Don't forget to paint your wall first with your "grout" color. I suppose you could carefully fill the grout lines when it is completely dry, but I never have. I have used the product on several projects and love it.

One caution: If you are attempting to do a whole brick house you have to be very careful when placing the tape to get a good look. I would do one wall at a time with a wraparound on the corner (could always use a corner trim instead).

Another thing to watch for doing a large surface is lining up the bricks on meeting walls. I have only used it on foundations and small walls or floors, but have seen it used on a full house.

Diane in SFBA

Wrought Iron Gates: I thought I'd share with all of you who are talking about wrought iron gates, staircases etc. how my creative friend Lorraine made a pair of awesome wrought iron gates for a room box she did. First she sketched out what she wanted them to look like. She used wood for the upright pieces. In her gates there were several heart shaped designs. She made herself a 'jig' out of toothpicks set into holes she drilled in a heart shape in a piece of wood. Then she bent wire into as many hearts as she needed. The vertical twisted lines were made from twist ties. She glued the whole design together with Super Glue gel, (I believe) and let it dry. Then she spray painted the whole thing with a matte black spray paint. You'd never know they were not metal!

Alice Zinn

Porch: You can add any kind of porch you like. Most appropriate would be one about 6" deep and 8" wide. A very low pitch roof with gable to the front. It should be supported by 2 pillars at each of the front corners, and a 1/2 pillar (or a pilaster) at the back corners. Run a dentil molding around the 3 sides, just below the eaves.

Tom Berkner

Molds: In the Micro-Mark catalog they carry two forms of silicone rubber for making molds. They are both two part products, add A to B and then it is ready to use. One comes in a liquid and the other is a putty. It is rather expensive so I don't know if this is feasible for you. I have debated using it to make the fancy moldings my daughter needs for the ceilings and walls in her colonial dollhouse, but it is so costly it might be cheaper to just buy the moldings! Would a good acrylic house caulking work? The good stuff is strong and flexible, at least that is what my husband says. We want to make the moldings of plaster and thought we might try using caulk, let it set until hard and then peel it off and pour in plaster. How about using Milliput? It is a British two part epoxy putty that is suppose to dry as hard as porcelain and can be rolled very thin.

Marsha in Wisconsin

Applying plastic brick to your walls. If your brick is the stiff plastic brick from Houseworks, use Quick Grab. Use according to directions on the pkg. Works great!!! Should mention that these thick, stiff bricks can easily be cut with a miniature table saw. And a miniature jig saw can also be used for curves and cuts that are not straight with the world!!

Betty Dann

CROWN MOLDINGS I presume that your difficulty is with upstairs walls that "slope" because they represent the interior side of roof slope. If you want to put crow moldings on such walls, you will have to first install a wedge shaped "sub-molding". The idea is to create a molding-wide (vertical dimension) block that is vertical.  Use a protractor, goniometer, bevel square or whatever to determine the angle you need. Use a table saw (if available) set to the desired angle to rip a long triangle shaped strip from the edge of a 3/4" thick piece of pine or similar. Mount these strips as though they were moldings to the sloped walls so that the side surface is vertical and bottom surface horizontal. Glue securely. Now install your crown moldings as normal on properly vertical surfaces.

DISCLAIMER #1 Personally, I seldom install crown moldings or wallpaper on such walls if the slope is less than 1/4 of the total wall height. I miter the vertical wall crown moldings to butt into the slant and simply paint a molding-wide stripe in matching color along the slope.

DISCLAIMER #2 If you do not have access to a table saw but can measure the angle, check first with your miniature dealer to see if they will do custom light milling. Second try should be your local club  If no luck there, measure the angle, draw a picture showing the angle, show the width of your chosen crown molding, determine how many total inches of sub molding you will need and contact me off the list for custom (simple) milling by mail order MEASURING INTERIOR ANGLES: If you cannot get a tool inside your dollhouse to measure angles or obscure dimensions, crush aluminum foil into the area. Remove the foil wad and measure it.

Mel Koplin, Las Vegas

Karen's brass leaves. I also have some of the most exciting brass sheets by her. A l" scale and 1/4" scale patio set, with 'wrought iron' table and chairs, also some incredible iron gates, also in different scales, and sheets of old signs and sun dials...these are the greatest looking 'iron' things I've ever seen...and maybe someday I'll actually cut them out and put them together! Would like to find a source for more, if anyone knows about where to find them.

Kaye in L.A.

Baseboards and moldings: Unique Miniatures of Isanti, MN(16 W. Main St,612-444-5522) has great moldings and trims. Saw their line at Mpls show and they also have door frames, columns etc.

MK in Iowa

Architectural Details - R.A. Picard bought out Architectural Details and his address is

R.A. Picard
PMB 201
618 S. Northwest Hwy.
Barrington, IL 60010

His windows really do add a lot to a room box without having to cut holes.

Betty in KY

Paper doilies for architectural detail: When I built my first structure 20-some years ago, I enhanced the front by cutting out, then gluing in a stack, a full package worth of the same motif that I repeated 3 times on the front of the shop. Since then I've also used this technique to make "pressed-tin" ceilings and the effect is perfect. Much cheaper than the plaster ceilings you can buy, and you can adjust the sizes and details to fit any room.

Kate

Doilies for ceilings: I used the plastic doilies that are sometimes sold, to make fake plaster ceilings. I didn't even have to paint them. The ceiling was white and the doily fancy detail was picked out in blue and gold which fitted right in with my antique shop color scheme.

