Backtracking

I have been away from my dolhouse for a while. I went to two conferences, and in between it has been gardening weather rather than dollhouse weather. I have been to Sweden and left a considerable amount of money in the miniature shop in Stockholm, but this is a separate story which I will be happy to share later. What happened today when I finally returned to my project was that I noticed that one of the basement doors, the one between the kitchen and the larder, was broken. Since the house hasn't been moved or even touched, this was a mystery. Then I realised what had happened.

I knew that I would have to deal with it sooner or later, so why did I pretend I didn't? If you have followed my project, you may or may not remember, and if you haven't, I'll tell you now. Almost half a year ago, when I moved the basement from the dining table and started assembling the main house on top of it, I didn't glue on the basement roof. I remember I was in a hurry because I had guests coming who would sleep in the room (and eat at the dining table). So I simply put the roof on top of the basement, and the house on top of the roof. I didn't notice, and would probably not think of it if I had, was that the main house was one centimetre de-centred against the basement roof. Which means that the weight was unbalanced, and finally, with the roof and the fronts added, the weight of the house crashed a basement door. Luckily, not beyond repair. Yet it reminded me that the basement roof needed to be glued on, for which purpose I had to remove the main house, for which purpose I had to remove all objects that could get broken during the move. Which resulted in this:

It isn't really going back half a year, because all rooms have floors and wallpaper, most of the doors and one staircase are in place, the rear corridors are done; but suddenly what to an inexperienced eye would look like a finished house was little more than an empty shell.

Moreover, when I tried to move it, I realised that it had become significantly heavier since last time, because of the fronts. So I removed them too.

 

My husband helped me to move the main house to a coffee table. It looked familiar.

It is now in the middle of the room, and the basement is behind it. No way I can have any guests in the near future.

So, with the basement I am really half a year back. There is another mistake I made, apart from assembling the main house before glueing on the basement roof. The roof should be glued on before the interior walls. It will be very difficult to do it now. However, I had a reason for doing it the way I did because it is extremely hard to work inside low-ceilinged rooms, and with my intricate rear corridor I wouldn't have been able to make it at all. So it turned our right although it was wrong. It will still be very, very hard to put on the roof.

Yet there are several unexpected advantages. Firstly, I can now replace the lights, which I was happy with then, but not any more, not since I used LED-strips in the rear corridors of the main house. I was going to do it anyway, but it will be much easier without the roof. I will also be able to re-arrange some of the furniture and add some stuff I had obtained since then. Again, it will be much easier while the roof is off. Repairing the broken door will be easy. I have learned some important lessons while working on the main house.

But glueing on the roof will be very, very hard.