Success with Chateau kitchen

 Finally I pulled it all together today! I'm very pleased with the results and have a sense of satisfaction. 

I knew I had to spray paint the new arches, and went on the hunt for low-odor spray paint, as it's 30 degrees here in Chicago. I landed on PintyPaint  (comes from Spain) - I researched it and wanted to buy local, so I could work on this week while I'm off from work. Turns out JoAnn carries it so I scooped up 2 cans and started. At first, it seemed a bit strong, but I opened the windows a crack and had the fan on. It's dry enough in 30 minutes to do another layer.  I got a nice soft white that is matte. 3 coats and it was perfect. 

Hanging the  Ray Storey chandeliers was a challenge, I had to ensure the length of chain was the same for both, and I scrounged my old jewelry and patiently attached them. Needed to drill a bit up in the peak to ensure I could feed the wire through to the exterior roof. 

Gluing the Sue Cook corbels, the custom arches and the Unique Miniatures trim...all coming together. It's been a long time coming and I've invested lots of time (and money) into this room, and I'm happy it's done. 

Chateau kitchen arches

The arches have been cut, glued together (3 layers) and painted. I'm now ready to glue them in with the flat decorative trim between the corbel brackets. I have a week off and would really like to wrap this up. Need to install the 2 hanging lights too.

Workspace organization - Ikea cabinet

 My Cricut needed a better home than the old desk I had it on. Let me set the stage a bit. My main dollhouse miniatures workroom space is in the basement where I have the main storage cabinets including some Ikea cabinets.

When I got the Chateau dollhouse, I had to find a home for it in a different space than in the basement, since I wasn't going to work on it right away. So I located it in a 2nd-floor bedroom, which is where I do my real work - what I do for a living (I work from home). 

As I started to work on the Chateau, my need for tools, etc., came with that. It's not very convenient to have to constantly run down 2 flights of stairs to grab sandpaper or glue. So I have had a dual-use room for the last 2-3 years. I've improvised with some old desks that we no longer use (I do use some of these desks as my dollhouse miniature village in the basement). So my old desk housed my network equipment and printer and became the temporary home for my Cricut. 

I've been admiring Sherrill's craft room and her use of Ikea Havsta cabinets and bit the bullet and bought one a few weeks ago. Today I got down to business and put the one I bought together. It of course took me longer because I did a few things backward but it's finally done. I'm very happy with it! I love the nice wide size and the narrower depth of the cabinet. 

It also helps to hide the things I now have inside - printer paper, Cricut supplies, a color printer...and some mini tools. I still have to clean and organize the closet in this room. It's become a catch-all for more mini supplies (wallpaper, tools, furniture I will use in this dollhouse). But that's for another day. And please ignore the mess around my actual desk, I have to organize the old desk on the left or get rid of it. I will probably get rid of it too, but right now my rolling drawers slide right under it and it does provide an additional surface to be able to set up my cutting mat for wallpaper.