Gutters: I just received a fascinating catalogue via my mother-in-law for the English company Sussex Crafts, Peter and Yvonne Warwick. They have a guttering and drainpipe kit which includes 3 x 11.5" gutters, 3 x 9 7/8" drainpipes, 7 brackets, 4 double ended pipe joints, 1 gutter "T" piece, 2 end caps, 1 end plate, spout, grating, and bend, together with instructions. The fittings are metal, guttering and pipes in easy to cut plastic. The total is 16.90 pounds sterling, plus shipping. The components can also be bought separately. They also sell pre-Victorian style lead look drainpipe and fittings.

The catalogue is full of information and all kinds of items. They make the servant's bells discussed recently, and a shop bell, plus a variety of taps/faucets and ceiling roses also as recently sought. All kinds of kitchen, scullery, bathroom and fireplace stuff, and individually named mice!

Wendy in Clinton, NJ

Eavetroughs: I made eavetroughs for one of my dolls-houses using thin gauge copper sheeting, the kind you can get at Michaels Craft Stores. It is thin enough to be cut with a utility scissors. I used a block of wood just three inches long and drilled a 5/16" hole into it and then cut it in half on the table saw so I had a channel in the wood. Now lay the sheet of copper over the wood block and place a 5/16" metal dowel on the copper sheet and tap with a hammer. This creates a uniform copper trough. You will have to move the copper down along the block until you have created a whole piece. The pieces can then be soldered together or lapped if you wish. You can change the dimension or dowel to achieve different size eaves. Be sure to use enough copper, at least 1", so you can place it up under the shingles.

Dan (Crabbyelf)

Coloring stucco: I used strong tea (w/o the ammonia) to color stucco. it came out great. i used fruit tea on the inside to stain the indoor stucco, and that came out so nice that i used it to stain my real fireplace in my real house that i live in. but stone is not quite as porous, and i had to add a little acrylic paint.

Judy London

Vinegar & Nails: As Helen posted, you DO NOT mix nails and vinegar in a CLOSED container. Use an open Pyrex glass bowl and set it outside to avoid the fumes. Since my husband restores antique firearms, another comment. This is the same solution used to "rust-blue" gun barrels which are then polished to a high shine and oiled. You are creating a rusting solution. Therefore any other metal objects you place near the part you have done can develop rust in time.

Ruth

Door Hardware: Kendall doesn't have a website but I have those doorknobs on my site. http://www.spminiatures.com/kendallall.html

Carol

Siding: I assume that your using the wide boards and not the individual strips. Start at the bottom. Use Quik Grab glue. Put glue around the board, especially along the edges. Press the board against the house, then pull it a few inches away from the house, and then press the board against the house. Move quickly as it does dry quickly. Don't use too much glue. I put it around the edges and a couple of strips in the center lengthwise. You don't need to cover the whole board with glue. You will notice an overlap at the bottom of each piece. The piece that you put on next will be right above the first piece you did and you should overlap the top piece with the bottom.

Carol

Knotty Pine: Being a bit of a perfectionist, I would feel compelled to make my Knotty pine walls with basswood strips for realism. If you look at the real thing, you can see some grooves between each of the boards. You can duplicate this by rounding over the edges of each strip of wood so that when they are laid next to each other there is some dimension to them. Then for the knotty pine effect, I'd use a wood burner or fine tipped soldering iron to add the knots. Afterwards, you'd want to stain all your boards appropriately to match what you are duplicating in real life. Most Knotty pine has a warm yellowish glow. You also would want to spray them with a satin sealer or something and put a nice finish on them. Then install your boards one at a time. Shoot- this sounds like so much fun I may just have to make a cabin scene. Granted, this is probably the hard way to do things. Just depends on how much realism you are trying to get and how much time you are willing to put into it. Maybe someone knows of some great product I'm not aware of to do the same thing easy.

Bonnie Gibson

Knotty Pine: If you are fortunate enough to find someone stripping away a full sized "bottle brush" shrub from their full sized garden - - - - The wood makes excellent scale knotty pine. Takes time to season (about a year and a half) and then must be milled to mini sizes.

Mel K.

Knotty Pine: Called the store here. They do mail order to the U.S. She wasn't sure what exactly knotty pine would look like (and I'm not too sure) but she said they have a web site http://www.madscrappercda.com She's pretty sure the supplier is American so you might want to try searching for something like scrapbook+paper+wood on your favorite search engine. Haven't checked it out myself. The sheets (9" x 12") are $4.59 Cda (So about $3 US) I did tell her it was for minis and she said that she had used it herself (not for minis - but to get smaller wood effect) by tearing pieces along the grain to get the effect she wanted. I'm a great fan of scrapbooking pages - Acid-free, easy to work with.

