Onward and Upward!

I got very brave this morning and wrestled the Glencroft away from the under bed dwelling, wood eating gremlins. When I opened the box, this is what I found. No. The cat was not included. Mookie is the official inspector of any and all boxes that come into the house. He has been dieing to see what was in this one for almost a year. I got it last year for the Miniatures.com April Fool's Day half price sale. Now he knows.

I am not so sure that I want to know! See that little tiny square of sandpaper laying on the many pages of directions? It is that with which they expect you to finish off all of those hundreds of parts. Yeah. Sure. That will do it.......Plus about 17 more sheets of various weights. That one quarter sheet is #280. It should last about 3 minutes.

Under the pages of directions, I found a double sheet that was titled "The Instruction Warm-up Sheet". If I had never done this before, that alone would scare me to pieces. Just think of the poor people that chose this as their first dollhouse. Instructions for what to do before you read the real instructions? Ummmmm.....Close the box quickly and shove it back under the bed before something weird jumps out.

Under that, I found 11 sheets of shingles that I will have to break apart and then I won't be happy. Knowing about me and shingles, they will at least have to be cut into quarters. I know. I could save a lot of time by slapping those on the roof the way that they are. No way. I like little shingles. That's 4 times as much work, but it has to be done for me to be happy. When do we get to the fun part?

OK. Move the shingles aside. Oh look! More not quite fun stuff. There are 14, count 'em, 14 sheets of punch out pieces.....And there aren't very many BIG pieces. One quarter sheet of sandpaper and 14 sheets of plywood? What's wrong with this picture? I wonder if I could tie sandpaper to Mookie's feet and let him run across the pieces? I guess not. He just ran and hid. He's under the bed, now that there is room.

To make matters worse, I have to figure out what all of these little parts are and label them. I will probably misplace at least half of them before this is over.

Now down to the fun part. I can never leave well enough alone. I kept looking at the photo on the box. I shouldn't have done that. I kept thinking that it should have 3 rooms on the first floor and 3 on the second.....Yup. I got out the quad rule and here's what I came up with. There will be an extension on what I call the kitchen side. If I had a place to put it when I'm done, I thought of a way to do the other end too.

The extension will be the kitchen. The original kitchen will be a dining room. The living room will stay a living room.

Upstairs the extension will be the bath. It has to be over the kitchen for pluming purposes. The middle room will be the bedroom and the room by the stairs will be the workroom and study.

That is at least the plan today. Years ago, I did a Harrison that had a secret passage from the billiard room up to the maid's room. The man of the house was not always a gentleman.... I am trying to figure out how to work a couple of secret passages into this one. So far, it is too small. We shall see. I don't know if I should tell you if and when I work it out. Then it wouldn't be a secret. As the saying goes, "If I tell you, I will have to shoot you!". Well maybe nothing that drastic.

I am now going to go back to the torture chamber and start labeling little tiny pieces, half of which, I will probably lose, replace with something else or not use at all. Wish me luck.

See you tomorrow.