Who's ready to get SHREDDED? Well you are if you are reading this post because I really did a number on this doll house today. Shredded is an appropriate word: there are bits and scraps of cardboard and old glue all over my project room right now.
Last weekend I went out and bought two things for the project. One is a large piece of press board that's is about 3'x5', and the other is a little tub of wood putty (more on that in a moment).
I set out to dig in and really see what, structurally, this hunk of garbage needs to become whole again. I decided to remove the roof and the third floor walls because nothing was aligned correctly.
Using a dull and semi-broken box cutter (cause that's how I roll), I cut through the old wood glue and then pulled each piece off.
This did not go so well.
The first piece that ate it was one of the sides but I don't care about that because, hey, the sides aren't supposed to be the pieces that have doors in them anyway. Ahem. However, the second piece that broke was the main white front piece, and it didn't just break it tore, like peeling bark off a tree.
So here were my goals at this point: fix the front that got damaged and put back on walls that actually would fit correctly. First I decided to fix the front. I'm using Gorilla brand wood glue for this. I slapped it back up there and put some binder clips on it to hold it in place.
Here is a post gluing pick:
I'm not delicate, y'all. And I don't like using paintbrushes for glue because I always forget to wash them and they get ruined. So fingers it is to smooth the glue out.
This was step was holding pretty well so I moved on to the next step. Are any of the other pieces removed still usable? Well, yes. The fronts piece, I figured out, was simply put on wrong. When I need it back up with the outer edge it left a gap between it and the white wall. Like so:
But when I placed the load bearing wall back up, it all fit together nicely:
Or not. I decided to just smoosh it all together and hope for the best. I imagine that the window part is actually supposed to be angled back in regards to the tower part but . . . I am just going to address that later. For now I decided to just make it smooth across using glue for the left side and middle piece and nails and glue for the right side fronts-piece.
To make it all smooth I whipped out my wood putty to spackle that shit into place. Now look . . . I am not a handywoman by any means (perhaps you have guessed that already). I learn as I go generally speaking. So today I learned about wood putty. Here is the brand I used:
And here is what I learned:
It's faaaaaaaab-u-louuuuuuuussssssss! Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty! Purple wood putty- I love it. I had no idea it was going to look like that until I opened it. I just grabbed it at the store and didn't bother to read the label (again, I'm just wingin' it here, people).
So I puttied it up all good and added some fail safes to keep it in place while drying.
That's right, some sweet, sweet duct tape. As you can see in the first of those two pics the front of the third floor of the house is now semi-smoothly lined up. It isn't perfect due to old glue bumps and such but I think it looks better and best of all the edges are now all flush.
When I put the roof back on to test it, the original board now fits perfectly. Very satisfying.
Don't worry, it's not attached yet. That's due to the fact that I have to find a way to cut the board I bought into new pieces to replace the side pieces.
In addition to that as the next step I need to figure out a way to cut off a few parts of jutting press board that are attached to the house itself and can't be pried off. That should be fun- break out the power tools!
