This post has been delayed for a few reasons; a couple of them were even out of my direct control! One of them being that the majority of the fixtures I chose to light my house were on back order and I had to wait longer than I would have liked for them to come in. The second of which is that installing dollhouse electricity is daunting, grueling, wrist aggravating work at the best of times and completely unmanageable at the worst. I have a new found respect for electricians after installing 30ft of wire, and I didn't have to mess around with running my wires through walls or studs - I just had to tape stuff to floors.
Seriously, this is pretty accurate representation of what I've been doing for weeks- just at 1/12th scale.
But the main reason for the delay in this post is that I had to do a whole lot of mental preparation before embarking on the electric installation. You see, for a great many years I have been terrified of electricity.
Seriously, unabashedly, petrified.
And Jiminey Cricket is to blame.
Yep. This guy.
Way back in the day when I was homeschooled (and the Disney channel actually showed Disney animation), they had these weird, faux-commercial breaks where they would showcase classic Disney shorts; a number of them starred that smug, aforementioned cricket. Mr. Cricket had a number of PSA skits that warned kids of the dangers of everyday things, like water, bicycles, or fun (not even kidding about that one) called "I'm No Fool."
Here he is singing his signature jaunty tune about not being an idiot and getting yourself killed.
And, considering how this post is all about how a cartoon character kicked off my long-held fear of anything that can be measured in volts, amps, or watts; I think you can guess what he warned me about through song one day:
Electricity.
I know, I Know, and I KNOW how stupid it is to have fear of ANYTHING instilled by a musical PSA, but I really couldn't help it. Despite video of this song not existing on Youtube, I can still see in my head that dumb cricket swinging his umbrella and assuring me that I can "...live to be 103!" if I don't fool around with electricity; and then driving the point home by drawing chalk-board pictures of people getting electrocuted while making toast or sticking things into sockets. In my defense, I was 7 years old at the time, and I was a very gullible 7 year old (I believed for many years that Mayonnaise was harvested by 'milking' the Mayo plants in South America thanks to my older brother.)
So for years I went out of my way to avoid anything and everything that I felt put me at an unreasonable risk of getting my fool self electrocuted (read: anything more advanced than changing a light bulb). I talked, bribed, and baked my way out of any home repair project that directly led to a breaker box and no one was any the wiser that an animated bug had full control over any facet of my life.
And then I get the genius idea to install electricity into my dollhouse. I knew it was something that I really wanted to have in my house, and if I left it out then I would regret not making the most of the great gift I'd been given.
So, I screwed my courage to the sticking place and bought an electrical kit; cricket be damned!
My transformer (non-Cybertronian variety), tape wire, lead in wire, outlets, brads, plugs, hold punch, bonus lamp I won't use, and instruction guide.
Even though I had my lighting kit and a whole front-load of wiring work I needed to get done before my fixtures arrived, I was incredibly hesitant to get started on this project. Even though the house is small, the idea of electricity felt very big to me. The voltage was small, but so was my courage. So I did everything I could to prep myself for my task at hand: I studied. That "Tapewire Instruction Book" became one of my sole sources of print entertainment for over a week. I studied the diagrams and recommended techniques until I could see them in my minds eye without having to open a single page. The more I learned, the less intimidated I became.
And then one Saturday morning I bit the bullet and plugged in.
And I've really never been more proud of myself.
I started by mapping out where I thought my tape wire would run. This ended up being more like a 'recommended route' than actual map. I'm like the MapQuest of laying wire.
The post on the right is where I did actually end up running my main electric line. That was really the only part of the original plan I ended up sticking to.
My dollhouse doors are hung on piano hinges, which prevented me from running electricity to the doors. If there were two hinges on each door I could have run the positive line through one and the negative line through the other to provide electricity to the front of the house.
Like so.
I'm actually glad that I have the piano hinge, though. It prevents me from running electricity to the porch, but at the same time I really, Really, REALLY would have hated to rehang those doors by myself. I'll just buy some battery operated porch lights and no one will be any the wiser, and I save myself a roughly estimated bajillion hours of door attaching.
Electricity is being run though my house via tape wire - a flat, self-adhesive strip of parallel running copper ribbons. It's easily cut, peeled, and stuck to walls; and was the easiest part of the installation process.
Totally hassle-free.
The bottom of my dollhouse has a textured foundation, so I did a test to see if the tape wire would adhere.
And adhere it did!
This is the lead in wire. This connects to the transformer and circuit breaker. I'll later camouflage this with...something. TBD. Maybe some shrubbery.
I needed to run my main tape wire line up to the attic, but didn't have a clear opening. So I made one.
The main line: fully installed.
This is how you join separate pieces of tape wire. You use this delightfully wicked hole punching-tool to create pilot holes for inserting copper brads. You connect copper line to copper line and blue line to blue line and presto!: a completed circuit! It's not a complicated process, just wickedly difficult to do on a small scale.
How small, you ask?
This small.
Or, if you need a scale reference: this small.
But a lot of the time consuming nature of this task is the testing; or more specifically all the backtracking you have to do if the testing fails. Every time you lay down a new line of tape wire you need to test to make sure that your copper brads are connected correctly and that electricity is flowing to the new tape you laid down. You do this with a test probe - which is pretty much a barbecue fork with a lightbulb on the end. You jab the prongs into both sides of the copper ribbon, and if the bulb lights up you have successfully installed the wire.
My electric fork.
My first attempts didn't go so well. There is apparently a subtle art to jabbing holes into copper that I wasn't privy to.
I got the hang of it pretty soon, though.