Maureen

Knotty Pine: If you take the piece of wood you are using and use a small drill or punch to make small holes a bit larger than the thickness of a toothpick randomly over the entire piece of wood. The more holes, the more finished knots. The holes are best a bit diagonal through the wood (not straight through like a nail). Then, insert a toothpick dipped in glue in each hole. Let the glue dry. Cut the toothpick flush with the main piece of wood. Sand the panel smooth. You now have a knotty piece of wood. If you are using stain, you will want to test the stain on the knots to make sure that you are happy with the way the stain "takes". I have found that the long skewers give a more "rough" look than the toothpicks.

Whui

Aging Wallpaper: I would try mixing some antiquing medium with water (probably about half and half, maybe thinner) and "patting" it on with a soft cloth, then ever so carefully, dabbing it off with another soft cloth. Be very careful not to rub it on or off as it may damage the paper. And, if you have some of the scraps of wallpaper left over, I would recommend you try it before going to the dh wall. Remember that when "real" walls and floors age, they do not age and discolor evenly. The area just above the baseboards, in the corners, etc. age faster than the rest as these are the areas that tend to collect grunge.

Sloan

Brickmaking:

You need some basswood stripwood and you cut this and glue up a little open form using waterproof glue, epoxy. Coat the form real good with epoxy after it is made to make it waterproof and strong. Make a little punch that you can punch out the brick when you fill the form. Remember that these wet-clays shrink when they dry so the form has to be about 10-15% bigger than the brick you want. The side of the brick is what will show so the thickness of the form is real important too. You fill the form with moist clay and punch it out and be sure to leave the mold marks on the brick. In fact, it is the mold marks that give the charm to the bricks except that you need subtle contrasts in color and texture.

So whatever clays you use you need two of them, different colors, red & brown, etc. and then you blend about 6-8 blends of those two colors in different ratios so that you get subtle differences and when you go to "lay bricks" you don't put clashing colors together. You keep the differences more subtle than that. You might not even make bricks out of the two "parent colors" at all. Just several "shades" or "hues" in between those two colors. There are red colored Mexican Pottery Clay, gray Marblex, and brown wet-clays you can mix in as well. Play around with it. You can do this on any scale. You can add bone-emulsions to harden bricks or Elmers glue or whatever. Self hardening clays are good enough, but (kitchen) oven hardening clays (Della Roba?) are also available. You lay the form on wax paper, fill the form with wet-clay, scrape off the excess clay with a stick or spatula, and take a plunger of the exact right size and push out the brick or hold down the brick and lift up the form, pinning the brick to the wax paper with the plunger. In other words, remove the brick from the form with a plunger/pusher of brick size (it must be small enough to easily penetrate (clear the sides of) the mold from top to bottom.

Let the bricks air dry and then oven-bake them if you choose. Don't mess around with wet bricks, except to make sure that they are not warped or crooked or fouled up. If they are fouled up, return them to their wad of clay and TRY AGAIN. You can make thousands of bricks once you get the hang of it. You will have a brick yard and can oven bake thousands at the same time, hundreds if you get bored easily, or whatever pleases you. You do need more than one color, in slight variations, for best effect. All the same color looks remarkably dull compared to the effect of slight color variations in the earth colors which gives a rustic, "natural" look.

You can glue these in place with Elmers glue or some and leave the seams exposed or showing. You can make up some "mud" of Elmers glue and clay that could be applied with a little spatula. I just paint on Elmers glue with a little brush on the bricks that are already in place and sit the brick down in it and wiggle ir around a little until it is "seated" into place, it will be a little "wonkey" but that just adds to the charm. You don't want it to look too mechanical and all bricks aren't just exactly the same size. You don't want air gaps to show between bricks so you may have to have some "mud" on hand to use as needed to prevent air gaps or cracks between bricks. Let a wall, chimney, fire-place, etc. dry thoroughly before messing around with it. Overnight or longer.

Let bricks dry thoroughly before laying them, else they will shrink and distort and be a disaster. They absorb water and swell when you are laying them if you use excess water, so don't go wild on moisture while you are laying them, unless you have fired them hard (Della Robba oven bake clays, etc.).

