroom was a lot of dust and my abandoned To-Do list. Hey - I bet that's going to come in handy!

The assessment was pretty darn good, but before any repairs could get started, I wanted to empty the inside and outside of every loose item. This way, as I spun and jiggled to fix things, I wouldn't make anything worse! After a bit of reminiscing and admiring, I tucked it all away in a tote for safe keeping. It will all have to be cleaned and reaffixed with fresh museum wax before going back inside.

The only things I left inside were the things that were permanently affixed or that were super hard to put back into place. As long as the museum wax is still holding tight, I can dust/clean them in situ.

How exactly does a giant person clean a tiny cottage? I don't know how everyone does it, but I have a few tricks I've learned over the years. First, I like to vacuum as much dust away from the inside and outside as I can before I begin the hand cleaning. My philosophy is to let the HEPA filter in the vacuum encapsulate/capture what it can to save my lungs a little!

Wand with small attachment. There is also an extension I can add for hard to reach recesses.

My Shark vacuum has specialty attachment accessories available that you can buy. Your vacuum may have them, too. This one is small enough that it fits into a lot of tight places inside and out of a dollhouse. Be careful, though! It is a very powerful suction!

Rest assured that if anything should happen to come loose and be accidentally sucked up, the canister contents can be easily rummaged through before disposal.

For size comparison. Very small but powerful attachment.

Just look at how much dust gets sucked up in the first pass! It's so much better than spreading the dust particles around while you're trying to capture them!

The vacuum takes care of about 80% of the dust battle, but what about the tight spaces and tiny crevices?

For those, I like to use a variety of soft makeup brushes. I gently sweep out/off the corners and items while holding the vacuum attachment close by to capture the dust. They are great for clearing out tiny, hard to reach crevices in corners and on delicate mini décor.

To remove residual museum wax, I love my metal Cricket spatula/scraper tool. It is thin and removes almost all of the wax by gently scraping it from the surface. It can be collected and reused if it is still clean. A glasses cleaning cloth is great for polishing the last bit of waxy residue away and can be tossed in the washer with kitchen towels.

When it comes to dollhouse flowers and garden landscapes, I vacuum off as much as safely possible. Then, I like to give everything a good blast of air! This really gets to the fine particles of dust in hard to reach places. Because canned air is so expensive and is really bad for our ozone, I have invested in an Electric Air Duster. The benefits are many, including being rechargeable. It has turned out to be the perfect tool for cleaning real life electronics, computer keyboards, speakers, video game consoles, power tools, window tracks and any place you need a forceful blast of air to loosen dirt and grime (like car dashboards). I find new uses for it all of the time!

CAUTION! It is remarkably powerful, so start slow and work your way up to full blast!

There is also a cheaper version that still gets great reviews!

Comes in a nice sturdy box for storage.

Many attachments to choose from.

Now that the dust was out of the way, I came up with a plan to repair things. The only issues with the exterior of the Storybook were the fallen gutters, the roof's standing seams coming unbonded and the mail box's lifting door had fallen off because the glue on the hinges had failed. It seems that the adhesive I used did not create a very good bond with the Krylon Metallic Copper Paint pen. It is oil paint, though, so I should have known the bond would not be strong with water based adhesive. I'll take note of that and be sure to leave bare wood to wood in the future so it bonds better.

It was tricky to attach the gutters back onto the house because there are teacup rain chains attached to them on both ends. The ends of those rain chains are attached to rain barrels. It was like working with hand shackles on, I imagine!  I sanded the paint off the areas where I was going to put the glue (a combination of Tacky Glue and Gorilla Super Glue Gel) and then supported them overnight with several pieces of masking tape. It seems to have bonded well now.

The front metal roof section above the door and bay window had four of the ribs come loose. I could only find two of them in the garden so I had to cut, paint and adhere a couple more. I applied a moss wash in several areas to blend them in.

I found that many of the flower petals and leaves, in spite of having been sprayed with sealer, had faded over time. I had dyed them with alcohol ink when I made them back in 2018/2019 and had no experience with how well that would hold up to time. Some petals and leaves were still as fresh looking as the first day and some were in varying degrees of fading. For the most obvious fading, I reapplied alcohol ink using a small paint brush. I resealed them with Mod Podge for paper in hopes of getting a thicker coating of protection. We'll see how that holds up, compared to the spray sealer, over time.

I also repaired the tiny cottage mailbox by re-gluing the opening flap and the wee flag.

I was very happy that, under all the dust, things had held up amazingly well since I stopped working on the Storybook in 2019! Now, as I turn my attention to working on completing the interior projects, I am hopeful that I'll find things are still safe and in great condition, too!

xo xo,

Jodi

Embracing The Detour

Hello My Friends! Once again, I didn't intend to stay away from my blog for so long! But all of the things that keep keeping me away have taken so much longer to finish than I thought they would! At least I am back now with some amazing progress to share on my workroom and with news of a long awaited return to a beloved, if too long sidelined, project. Let's catch you up...

