Fixer Upper: the second weekend brings wallpaper!

There are more ways to cut wallpaper wrong than to cut it right. (Infinity is larger than one!)

Bottom floor is re-papered, top floor is not.

Hanging paper was a tedious process, as the end walls have cracks, so it made sense to cut posterboard templates, Mod Podge the paper to the templates, and then glue the papered posterboard into place. My space is so limited that I could podge one back wall or a set of end walls at a time, and that's it.

And then it all warps and fits only so-so anyway. The doorways will definitely be getting trim that wasn't included in the original house.

O hai large flowers!

The desk with peach drawers is now a sophisticated black. I haven't entirely decided on the second color for the chair. Though blue painter's tape adds a jaunty industrial touch, it's a sign of things being in-progress, not an artistic statement. Fianna, supervising renovations, sits in an un-redone chair.

My punch list goes for days and days.

The fabric for the kitchen is going to be tea-dyed, possibly even tonight, when I finish cleaning up an experiment in authentic Irish soda bread that entirely explains why the Irish wanted to come to the U.S. for a better life.

Working our way toward industrial chic.

Meanwhile, Phineas marks the house as his. He hop-hopped onto the roof from the bed and went crazy. I guess the shingles feel good under the little cat chin.

It's mine, I tell you, it's MINE!

Fixer Upper Day 3

Very little happened yesterday, due to disappointing trips to the Paper Source near the office (where all paper had gold flecks, veins, stamps, or other gilding) and to Jerry's Artarama (where every floral paper incorporated the exact shade of Pepto Pink that I spent Sunday painting over).

Today, the house is far enough along to be off its drop cloth and in its official spot at the foot of the bed, where it casts serious doubt on the wisdom of this room arrangement, but it's a convenient spot for working on it.

Still huge, less pink.

Between reading corporate reports, I recklessly painted some things. The bath fixtures are shiny pale aqua because I had half a can of shiny pale aqua, and it's a nice bath-ish color.

Super chi-chi vanity rehab in progress.

 Oh, there's more... and a surprise!

Fixer-upper day 2

Tediously taping trim.

I painted things cream for the length of an entire movie on the musical influences of Leonard Cohen, which was pretty much a tour of how to be a Canadian intellectual in the 1950s and 1960s.

Lots of things needed to be cream, including a ton of window trim, the window interiors, the ceilings, and portions of the furniture. Oh! and the stairs. The stairs were held in place with two screws: one straight, one Phillips.

Notice what's missing? The carpet! I found the right corner to grip and gave it a yank. On Thursday, I'm going to Home Depot to look at flooring.

Phineas checks out progress at just the point where the paint might still be tacky enough to hold cat hair.

There's a Paper Source in the plaza that surrounds our current office location, so I'm shopping for wallpaper tonight. It's pricey, but not actually any worse than trying to buy large wallpaper samples online, and the selection is much better than at the nearest art supply store. (If I hate everything, there's always Jerry's in Tempe, but it's a haul.)

Kitchen rehab!

Katie is gobsmacked at having a dining chair with a proper back.

Now if I could find the lids for the cannisters, I'd have something!

When last seen (or, really, not seen, since I haven't posted in a couple months), the eggshell stools from the patio project had moved into the new kitchen in the Billy tower, as the new layout eliminated the garden floor.

It looks pretty, until you're slumping over a cup of coffee and fall off.

Feeling a bit inundated by how big the 1:6 party had gotten, I rearranged my storage, and put about half of the dolls away temporarily (they'll be back!) so that I'd have the blank space, both mental and physical, to focus on doll projects I needed and wanted to make progress on. One big project was getting Katie and Hayden's house in order.

After thinking hard about DIY chair and table projects involving simple dollar-store finds, I cracked and ordered a proper dining set on eBay for all of $11 with free shipping.

If I were a Billy-onaire...

So in mid-April, I had newly dressed dolls sitting on my coffee table because the prospect of putting them back into the dark and inadequate shelves was daunting. It daunted me into a dull state of dauntedness -- in which I limply lifted bits of fabric, then let them drop sadly -- until I resolutely went to Craig's List and bought me some Billys.

Behold the Billys!

But wait, there's more...

Bathroom week is survived, barely...

Abigail is thrilled to be able to wash her hands in a sink with faucets.

Now if we just could get the hot water heater to work...

My original plan had been to make the central faucet from a cup hook, as I did with Katie and Hayden's kitchen. However, as I as wandering through Howard's Ace Hardware, home of housewares and ammo, at the crack of dawn, I chanced upon picture-hanging hooks that whispered: "Turn me upside-down, and I would look like a faucet!"

Fruits of Kitchen Week (and Patio Week) plus the introduction of the Roaming Bag

Katie is proud of herself for re-installing the kitchen shelves, now that the floor is reliably stable.

Whoa! The dishes are no longer scattered all over the place!

Hayden is grateful, but her mind has skipped ahead to improvements to give the place a little more style. This past week was Kitchen Week, so Hayden's not the only one with kitchen improvements.

In which Katie and Hayden's collapsing floor problem is fixed for good

When Katie and Hayden's middle floor collapsed again a couple weeks ago, I emailed my parents to ask my father if anything would go wrong if I just nailed the damned shelf into the sides of the cheap, poorly constructed MDF bookcase.