Anyway, have fun! It's not so hard and you can make bricks on Half-Scale (1/24th scale), on "Inch Scale" (dollhouse scale) or on "O" (1/48 Scale) or even tiny bricks on "dollhouse for dollhouse" scale. So just make the forms the size that pleases you and GO FOR IT!

Walter Vaughn!

PaperClay - I use PaperClay all the time, thanks to Rik Pierce and other SSers that suggested it to me. It is a paper based product, and is great to work with. It is more for sculpting than for making food and such with. I prefer it to poly clays because I like the texture much better.....doesn't feel like I'm sculpting silly putty. It is an air drying clay, but you can bake it......250 degrees until dry, and doesn't "burn", even if forgotten for many hours (don't ask....let's just say I know this from experience and leave it at that! LOL) It takes paint and paint washes very well, and I've also used wood stains, antiquing gel, and even diluted food coloring with good results. As to texturing it....go to town! I've used a the end of a piece of wire, a dampened stencil brush, even a dry finger pounced over the surface lightly will give various textures. If you want it smooth and porcelain like, wet your finger and smooth over the top....you can also use a small piece of cosmetic sponge. BTW, it is nothing like paper mache.

Sloan

Stucco: Try stucco patch. You can get it at ACE Hardware, or probably any hardware store - it comes in a container and is premixed. If you want you can add some paint to it for color - otherwise it dries a gray-white.

Norma

Stucco: There is a product that artists use occasionally to add texture and a 3 dimensional quality to a painting. The one I use is Schewee's White Texture Medium in an 8 oz. tub. It is easy to spread, cleans up easily (I wash my brushes in 1 drop of Murphy's Oil Soap and warm water) and dries hard but still flexible. Great stuff!!! Also makes "Tupperware" bowls ... paint it on the outside of a bowl shape, let dry, and then peel off ... it comes off inside out to what you painted which puts the smooth part outside and the rough part doesn't show when you fill the bowl!

Laverne

Thatching: Today, I put instructions on my web site http://www.dollhouse-miniatures.comfor thatching a dollhouse. Be aware, there are quite a few pictures, and they are 20KB each, so it can take a couple of minutes to load. Look under Tom's Tips--- Thatching.

Tom Berkner

Roof Tiles: I make my roof tiles out of good quality card. I wanted old, red tiles, so I painted each sheet (A4 size) of card a slightly different shade of salmon pink before I cut them out. I made separate tiles. Because I cut them with scissors, they were slightly different sizes, but a guillotine and a jig would give you a more precise tile. I wanted mine a bit variable. Then I stuck them on the roof (I know - one by one! It's very therapeutic) and used the same card, cut into strips for the roof ridges. After the glue had dried, I went over the whole roof with one thin coat of rosewood acrylic wood dye. This gives the roof extra stick, makes the red roof colour perfect, and protects the delicate card. Then I got my paints out and began to dirty it a bit. I know it's a bit laborious, but this is a hobby, and I had a lot of fun thinking this up.

Lynne Connolly

PAPERING CEILING: this is more tedious than difficult. First (and most tedious), remove the furniture and accessories. Next, get help if it's a huge house, and turn it upside down, bracing it with old pillows to protect the roof and trim and wedge it in place with the ceilings in floor position. Then get the cheapest index cards you can find and plenty of masking tape. Start around the edges, taping cards together to cover the ceiling. Overlap them as necessary and fan them around the light fixture until you have completely covered the ceiling edge to edge with taped-together cards except for the hole the fixture hangs through. Mark the "right" side of the template -- the one that will show. Gently lift this template out and use it as a pattern to cut your ceiling paper. Before you cut the paper, be sure that the "right" side of the template faces the "wrong" side of the paper. Cut out the fixture hole and the ceiling paper to size, and glue into place. If your house is Victorian or earlier, the mock-tile textured life-size paper makes a nice ceiling; some of it is geometric and faux-painted like wood would be great for a coffered Arts & Crafts or Tudor ceiling.

Loretta Sniarowski

Carpets: Look at the upholstery fabric.....some of the small designs are perfect and you can see the weave etc...just fringe the ends...I got mine from sample books (old ones ) in a drapery store.....they usually throw these out.

Heather

baseball rug: I wanted to share something I tried for a rug. In the applique section of Joanne's or other fabric store, they usually have a good size baseball meant to be sewed on a jacket. I found this works on the floor nicely for a rug. I used a small butterfly in the bathroom too.

Lee from Melville, NY