Current State - Still a lot left to do. Purple chair will have a teal charcover.
Retreads in front of window seat will eventually go on the staircase, lol!

We got the ceiling and walls painted and boy does it feel fresh in the office half of my work room! Despite its chilly name, the Benjamin Moore Jack Frost paint is such a warm and tranquil shade of light teal and I just love how it feels to be in this room now! That salmon-y pink I had in the former living room was really harshing my vibe. I didn't even realize how much until the last patch was covered by primer!

Photo from September 2015

A few years ago we had cut and painted a piece of plywood to fit inside the recess of the upper arched part of the window. The intent was to block the intense afternoon sun from shining in and blinding me because my desk faced the window. It made a big impact taking that down, too. Now that my back is to the window, it does not seem so bad for very long in the afternoon. I am really loving the light! If it becomes a problem, I will find another solution other than blocking the wonderful light. 

    

I painted the shelf backs a color called Surf City. I love the contrast with the white shelves and the way it plays so nicely with the wall color. I have moved some of my mini projects over to those shelves and it seems like a nicer way to display them. I have many more to move over that are currently residing in grandma's hutch. I also bought special frames to display a couple of the projects that were featured on the covers of American Miniaturist and Dollshouse World. 

Russ put together a rustic sign board for me using three pieces of the tongue and grove boards we have left over. He sanded them and attached them together so that I could whitewash them. I made stencils on the Cricut to paint the My Miniature Madness logo. We'll get it hung this weekend. The whole workroom is starting to feel like a legitimate workshop for me! There are several more details and decorations I want to add as I have time and inspiration.

Speaking of inspiration... When removing all of the things from the shelves in order to paint them, I did a lot of detailing to many past projects. Honestly, it was a task that was long overdue and I was a little surprised at myself for having let it go for so long. Ah well, it does no good to live backwards so I just got on with the cleaning and detailing and actually enjoyed the walk down memory lane.

When I got to the Three Pigs project (it was the 2017 HBS Creatin' Contest entry in which I received Honorable Mention), I was aghast at how much dust had accumulated. It made sense though, as the roof was cut back a ways for ease of reaching in. It made me think that in any future project I do, I want to be sure to make it completely enclosable. And then I thought, why not take The Three Pigs apart, streamline the scene and put it into a new, completely enclosed room box? I love the idea of cutting the items down and giving the scene new life. Big, spacing hogging projects are so much to keep! I set about decommissioning the brick house, saving the contents for future display, and I even gave the structure to a new mini enthusiast! 

And all the reminiscing and dusting had me thinking about The Storybook Cottage. There are some incredible minis that I collected for the project and have yet to display. It is so close to being complete and I love that dollhouse so, so much! What am I waiting for??? There is no time like NOW! So I have determined that that will be the project I bring down to the table to work on as I find any mini time. Finally!!! It is really going to need some TLC. Time has revealed which adhesives fail over time and what dust can do to a garden full of flowers.  This will be quite a journey...

And the final bit of change I have to share is my window seat area. My wonderful and generous 30 something son gifted me with some yards of lovely peacock colored upholstery fabric and several pillow covers in varying shades of teal in order to recover and rejuvenate the best feature of the former living room. It has turned out so lovely, and I am looking forward to testing out it's comfortableness with a nice afternoon nap in the near future.

And that's a lot of what kept me away from minis and blogland, my friends. I am really struggling with the urge to get hip deep in a mini project, and I've almost got enough off my To-Do list to jump in guilt free! I can't wait!

Hope you're hip deep into something joyful now, too!

xo xo,

Jodi

Successful Hoard Reduction and New Paint!

Greetings kindred souls! I want to offer a big hearty Thanks to everyone who came by the eBay store to have a look, bid or win some wonderful mini kits! It was a great success and I am so very grateful for it! Now I have a little bit of extra dough in my pocket and a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing those kits will finally get their time to shine! 

I'm not quite at the point of getting back to my craft table yet. It is full of all of the things you have to relocate when you paint. And boy am I painting! Technically, I am priming over the salmon pink in my "office", then painting new colors on the walls, shelves and ceiling.

Does this color palette look familiar? Yep - they came straight from the blog! I captured the RGB values, searched for the Benjamin Moore equivalent on e-paint and bought samples to test. The test patch was dramatic but oh so lovely!

I also owe a million ~Thank Yous~ to Russ for picking up a million gallons of paint during this whole renovation project!

I really think the new colors are going to make my entire work space feel bright, clean and ready to inspire creativity! But I've got a ton of work ahead of me and this body isn't getting any younger (or any more limber)!

I'll be back real soon with update photos to share. They're going to be dramatic!!! Maybe they'll also  inspire you to tackle long awaited dreams!

xo xo,

Jodi