Building the Beachside Bungalow part 01

 

Watch the video here.

 

 

I want to preface this project by saying that although I am reading the directions provided in the kit I am also using my own judgment based on experience building dollhouse kits for my plan of attack. That might mean that some of the things I choose to do might cause me problems later on. If they do I will show you how I fix those issues too. If I had never built a dollhouse before and was going this alone I would probably be following those directions step by step. Over the years I have learned some things that work better for me while building and I will be sharing my way of doing things.

This week we are doing the very beginning of the building of my new dollhouse kit. I start out by showing you how I marked each piece in the kit. I did this because before we can start building we need to make sure that all the parts that are supposed to be in the kit are actually there. I am happy to report that my kit does contain all the pieces that are supposed to be included.

I used a pencil to lightly write the name of each piece on the larger pieces. I was careful to do this on the back of the pieces and in a corner. I tried to stay consistent with the corner I marked also. I did this for a couple of reasons. I used the pencil because I know I can erase it in the future as I build and it won't leave any marks that I have to hid later. That is also why I am emphasizing that I wrote lightly, I was careful to not write hard enough to leave any dents in the wood. Also if I have used a pen it might have left marks that I would have trouble removing in the future. You don't want to have to worry about hiding those marks later so use a pencil and be careful to write lightly.

On the small parts that there were several of each I bagged them by type (1 type per bag) and marked the bags. That way I will know which bag has the parts I need each time I need to work with them.

When I build a dollhouse kit that is made of the thin plywood I always prime the pieces on both sides before I do anything else mainly to prevent warping. On this kit since the parts are made of MDF and are thicker I am not as worried about warping. For that reason I will prime some parts after doing small bits of construction, like with the foundation today. On other parts I will be priming both sides prior to construction It will depend on what steps I am doing and what seems logical to me at the time. I will try to remember to explain my “why” each time. This week it was simply because I felt it would be easier to prime the foundation after it was glued together rather than trying to prime both sides of the long skinny pieces.

Now on to why we prime. Primer is used to seal the wood. In this kit and with dollhouses that are made of ¼ “ plywood we are sealing to both help to save on the amount of paint we use to finish the dollhouse (primer is generally cheaper than paint, not always but generally) and to give our final coat of paint a surface to grip to. The primer also seals in any stains that might come out of the wood either from pitch or from the manufacturing process. In the case of the thin plywood that I have worked with in the past the primer also helps to prevent warping as I mentioned earlier.

I decided to use Gorilla brand wood glue on this project for most of my gluing. I had purchased it a while back and I am really liking this glue for wood to wood bonds. It works really well and cleans up nicely.

The wood floors are milled into the wood pieces in this kit. I am used to laying a wood floor from thin strips of wood so this will be a new way of getting a wood floor if I decide to go that route. Since I haven't decided on a color scheme/decorating scheme for the project yet I haven't decided what I am going to want for floors. For that reason I went ahead and added the protective coat of clear poly-urethane to the floor pieces like the directions said to do. That keeps my options open until I do decide.