The Willowcrest Dollhouse Revisited Week 10

I had to brainstorm on how I am going to add the stained glass skylight, I want for this dollhouse. I got this inspiration from the blog My Miniature Menagerie and the Willowcrest Dollhouse featured there named 120 Copper Court. You can see, the builder of the dollhouse had the ingenious idea of making the bathroom larger by simply extending it over the kitchen bay. This creates one large bay for this side of the dollhouse. The ceiling of the bay was made into a stained glass skylight.

Well, I just want the skylight and since I did not bash my Willowcrest in this way, I decided to create a skylight in the living room bay ceiling. Of course, my skylight is going to differ from the one I mentioned above but the idea is the same.

I need to cut out the ceiling of the living room bay but not entirely. I want to keep the living room bay roof trim because it will be the trim for my sky light so I used it as a guide to trace what I want to cut out. I used a sharp box cutter and lots of patience to make the cut out.

I will be using trim on the interior as well as the exterior of this sky light, once I have the "glass" for it so the rough cuts will not be visible.

This dollhouse is extremely difficult to assemble because it is a maze on the interior and you have to be very careful in planning your finishes. The addition of flooring and ceiling paper to the dollhouse, makes it all the more difficult. You really have to think ahead so that you can decide which finishes can be applied and when. Some finishes will be very difficult to apply because of the intricacy of the dollhouse's interior.

I finished the foyer, as I previously posted, except for the baseboards and ceiling trim. I am leaving those for later. I can still reach into the foyer through the door and window openings to apply these in the future.

I wallpapered the second floor stairwell. This can only be done semi-comfortably with the dollhouse turned upside down, like I mentioned in the previous post. Remember, when you apply your wallpaper, that the dollhouse is upside down so that you do not apply your wallpaper incorrectly. This was a difficult thing to do. It kind of made me regret not doing it before I installed that staircase wall but there's no turning back now. Dollhouse assembly is more about solving problems than avoiding them.

I added ceiling paper to the stairwell section, after I wallpapered. You have to make sure you do not add ceiling paper to the bedroom area yet. If you do, you will not be able to slide in the bedroom/hallway partition. This is the wall that has the bedroom double doors opening.

Like I did in my first Willowcrest Dollhouse, I am installing the second floor staircase before I install the bedroom/hallway partition. This will make it much easier than having to squeeze the staircase between two wallpapered walls.

The bedroom/hallway partition has to be wallpapered before it is installed because the staircase will go against it and so it will not be accessible later. You have to dry fit where the staircase will be so that you know what section to wallpaper. As you can see, I only wallpapered the section that will be visible in the hallway. The bottom section is the bathroom closet and that has to be wallpapered to match the bathroom.

I again chose the wrong type of wallpaper for this area. A very intricate and tight area like this, should not have a striped wallpaper but what's done is done. Thankfully, I was able to line up the lines pretty well on all the corners and joined areas.