I used to play with dollhouses a lot as a kid. I had two really nice ones and rival families lived in each one. Taylor Swift's "Love Story" was THE song at the time so of course I had a star-crossed lover thing going on. While always there for a good Willy Shakes moment, I really really love Halloween. I've always loved it, and the warmer weather has me longing for October. So, I got started on bringing my model from Lab 4 to life all while playing Tim Burton films in the background and jamming to The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack. It was a long process but my spooky self was thriving.
Getting Prepped for Laser Cutting:
I started with just the main body of the house. I didn't think about things like the porch, floor, and roof until a little later.
My model had thickness. However, it was really me just trying to picture what the thickness would look like not the actual thickness of my material. So, my original material was a 1/4 inch plywood that actually measured slightly thicker. I took the exact thickness and then extracted all the surfaces of my house and then took away that thickness from certain sides depending on how I was putting it together. I also added joints to the bottom. This involved a lot of scaling and split. I also used unfolding for the cardboard roof part.
I then took it and laid everything flat. I originally intended to cut at the ITLL since the BTU lab laser cutter was broken. Since I didn't have access yet I went and did the orientation thing and then the Laser Cutter workshop.
Laser Cutting - Body: Take One (and I guess two?)
My first iteration has more joints than my final version so the pieces on these look a little different. So, I got 5 sheets of 2x2 plywood all ready to go. My model had the lines and everything figured out. I went to the ITLL and began to print. It didn't take a whole lot of time for the first round. It didn't cut all the way through though so I did it again. And again. And again. I ruined 2 sheets (very burned and not even close to having the pieces fall through) this way and was "successfully"able to cut through one. It wasn't a fun time in Halloween town.
I did this over the course of two sessions the first one about an hour. The second one was two and had resulted in super splintery pieces but only from one of the sheets. I was frustrated and decided that maybe it was just my material. So, I went to Home Depot and got myself some Sandalwood plywood because they were fools who didn't have birch. The other 2 sheets are still just chilling in the ITLL and I should probably get them.
Laser Cutting-Body: Take Two
Unfortunately, the new plywood was thinner (.2 inches compared to the 2.6 of the other one). While it probably wouldn't have been to must of a mess, I do think that this would've impacted it enough that pieces wouldn't fit as well as they should have. So, I went through and deleted and added 5.23 mm to my curves to ensure that they would fit properly. And then it was time for Round Two with the laser cutter which thankfully was a lot more successful.
Laser Cutting-Porch, Roof, and Windows
This was a fairly smooth process. Except I didn't account for one of my roofs not fitting. I cut some of it out, took too much, tried to fix it, failed to fix it, and then ended up using an exacto knife to cut it out. The railings on my house were thin so I had to carry them to make sure they wouldn't break. For the windows, I wanted it to be acrylic, and to make them fit I scaled them slightly bigger so I could glue them on the inside of the house so from the outside it looked in place.
Hey Kids, Painting is Fun-Tests:
Prior to painting I did do some tests with glue. I wanted to get a crackle effect on the main body of the house and in order to do this, you paint on layer that you want to show through, then use glue, while glue is still wet you add your second layer of paint and the glue causes creases to appear. For this I used some of the cut outs from my house that I wasn't using. I also did some glue tests since I bought some paper that could be used as flooring and wallpaper and I wanted to know the best way of putting them inside the house.
Putting the House Together and Sanding:
Unfortunately my floors did not fit, so I had to sand one of them down. A lot. I took a long time and I was made aware of how weak my arm is. I used a combination of wood glue and hot glue. I would put hot glue in the middle of some of the edges and a little bit at the corners and the rest was wood glue. Since my piece is fairly tall and I got rid of a lot of my joints when I had to fix them for the adjusted size, the hot glue kept it in place for the wood glue to dry. Any cracks I saw I filled with joint compound to smooth it over.
I Almost Forgot Houses Have Doors:
While I busy doing all the wood house parts I almost didn't do the doors. I designed them to have little nubs at the top and to fit in holes of the seperate piece so they could turn. Shia surprise they didn't fit which was very uncool of them and not the best design on my part. I unfortunately just didn't have the time to dedicate to redesigning them as I wanted to really focus on the rest of the look of the house. However, they are something I want to get back to at some point. So, Instead I sanded them down, primed them for painting, and then with a couple layers of paint they looked like wooden doors.
Do You Ever Wonder What Michelangelo Felt When He Painted the Sistine Chapel?
I definitely did not feel the same things, but boyo this was a really long process. I was okay with it though because it was also very calming to me. I started with primer on all surfaces. Once that was dry I went on to my first coat of the house. I used a dark grey and a little bit of black. After that I did covered little sections in glue, and went over it with white. I did this until the whole house was covered. Once the house was dry I sanded some edges to really push the distressed abandoned house look. I was originally going to have it be super dark in paint color as well, but I had Beetlejuice playing the background for this part and their house really reminded me of what mine kind of looked like. Overall, I'm really happy with that paint job. For the roofs I started with red and made my strokes resemble the texture of a roof, and the bottom was a night sky. It just felt very Twilight-zone to me to do it that way, and that's when I realized I was subtly incorporating aspects of my fave Halloween things.
I Went To A Palace In Spain And The Wall Paper Looked Like This
I found this paper at Michaels and then bought all the sheets they had because I wasn't about to run out of it while putting this together. And it was a TIME. I cut bits and sections
and placed them in the house using a combo of just wood glue and hot glue it it was being a pain. One of my papers had a velvet texture so I couldn't just use modge podge glue. I did put a little bit of it where the papers overlapped though so they wouldn't stick out.
Paint Touch-Ups:
Before adding my windows and roofs I went through one more time and painted any touch ups in my house. For the red wallpaper I added red paint in the creases to hide the parts where they didn't align perfectly, I also painted the rims for the windows black, as well as the porches gray, and I added a couple details like monster eyes on the bottom and a Stranger Things Motif after installation of the windows and such.
"Wrap it Up with Spider's Legs and Pretty Bows":
I was worried that the windows wouldn't work because they weren't too big enough, but it was fine. I did this part with hot glue which worked really well because the strings from it kind of looked like spider webs. I then put the hinge in. This was the first time I've ever used a power tool without another person to supervise me. I hate power tools, always convinced I'll mess up but yay I did okay. I did lose one of my hinge screws which is okay I just painted where it should have been black. I also added a little lock on the other side. After that I added the roof and did any touch ups I needed to there. I also added little felt circles to the bottom so the house wouldn't scrape the surface if I moved it. I put my gargoyles that I bought in place and called done (for now) :)
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