What I've Been Up To

Hello from Cairo! My husband and I are currently in the middle of a three-week trip to Egypt and Israel. Since I like to keep this blog strictly miniatures-only, I've created another blog to journal my travels. If you'd like to visit it and see some photos, click here.

We'll be back in a week or so; I can't wait to catch up with everything you've all been up to!

Foyer Walls

Here you can see I've built a wall for the foyer.
Click here to read the rest of this entry...
Actually, I built two walls at the same time (and the assembly-line process really helped speed things up a bit). Here's the other one:

Here's an overview shot for some perspective.

The front door will be in the wall near the bottom of the photo. To the right is the doorway to the dining room, which I'm almost finished with. To the left is the doorway to the parlor, which I've not yet begun. Toward the top of the photo is the ballroom. Eventually, there will be a grand curving staircase in this foyer, leading up to the second floor.

I'm pretty excited about the crown molding I created for the entry. I used some leftover molding I already had for the top portion and some quarter-round for the lower portion, but for the decorative molding in between, I used some braided trim I bought at the fabric store. This what it looked like prior to painting.

And this is a detail shot of it after painting it.

This first time, I glued on the trim before painting the entire piece, which was a bit of a mistake. It took a long time, and probably about 10 coats of paint, to get in all those nooks and crannies. Next time, I'll paint the wood backing separately, and then maybe dip the trim in paint to get it all covered before assembling it. If that works better, I'll let you know.