Elena and Kayla provide confirmation of my original ideas on floor height.

He sent me a drill.

My father is a man of action. He is also a man who knows his power tools.

Hellooooo, drill!

He also got on the phone with me to explain how to perform the necessary bookcase-fixing actions, which I am about to share because today's sewing session is just going in a vile manner and telling this story makes me feel competent.

Bathroom surprise!

Sophie and Meygan have decided to surprise Hayden by fixing up the bathroom.

(After seven photo shoots and ten drafts of my promised Hispanic Heritage Month post, I'm still not satisfied, so that's going to hang fire a little longer while I enjoy my last Marinela Choco Roll and get some tidying and organizing done. There are still three weeks to the month.)

The key to happiness is accessorizing.

Unsurprisingly with Phoenix construction, the marble walls ripple a bit. There are rumors that we got a building code some time in the 1980s, but I've never seen proof that it's enforced in any way. (I was very pleased to get beige "marble" in Dollar Tree contact paper, regardless. The floor is a vinyl sticky tile from Home Depot.)

Alexis finds unexpected goodies at Dollar Tree

Alexis attempts to placate Hayden, who's still unhappy about the progress of home improvement, with her finds on a junket to the big Dollar Tree out in Mesa. For instance, there's this very fine urn that will look lovely in the garden once it's repainted in beige.

There are four of those urns.

Look! Either tops for garden tables or stepping stones for the garden. Was this not a bargain? (The girls took their hats off because the sun went behind a bank of clouds, this being monsoon season. Alexis is looking a bit mussed from being out in the heat.)

Katie and Hayden get bath fixtures

There's still a long punch list that includes better cabinet handles, a toilet flush handle, flooring, wall tile (and, it would seem, washing my real-life refrigerator, which has picked up the Arizona Perpetual Dust Smudges)... but it's always the last ten percent of the job that drags on. Spidey is ready to declare victory and deliver the bath fixtures.

In their original form, these fixtures were somewhat more pink.

Gloria was a brand recommended on the One Sixth Warriors forum, where it was also promised that the sets take painting well, since G.I. Joe's battlefield latrine would be lipstick pink only if he were engaging in trench warfare inside a Justice store.

Katie and Hayden get a bed

Both girls are looking a bit frazzled from getting the bed into the room.

Katie and Hayden get a kitchen

Hayden hopes the freezer contains Ben and Jerry's That's My Jam, as spills will blend into her dress.

Kitchen construction is hell, even in miniature. Somehow, I got the notion that I needed to build the kitchen from scratch, using balsa (because I rightly didn't trust the heavy-duty utility knife to cut basswood).

Katie and Hayden get nightstands with drawers and silly bun feet

Nightstands with storage are a necessity in the small loft condo.

These are built from matchboxes, which can be had at Dollar Tree in a ten-pack for $1. This technique is expounded upon in Eileen Mercer's Let's Make Doll Furniture (1975) which extols the virtues of re-using household items and limiting the extravaganza to maybe three colors of paint. I have read the book so many times that it may be imprinted on my DNA.

Katie and Hayden move into an apartment

The girls' budget was constrained. Although Hayden has access to the Basswood trust fund, it's understood that she's supposed to try to make ends meet on her job as a publisher's assistant. And while Katie's vintage bicycle and skate shop is the darling of the hipster set, it makes very little actual money. The girls finally settled on a loft condo that doesn't offer much space but is close to downtown amenities.

Katie and Hayden also get occasional tables

These are the world's easiest occasional tables, but they depend on the presence of specific items.

The pieces are:

• Rubber leg tips in 1-1/2 inch (38 mm) size. A two-pack is on the order of $3 at Home Depot.
• Plastic buttons with a 1-3/4 inch diameter and a recess under the raised rim. This recess fits over the ridge of the rubber leg tip. I got mine at SAS Fabrics (your "polar fleece for the entire drill team headquarters") for 25 cents each.
• Sticky-back cork paper from the hell-hole that is Michael's. I have this around for other projects.

Here's what to do:

1. Measure and cut the cork paper to fit in the center of the button, covering the holes.
2. Flip the rubber leg tip upside-down, so the ridged part is the top.
3. Hot-glue the button to the rubber let tip.
4. Peel the protective backing from the cork circle and stick it in the middle of the button.

The most time-consuming part of the project is waiting for the hot-glue gun to heat.

And there they are! When I bought the constituent pieces, I had no special plans for them, but putting together tables assuaged my woe at having a bed-making project not go well. There are beds that, once made, nobody really wants to lie in.

Katie and Hayden get a couch

Katie and Hayden may be hung up in the intricacies of the U.S. Postal System, but they will at least come home to a comfortable couch.

The couch frame is a shoebox that the cat had not yet commandeered for napping. I looked up sofa dimensions to get the seat depth -- 28", which comes out to 3-1/2" [which I woke up at 4 a.m. and realized was 1:8 , not 1:6, dammit] -- and then somewhat randomly picked 1-1/2" for the arm height and 2-1/4" for the back height. The seat sticks out slightly further than the arms because the shoebox construction had its side flaps meeting in a way where a bit of cardboard fell off unless I simply cut the arm back further.