Attic
Master Bedroom
Kid's Room
Upstairs Hall
Bathroom
Kitchen/Dining
Main Entryway
Living Room
As you can see in the 'Living Room' photo above, I installed a ceiling fan to give me a nice, bright visual to signal that I had the dollhouse plugged in and wouldn't shock myself. I have three of those ceiling fans set to install in various rooms in the house. I really like the ceiling fans except for one detail: the fan blades.
This is the ugliest wood color I have ever seen. It looks like they ripped them out of a 1970's ranch house. Ughghg.
So, I painted those suckers with an acrylic glaze I made and they look So. Much. BETTER.
Left: Nice, cherry colored fan blades. Right: the fan blade personification of 'terrible'.
I was also disappointed with the chandelier I bought for the dining room. What I expected to get was this:
The "Tiffany" amber chandelier.
What I actually got.
The shape of the lamp is spot-on, but I was really hoping for a deeper amber color to the shade. The white seam coloring also wasn't as crisply applied as I would have liked, so I did what any artist does and made more work for myself than was probably necessary. I grabbed some sharpie markers and set about to altering the chandelier and giving it a more 'stained glass' appearance.
Starting out: featuring some concept illustrations. Despite the fact that it looks like I mostly fly by the seat of my pants I actually plan out most of what I do. Sometimes.
The finished product! Not quite "Tiffany", but also not quite as shabby as before.
I was going to end this blog post with a picture of all the lights installed in my dollhouse, but as soon as I finished installing all the lights on the first floor the transformer blew out. Pardon me while I go throw money at my problems.
My goal for this week was a simple one: get the doors on my dollhouse to stay closed.
This task shot to the top of my to-do list for one reason and one reason only:
The Standard Sized Qubeley.
In the one week since I have started my miniature work, this little guy has developed a hunger that can only be satisfied by EATING MY MINIATURES. I originally had a chair propped up to keep the doors closed, but my cat activated his boneless powers and used the chair to pop open the doors and pull out just about anything he wanted (see diagram below)
I don't know where his bones go.
So, I had to put a stop to his fun ASAP. As you know from my last post, my attempt to use magnets to shut the door ended in failure, but I figured that my problem could be solved by simply adding more magnets! Which meant only one thing:
Ohhhhhhh yeah!
Make sure to wear proper safety gear when Dremeling (because sawdust under a contact lens is something you let happen once. ONCE.) The hat functions as a hairnet, keeps my head warm, and makes me look like a low budget Bond Villainess.
Before the Dremeling. You can see the original larger magnet I installed around the second stair.
After the Dremeling
The magnet installation on the opposite door.
I actually went to the hardware store specifically to pick up Dremel router bits to make magnet installation easier, so I flew through installing the additional magnets pretty quickly ("quickly" meaning under two hours while I was waiting for the glue holding the magnets in place to dry). While waiting for the glue to dry I started to plan out where my wiring in my different rooms will go once my super awesome wiring kit arrives.
I can't believe this nonsense costs $160
I figured that sockets are usually around a foot off the ground, so I found a book and pencil combination that let me draw a 1 inch line across the foot of every room (my dollhouse is 1/12 scale, so 1 foot = 1 inch. I'm 6 feet tall, so a scale model of me would be 6 inches tall). The upstairs bathroom is the only room that deviates from this. I instead placed the line 3 1/2 inches high to simulate the height of a bathroom sink. So that'll be oh so much fun to rig up later.
The book I used is actually my dollhouse planning journal! It was truly meant to be!
I also took the time to plan out furniture placement and where I'll run wires up to the higher floors.
The results of my day's work. Doors closed, minis safe, and 6 magnet installed.
Next post will most likely be about my adventures in wiring. May God have mercy on my Junction Splicing.
My day began with trips to two different craft stores, and even though I spent nearly $200 between the two I still didn't acquire all the stuff I wanted (namely a lighting kit), but I *did* return home with more sharp tools than I have fingers; including my new favorite craft tool:
BEHOLD! THE MITRE SAW!
Just looking at a picture of that thing gets me weepy about the precision of my angle cuts! I got so excited I bought three replacement blades because I just *know* I'm going to be finding objects around my home that could benefit from being cut precisely at a 60 degree angle.
Anyway, since work on the inside of the house is pretty much at a standstill until I get my grubby hands on a wiring kit (which will come after I figure out just how many lights I'm actually gonna' stick in the thing), I decided to limit my work to the outside of the house.
I started my session first by attaching on the outside set of stairs, which included a set of inlaid magnets that I hoped would keep the front of the house from swinging open wildly at the houses' every whim. Hours later this would result in total failure, but look!
Railings! And my, look at the precision angles of that handrail!
While I waited to discover the verdict of my failed door latch, I made good use of my time by working on some minor fixed to the house. I sheared off the sides of some balcony tiles that prevented the left door from closing smoothly, and added in a balsa wood support for the bottom of a weak door hinge - the most exciting part of which was using my new tungsten carbide reusable sanding block to custom shape the piece.
So....incredibly....useful!
The results of my sanding session.
I still had time to kill waiting for clue to cure, so I worked on some porch decorations. Here is a made up flower in the process of being built.
But the star of the day ended up being my lavender plants. I'm so stupid proud of how they turned out!
So pretty!
And here is a finished shot of the day's work. Not too shabby in my opinion!
And then I had my favorite miniature of my cat, Qubeley, model my newly made plants. This picture is especially comical to me because the actual cat is terrified of the outdoors. In dreams and miniatures, I suppose.
