Manor Minis and More

Well, the excitement never ends!

Due to a rather nasty storm in Virginia, we lost our power for 10 days (We are part of a very elite group!)

I still have this in my front yard.

That is a pine tree and an oak tree in an intimate embrace.

The good part was that we had the apartment we were fixing up to get water, shower, and store food. The bad part was 100 degree temperatures and only some battery operated mini fans.

A great big boo hiss for Appalachian Power.

We did manage to finally finish the apartment repairs.

See the new crown molding in the kitchen? No compound cuts! I think I saw Otterine do something like that in one of her dollhouses. Now I know why. It does not make you a crazy person when doing trim in an old, never square room house. Or a maybe not so square dollhouse.

So I have been a painting, trim working, get out the miter saw and the power nailer babe of late. But in 1:1 scale only. Sigh.

Sandra

1:1 construction has replaced 1:12 construction lately. My husband and I have been working on our real life Victorian (there is a certain irony in working on an old house in real life and preferring modern minis these days, I think).

After two years (that is really bad!) the painting on the exterior is finally finished. Plans this summer are to finish the porch, put together some sort of storage shed in the backyard, and to do something with the front yard (flowers? bushes?).

Most of the time this past month, however, has been spent repairing the apartment side of the house. Sadly, not very well vetted tenants pretty much trashed the place (we know better now, I hope!). Okay, the didn’t break everything. But, we are talking hundreds of dollars worth of damage (thousands, possibly, if we had to hire people to do the work). Besides the usual suspects of broken window frames and baseboards, they broke every door on the inside, broke the glass in the gas heating stove, and took down all the crown molding in the kitchen (I later found some of the broken crown molding under the old garage). Who does that?

To be fair, they did try to do some repairs themselves. Doesn’t this trim work look as good as new?

In the background of that picture is my painted over wallpaper. Sigh.

On a different note, since we were “in the hood” I decided to participate in the neighborhood yard sale day.

Yard sales are funny things. Sellers want to make a little money. Buyers don’t want to spend money. And the majority of people out at 8:00 in the morning on a Saturday are retired couples looking to pass some time knowing full well that they don’t need to buy one single thing. (Why, oh, why don’t we have yard sales in the afternoon aimed at young couples with children who actually WANT TO BUY things?)

I did manage to make a tiny bit of cash. And I got rid of a few things, which is also part of the point of a yard sale. (Someone out there still owes me 50¢ for the bag of pinback buttons that went missing.)

And lest you think that this post has absolutely nothing to do with miniatures, I will say that I did have an old dollhouse on my yard sale for $5.

I made that dollhouse for my mother a long time ago. Granted it is not wonderful. (I am much pickier about things now and rarely make a kit without upgrading it.) But, I thought $5 was a fair enough price given that the kit was $20 and shingles, wallpaper, and wood trims probably about $20 more. Heck, I thought, you could take the house apart and put it back together with new colors and better components and still make out. Silly me! “Would you take less for the house?” “Is that your best price?” I was asked. Seriously? $5 is too much? The house did not sell.

Another interesting miniatures/yard sale moment was an older couple who saw my little house and told me about theirs. They even came back later with some pictures. The husband built his wife a 5 foot by 4 foot replica of her childhood home with incredible detail, including a turret in the style of Luxembourg where her grandfather was born. Pretty cool!

Well, back to repair work for me.

Sandra

Modern Mini Houses brought to my attention that comments were not working properly. Well, that totally stunk! After getting my techie husband to look at the code and give up, I decided the best course of action was to change my theme. And so I did. Comments are working now. In fact, I got my first spam comment! (DOH!)

Sandra