Roberta

Dovecotes: A dovecote was a combination of an old-fashioned chicken coop, with all the little nesting boxes, and a hollow square or circle. The outer wall had openings for the doves to come and go. These openings were generally rounded on the top; you will sometimes find cotes with square bird doors, but they were most often used if the dove cote was built into a barn wall or other brick structure. The inner wall had narrow hinged doors, allowing the farmer or his wife to stand up inside the cote and reach in and grab a squab off the nest. The insides of the nesting boxes were painted white, to duplicate the natural nests, which were coated with, um,...well, if you live near a pigeon coop, you know!

In general, only the squabs were eaten. Not only were they easier to take off the nest, but never having flown, they were very tender. At a month old, they were at their peak. Older birds were only eaten when the nests were culled once a year. Pigeons are notoriously hard to digest, and are only fit to eat when they are stewed for a long time. Such meals were strictly for the lower classes - servants and slaves.

Doves were raised not only for the squabs (nestlings), but for the eggs, down, and fertilizer. The pair of doves had four to six broods of two eggs a year, which take about eighteen days to hatch. Within a month - - six weeks in the winter - the young were ready to eat. In a time without refrigeration, such a steady supply of fresh food was vitally important. Dove guano was considered by many farmers to be the absolute best available.

The down side to this, of course, was that the parent birds thought the crops in the field were planted for them. Turn about, and all that.

Anyway, a dovecote would be a proper addition to any rural or semi-rural setting from the middle-ages right up to late Victorian times.

Dani

Wood shavings tip: Take thin wood shavings, dunk them in water 'in and out' - no need to soak - and flatten them under weights for a week to make sure they flatten, putting them between newspapers to absorb the water. Then peel off paper. Voila - the thinnest flat wood, which can be cut with scissors like paper, to make flowers or anything for which you may ordinarily use thin card.

Helen from York, England

Gothic Style: There is a book "Gothic Style" by Kathleen Mahoney that is wonderful.

Rik Pierce

The Glencroft. We love that kit. It is a pain to assemble but we think it is worth the effort. We completed our first one shortly after our grandson was born. He is now over 20 years old! It became our family project. We added a "basement" under it several years later and it became Santa's house. The basement became his workshop, elf's quarters, and the entrance to his gold mine. While many shops display those big, expensive houses in their front windows, we proudly show our Glencroft. BTW: We tried many techniques to make realistic looking snow on the roof. We wanted a heavy snow since it would be the North Pole. Finally, we hit upon styrofoam cut to fit the roof with a slight overhang. The complex angles of the roof presented some problems but we finally did it. We used 1" thick sheets. We sculpted the finished roof to round it off and each year we remove just a tiny bit of the surface to keep it white. We like the sparkle that is natural with the styrofoam. We also made icicles from clear sealer on waxed paper and glued them on. It has been great fun and we are very pleased with the result. From Mrs. Santa baking up a storm in the kitchen, to the elf making use of the bathtub, Mr. and Mrs. Santa's bathroom upstairs, we believe the Glencroft would suit Santa just fine. Now I want to complete a Glencroft just to provide the backdrop for a wonderful exercise in landscaping. That house just pleads for a bountiful garden.

Sandra Olsen

Plank floors: Why not use edge banding for plank floors. I have done two floors with this and they look super. It irons on and is real strip wood. The real use for this is the edges of counter tops. Three quarters of an inch wide, fifty feet long for twelve dollars.

Doris of Ottawa, Canada

Stucco: You need facial tissue, a stiff bristle brush (1/2 inch wide or so) and paint in the color you want the stucco to be. Lots of people use this method, (not my invention) very realistic and not as messy as the real stucco. This is not a sandy looking stucco, it is like the thick plaster type stucco.

1. If two ply tissue, separate into single ply and roll into as tight a ball as you can. Then carefully open up completely but don't smooth out the wrinkles. If you're doing a large area have several tissue balls ready. Use plain white tissue, no oils or perfumes.

2. Put a thick coat of paint on a small area and lay the tissue over the painted area.

3. Using a stenciling technique (but not a stencil brush-too fat), stipple paint over top of the tissue with the stiff bristle brush. Don't use as much paint here as underneath the tissue, and don't use brush strokes as this will tear the tissue. You should be dabbing the paint on with the tip of the brush.

And remember, the tissue will not stick to a surface if there is no paint underneath or if the paint underneath has dried.

Mary Kay

Fabric for Wallpaper: Saw some instructions on applying fabric as wallpaper the other day. They suggested using carpet tape. Why don't you use the sticky backed foam board you mount needlework onto? Just cut it the size you want for the walls and paper it w/o being inside your dh. Don't forget to leave an overlap on the first wall so when you put the next one on, it will show joined and not showing a crack.

Lisa

Shingle tips: I wanted to share a shingle tip that was told to me by Roger of My Doll's House in Torrance, CA. He uses hot glue for putting on shingles, that way if one becomes broken you only need warm it up to remove and replace it (also no warping and curling like you get with some glues).

He also either cuts a 1/16 x 1/16 length of wood (or cuts shingles into slivers) and places them at the very edge of the roof, then placing the first layer of shingles on top of it. That way they all look even.

Ami

Hot Glue for Dollhouse Shingles: If you do decide to use hot glue always use the hot melt, never low melt. And even then be very careful. A friend of mine consistently made crafts using low melt hot glue and when we did shows her glue melted and her products fell apart. You may not foresee a time when you will live in a place this hot or your house ends up in a hot attic, but you never know.

Laura in Tucson