The Fourth Wall...

 

Wallpaper....

I don't know about you, Dear Readers, but I always forget about the "Fourth Wall" of my houses! I suppose it is because the kits usually made in America don't include an actual wall, but leave the "back" of the house open for ease of playing. I have always loved the idea of the completely closed dollhouse... with hinged doors for keeping the dust and stray pests from invading. So far my houses are mostly open on the "fourth wall" side, but I am thinking more and more of changing that! Meanwhile, the construction of the Dollmaker's Studio, being a hodge-podge of kit bashes, didn't start out with the fourth wall as part of the plan. At some point I added the fourth wall to the ground floor (remember this initially was the great addition to the too small Sugarplum Cottage kit which has no fourth wall) making it a lovely enclosed room. With hinged opening doors.... (have I mentioned that I Love hinges?) And because the ground floor was now enclosed, the upper floors would also need to have opening doors on the "fourth wall". You can see those doors in the above picture (the third floor ones have still not been constructed).

 And if you are familiar with the Sugarplum Cottage Kit, you will know that it has a very cute front porch with little benches beside the door. This is actually one of my favorite parts of this kit! But in this kit bash, the porch is elevated one story from the ground... making the porch unnecessary. But because it is one of my favorite parts... I decided to make it into a balcony instead. And then when I realized how much the door to the porch used up valuable wall space inside the room... I decided to reverse its location to the "fourth wall", the opening wall. You can see in the above picture the closed-in altered front wall of the Sugarplum kit where the porch would have been. I even had carved the new door opening slot into the foundation extension before deciding to make it a feature of the "fourth" front opening wall. Which is why there is a "door to nowhere" in that front opening wall (see the first picture). All of this is a way of saying that there were quite a few challenging adjustments needing to be carefully fitted to make the front opening wall have a cute porch attached to it!

Starting with the addition of the 

porch support to the opening door.

(I apologize for the dark pictures... 

it was so hot on the weekend

 I had all my window shades closed...)

And you might have noticed on the first picture

 that all the screws for the hinges

 are poking through the too thin wall...

Requiring lots of added "strip wood" to hide them.

 

Here you can see the one on the inside of the front opening door.

Here the door is separated from the building.... 

you can see the added trim on the door frame

 and the door itself (covering the screw tips).

I needed to get the porch and door framework started

 before I could add the wallpaper to the inside of the front walls!

 

Here you can see the Sugarplum porch pieces

 have been stained and glued together.

(I didn't have enough hands to hold it all together

 for fitting without gluing it).

But they are not attached to the building yet. 

I will be making some changes!

But they fit on the door and the door

 swings open without interference.

I added a large baseboard on the interior of the opening wall doors

  in part to cover the screws I used to secure the porch support beam.

And here you can see the door trim being added to the porch door.

Making the arched sections will take more time,

 but can be done after the wallpaper is attached.

Here you can see both doors with the wallpaper....

(at the kitchen table where the light is better!)

And an inside view seen through the alcove window.....

The window will require fitting and trimming too.

Here's the exterior view with the porch in place 

(although it leans out because it is not fastened yet)

it will need railings and perhaps a roof.

And with the doors open (and the flash on)

you can see that at least the wallpaper is all done!

I do like the way it is looking!

And here you can see that no progress at all

 was made on the ornate ceiling trim.

 

It always Amazes me, Dear Readers,

 when the pieces of the puzzle start to come together

 and they look as good as I imagine.

Seeing the Wallpaper on the fourth wall

 really makes a difference!

The New Project.....

Gets Complicated......

I have to confess, Dear Readers, that I Should know by now that my projects are never simple little projects... even when they start out with that intention! You can see above a picture of the little kit I fell in love with back in the middle of the Winter when I was slaving over lilac blossoms and dreaming of Other Things. It is made by Sandra Morris of Tower House Dolls, a UK Dollmaker whose work I have admired and collected for a while. Sandra has been "downsizing" and threatening to retire and when she posted this kit as a possible final home workshop kit.... I didn't hesitate but hit the "buy" button right away! I was lucky to get one of the ten kits which you can see above. The set-up is so charming and includes the parts for making everything you see in the picture, resulting in a little free-standing vignette of a dollmaker's workspace. I just couldn't Wait to get started.... but alas, I had set myself a Goal of a Spring Lilac Shrub in full bloom.... so the kit was put on stand-by while I finished the lilac blossoms and attached them to the shrub. And while Daydreaming of this kit, I realized that it would be sort of Dangerous to leave it an open vignette in my little house... things would fall off and get lost...( I don't like to glue parts in place....) so I started thinking of incorporating it into a closed "room-box".... which would allow me to expand a little bit and add more to the Dollmaker's Work shop! I could include many of the tiny dolls I have been collecting! So, should I make the project a simple room-box, or a store-front type of place.... or perhaps I could start with a small house kit and incorporate the vignette into the house....?... and you can tell what happened next.... I woke up one morning having Dreamt  of the Dollmaker's kit being added to The Sugarplum kit that I already owned... the vignette window would insert right where the Sugarplum kit has a big picture window... and I would add stairs to the attic, climbing up a tower of oatmeal boxes, of course!

Here is the basic Sugarplum kit with the Oatmeal Tower for the stairs......

And starting to put together the pieces for the Dollmaker's Kit.... 

to see how they would fit together....

I love the shape of this window with the shelf....

Here you can see how the two kits will fit together....

 

 

I will need to enlarge the opening in the Sugarplum wall....

It will make a lovely alcove in the room.....

 

 

And the front porch will become more enclosed

 with the roof extended out over the little porch benches.

As you can see, I think it will work!

But that is not the end of my Great Ideas, Dear Readers,

 because if you know anything about these kits,

 you will know that the Sugarplum is really quite small.

 The main room is 9' x 14".

 And there is only the main room and the attic.

And if you know anything about My House, 

you will know it is small and already quite filled with Dollhouses.... 

and if I were to justify adding another House... 

it might be best to optimize the floor space 

by making it Tall... within a small area!

(This is how I get myself into Trouble!)

So, Of Course, I added a ground floor

 to the base of the Sugarplum kit....

(I've got the pieces propped together here...)

And the Base Room would need doors to the tower stairs.... 

and a bathroom addition off the side next to the Tower...

And a sunny window on the other side.... 

beneath the side window of the Sugarplum kit

 which sticks out  from the side in a bay window.

And then I realized that the opening I had cut was just the size

 of a unique door I had bought from an artisan

 at the Sturbridge Fair a number of years ago.... 

and maybe this was where I could finally use that door?

Here it is propped against the wall.... 

only small adjustments are needed for it

 to fit the opening I have already cut....

The width is right....

 I just need to round the arch at the top 

and extend the opening to the floor!

And then I remembered another window I already had in my stash... 

and wondered if it would serve to upgrade

 the window embrasure on the upper floor.....

Like So....!

So I cut the wider opening for the door....

(I'll take a better picture, I promise!)

And added Hinges to the Tower door and the back door...

(This is easier to do when the walls are still separate!)

 

And that is as far as I got, Dear Readers,

 Chasing my Dreams down the Vacation week...

 Ever Deeper into a "Simple Little Project"....

Which somehow got quite Complicated!