Doll house construction part 2

I keep bragging about my exalted status by pointing to the ancient family we trace our roots back to. My great grandfather(many times over) rebuilt our ancestral wooden home that was burnt down in a fire in 1909.

Now this gentleman had tonnes of money. He owned a tile factory which was the source of his considerable riches. As invariably happens, the succeeding generation proved not to have his mettle and managed to diminish his not inconsiderable fortune by the simple expedient of gambling it away.

The interesting thing about our inheritance is that ours is a matrilineal society. So I trace my roots to my mum's family and not my dad's.

To understand how family property got divided, let us take a case study of a family of two sisters and one brother, each of who had two children. At the time of division, each girl and her children got individual shares whereas the brother got only his one share; his kids' share wasn't counted. So in the scenario stated above, each of the sisters would receive three shares (her's and her two kids') where as the brother would get just one share.

No wonder the women just kept producing babies. The more the kids, the larger was their share. 
Population explosion! Nah! No such worries.

Now having come from such a family but without having ownership of the said tile factory how could I tarnish our glittering reputation by not having a tile roof on my doll house?

I had also decided upfront that I wouldn't make any but the most essential purchases. So no question of buying miniature tiles. I had to think my way out of this conundrum.

Meanwhile there is a certain urgency that comes in, once the shell of the house is ready. After that you can't wait to put in miniature rugs and wall hangings. It's so difficult to hold your horses and worry about details like staircase, roof and that blasted balcony that you forgot to make a cut-out for.

My daughter whose patience levels are comparable to a cat catching sight of a particularly frisky rat, wanted to start painting it the minute she was back from school. So we made the short trek to the hardware store and bought white enamel paint.

We did paint a lot more of the floor of our home than the doll house. But these are minor quibbles in the larger picture.

Now to come back to the question mark over the roof. I decided to make a faux tile roof using sandpaper. I drew rows of lines about an inch and a quarter apart. I cut these rows of sandpaper out and then made snips almost three quarters of the way at intervals of one inch and cut small notches out.

I started by sticking this sandpaper at the edge of the ply roof. Once one row of sandpaper was stuck, I stuck the second row, making sure not to align the notches. This gave it a faux tile effect.

Two days of tiling and voila! It was done.
Then I got to the problem of cutting out holes for the window and balcony that I had completely forgotten about before nailing the whole assembly.

I had not yet taken a crash course on using a drilling machine but lack of knowledge has never been an impediment to usage of equipment.
Called the man of the house breezily to ask him where he had stored it and he sternly advised me against messing with tools that hadn't yet made their acquaintance with me.

I told him " I can draw designs on teeth with the equipment in my clinic," and he retorts, "Well you can drive a car, try driving a truck."

I saw some merit in that argument which probably was a good thing since it helped to preserve peace. Later on of course I realized, that as arguments go, it was flawed in reasoning and underestimated my considerable (ahem!) skill.
I took to carpentry tools like a fish to drinking or fleas to a dog! Well! you get the picture.

I made windows using Popsicle sticks and wooden skewers for grills. Using this as the template, I cut out the opening for the window by making holes close together using the drilling machine and joining them using a hand blade. I apparently should have used a jig saw but the, by now wise, M.O.H had hidden it, methinks. No amount of searching yielded any clues about its existence. 

Unfortunately the picture isn't very clear

The first photo shows the window on the left wall and the opening for the balcony on the right wall. The second picture shows the balcony.

After making the cut outs, I was worrying my little head on how to fix the balcony over-hang to the building. Then I decided to not worry too much over structural integrity and continue my 'doll house for dummies technique'. So I just cut wood for the balcony floor to slightly more than the exact dimensions of the opening and jammed it into the opening. Those who have a problem with this technique, please look elsewhere for tips.

I did the same thing for the door jamb above.

My next step was to fashion open-able doors. Now already I had faced criticism from my eight year old on how I hadn't made a doll house as nice as uncle Christoph (if you remember he was the original spark for my daring venture) his' was three feet tall and the kids could get inside it. Leave alone the fact that if I built such a big doll house, I'd have to sleep at the neighbour's, I also did not have the skill or expertise to attempt something so big. Now if I made faux doors which didn't even open, contempt would be total. My face would be covered in egg or worse.

I turned to friends for help: one suggested piano hinges, another volunteered to mail miniature hinges from the US. I decided to ask my local hardware guy but he just threw up his hands.

I could have gone to the city centre and hunted for miniature hinges, but I am not known among the glitterati or literati for my persistence. 

I must say I'm particularly proud of my ingeniousness in finally fashioning open-able doors without using hinges. It's as simple as it is efficient. Applause. Applause.

I attached a wooden skewer to a door that iI had already cut out from wood. This skewer was a little longer than the door. I attached it using fevicol and held it in place using a cello-tape till the next day.
Meanwhile I made holes in the threshold sill and opposite that in the top jamb or lintel.

Now I manoeuvred (I challenge you to spell that word without using auto correct) the door assembly (including the skewer which I cut to size using a blade and a file) to fit into the holes.

That's it, as simple as that.

The door handles that you see are just some closed hooks which can be screwed in. Found these in the tool box.

If you have any questions feel free to drop a line and I'll try to help.

Thanks for stopping by!