Quarter Scale Coaching Inn

When I realized I couldn't divide a floor in one of my Butterwick houses to form a dining room and billiard room, I gave up on having a billiard room and thought my nice table would need to go in another project in the future. What I didn't realize, though, is that my coaching arch from Scale Model Buildings had an additional floor above the main floor I thought I was getting. I kit-bashed it a bit, as it was intended to be a loft accessed by a ladder. One of the things I've had to decide with this project is that it's not always going to be clear how people get up to certain rooms or move from room to room (except for the super-lovely staircase that'll happen on the floor below this one). It's just a sacrifice I think you have to make in this scale sometimes. There isn't a lot of room with the roof angled up there, but the billiard table will JUST fit (tall people might need to bend over to play, haha!). The wallpaper is Mini Minutia from Etsy , lov...

So as I mentioned in my last post, I went on a huge offensive over the weekend to try to finish up the four upstairs bedrooms in Butterwick, and I succeeded! The first thing to mention about the bedrooms is that I split the top of my Butterwicks by adding dividers, which made for four cozy bedrooms up top rather than two giant ones. This felt more right for an inn where people would often just be staying overnight. All of the rooms are fairly masculine -- it wouldn't be as common for women to be traveling by themselves, and I thought these rooms would be more often occupied by men. The first room is meant to be one that might be preferred by someone in trade. Although the rooms are mostly geared for a one-night stopover, this one might be used for longer by someone who had business in the area. It's got a table, bed, chair, writing slope and desk from Petworth Miniatures . The picture frames for all of the rooms are also from Petworth, while all of the fir...

I went on a major offensive this weekend trying to get the bedrooms of my Butterwick Houses done, and I did! But it's going to take some time to write up the details for those and I realized that I still haven't posted on completing the ballroom. It's simpler than many of the other rooms as it needs a lot of space in the middle for dancing. On one end are two Petworth Miniatures chairs, and a plant stand I picked up somewhere along the way, which is serving as a little side table to hold another Mini From Italy fan. The vases are actually lamp bases from SJS Originals on Etsy, with some Stewart Dollhouse roses inside and embroidery thread as the greenery. I'm pretty chuffed with how those turned out as I think it's my best tiny painting to date. The fireplace is from Victoria Miniland and boy those are a pain to paint. I think I tried spray paint first and it just wouldn't get into the detailed bits so I had to use regular paint (somewhere around here I h...

I haven't posted in a while because I haven't really completed anything lately. I am still working away on both Butterwick Houses, but I thought I would at least post some pictures of work in progress. One of the tricky things with these houses has been figuring out my plan to build them. The reason for this is that they will eventually be joined in some fashion -- their balconies will connect to form the gallery. The bottom part of them needs to be in a stone finish, and I couldn't put the lower windows in until the stone finish was done around them. But the stone finish couldn't be completed until the upstairs was more complete and I attached the balconies. Add to this a whole lot of wallpaper and details which means I really need to work on the rooms from the bottom up without the upper floor in place for each room, and it became a real conundrum. Ultimately what I decided to do was to do part of the front stone, particularly around the windows. I'll then ha...