Yes, yet ANOTHER blog! 'Snippets from
my Studio' is so packed with quarter scale buildings that I thought this
deserved a blog all by itself. This is the beginning of a journey
long-awaited: the construction of the Greenleaf halfscale Fairfield
cottage.
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| Picture from box - front view |
I fell in love with this house fifteen
years or more ago when I first started my adventures in the wonderful world of
adult miniatures. But I was nervous because it was in half inch scale and
I was just getting used to one inch scale. Unfortunately by the time I
got around to trying to order one , Greenleaf had discontinued it. Then
in 2005 Greenleaf started to advertise their houses again in the miniatures
magazines.
I inquired about the shipping cost to
Australia. I knew that it would be hefty - it always is! My
'Cadogan Gardens' mansion from the UK cost more in shipping than the kit did,
and the basement cost as much in shipping as the house.
So I checked to see how much the shipping was. The Fairfield costs $US76. Shipping to Sydney, Australia was listed as $200US!!!!! I don't think so! Scouting around dealers here in Australia didn't prove any more successful, and I put aside the dream of one day owning a Fairfield.
But then Greenleaf at the end of 2012 had a special deal for shipping overseas and I finally achieved my dream. My Fairfield arrived and this is what I wrote:
Sunday, 30th December
2012
The Fairfield – Construction day 1
I finally opened the box with my Fairfield kit today. It has been sitting there ever since it arrived, whispering 'Look at me! Look at me!' but I knew that if I so much as undid that box and looked at it I would not be able to resist starting it and I have had so many other things to do that I couldn't afford to do that. Now that Christmas is over and my DD Kylie and the boys have gone home and I have a few days before DD Kirsten and her family come, I can spend just a bit of time on it. Enough anyway to give me an idea of what I need to order so that it will be here in time for me to work on it when we come back from Church Camp at Jindabyne, which is 11th-18th January. I read through the instructions first - yes, right through! Aren't I a good girl? Though I find that they don't make a great deal of sense until I get my hands on the pieces. Then I labelled all the pieces on every sheet, matching them to the schematics given. These are excellent, and a huge help. It took ages to do this. It is tedious, but saves a lot of confusion later on. Then I did a dry fit of the pieces for the main house. It looked very odd, because I held it together with blue painter's tape. So it wasn't very stable and the tape was rather bulky, preventing some tabs from slotting into their holes properly. It did however give me some idea of how the house goes together and the layout of the interior. Before I did the dry fit I wasn't sure whether I wanted to reverse the stairs or not, and that decision is still up in the air. One side of the plywood is reasonably good, the other side is terrible: extremely splintery, the edges difficult to sand without jagged bits coming off. So a lot of care in needed to make sure that sanding doesn't make the edges even more untidy than they already are. I can see a lot of wood filler being used here! Peter bought me a palm sander recently, and I had envisaged using it for the sanding that would be needed for this kit. Now I am not sure whether it would be too rough on the would and actually damage the surface more than improving it - the surface seems so fragile. I'll have to practise on some of the scrap wood to make sure I am used to the sander and to test out the timber as well. The house is larger than I remembered from over 15 years ago. It seemed quite tiny to me then, but probably that's because at that stage I was only used to 1:12th scale. It appears that it will measure about 18" square or so when finished and now that I am used to 1:48th scale, that seems large to me! On the ground floor there is a living room, dining room, kitchen and the base of the tower. The first floor has part of the tower, the bathroom and two bedrooms. The attic of course will have its usable space reduced by the sloping roof. The tower room extends up to that level as well. I will have a 'fold down' stairway so that my mini people can access this second floor, and probably the same for the tower room. I'll probably put a couch or desk and chair in the tower on the first floor and make use of it as a nice place to just sit and read. The top tower room will also be a type of 'snug' or maybe a studio - though it's not very large, in fact it is tiny. So now I need to put my thinking cap on and decide how to decorate this sweet little house. Sharon is quite correct (see her wonderful blog A Fairfield for Miss Lydia Pickett here) – this house is remarkably similar in appearance and layout to the Pickett Hill |
