Can we finally move forward Abner Raleigh?

My goodness, I think I am going over this too much! Time to buy and cut the plywood, and move on.

I have been arranging and re-arranging the furniture until I am dizzy. I think I have two possible living room furniture arrangements that will work with a door to the dining room next to the fireplace. For a simple house (at least on the first floor) ... hmmm....

View of composite layout showing the living room, dining room, and the entry hall with its bookcase for the library area.

Close-up of the hall and bookcase, and the dining room. The kitchen is "in front" of the dining room in place of the back of the entry hall. The real house has a front-to-back hallway with doors on both ends to allow cross ventilation breezes for those hot and humid Virginia summers.

I have decided that the dimensions are: 29" width x 28" deep. The ceiling height will be 10" on the first floor, and I am pretty certain that the the second will be 9" as I originally decided.

I still have to decide on the slope of the roof for the second floor. Mansard roofs have a slope of 11 degrees and I think I will follow this-- no sense re-inventing.. Then there is also the break in the roof to make a top portion at a different angle... hmm.... I think there could be some interesting building here. But first things first--build the first floor.
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View showing "broken" Mansard roof--should be interesting!

Now I have to lay out a cutting diagram for the carpenter. I think the house can be built with two sheets of Baltic Birch 3/8" plywood which comes in 60" x 60" sheets. I will buy two and if I need more my woodworker's shop can get more.

I will have him cut just the wood for the first floor and its ceiling since this will be as a complete unit with ceiling. The second floor (attic) will be built later. And then will come the "broken" roof topping. And then, I will have to complete my ideas for the porches and the front-opening doors.

I will be going back to the layout of the house to plan out the electrical system. I think I will use tape wire with transformer(s) in the storage area under the house. I like the power strip system but I think the house design makes pulling wires through and hiding them problematic.

More prelim ruminations for the Abner Raleigh House

Funny that I thought we had worked out all the basic design decisions! Anyway, I have added another inch depth to the living room and therefore taken away one inch from the dining room. The dining room does not have much furniture and the table is small, so it should be all right.

I do think that I have to add two inches to the width, otherwise, no matter how I rearrage the living room furniture (and like the arrangement), the door to the dining room gets to be a problem. The door to the dining room is necessary otherwise I would have to take room from the kitchen to have a door to the dining room from the hall. And, for the moment, the kitchen is too small to lose floor space. Thus the interior will be 30 inches x 28 inches. --Stay tuned, nothing here is written is stone!

We have been spending some time trying to find the wallpaper and in for some rooms, we are having second thoughts about "which wallpaper". Fortunately, we still like the living, dining, and kitchen wallpaper! One nerve-wracking thing about the living room wallpaper is that my sister only could get three sheets. This does not allow for any mistakes, nor does it let us paper the door wall. I will take a scrap of the paper (after wallpapering!) to Home Depot and get a custom color paint of the background color, and just paint the interior door wall.

Chinese Fantasy. Made by X-acto ( I think this is old, but spectacular paper).

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Symphony Stripe by MiniGraphics. It is a soft blue with a purple cast-- gorgeous.

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Fruit Sprays by MiniGraphics. Just a happy wallpaper.

And we have a new problem that we can't find one dining chair. My sister just loved the dinng table and chairs but it is an older Bespaq set. She did have four chairs but the box marked "4 chairs" now only has three! Well, we are still searching all our furniture supplies and are hoping it was just "mis-filed"! It probably will be impossible to match the chair any more. Yuk!!!

Ok , I am now going off to have a drink and some dinner. -- Enough for today! Thanks for listening to me babble!

Funny thing--but all may be ok for The Abner Raleigh House

Cardboard floor plan with interior walls marked in pencil (so I could erase and adjust, if needed).

I decided to try again with the 28 x 28" plan. I added some scrap lumber for walls, and finally came up with a room that looks reasonable (the fireplace is just an old one I had hanging around). There still is no room for the door to the dining room.

Living room layout

I am still thinking about the width of the house. I may add two inches to the width but keep the depth of the house at 28", so the house becomes 30" across x 28" deep. I think the rooms are deep enough but maybe a little more width is the answer. I have some gorgeous Chinese wallpaper for the living room and I would like it to show up well--also, a good reason for the dining room door to "go".

I am also pretty well committed to a front and back opening main floor (I know I still have to figure the logistics of the porches.)

Flushed with this success, I will now make a cup of tea and rest on my laurels.

Funny thing happened with the mock-up of the Abner Raleigh House

I marked the cardboard with the room layout and then placed the furniture for the living room, dining room, and hall. I didn't like it! The rooms didn't seem the right size? ... or something else? Yikes!! Just when I thought I was an my way. Well, the hall seemed ok, but that just has a staircase and a bookcase--hard to go wrong there.

A 28 x 28 inch house seemed right on paper and I really didn't want to go larger ... but ....

Now I am trying to decide if I just need to make the living and dining rooms more than 17 inches but keep the other dimension? (The living room is 17 x 14" and the dining room is 17 x 13 5/8"). Do I have to make the house deeper, too? I guess the next layout will be 30 x 30. No sense just upping by one inch, might as well go for broke... Or maybe I should just make the house deeper to 30" and keep the 28" across the front? ... Or I could compromise and make the house 29 x 29" ???

I guess I have to play with the "mock-up" in different sizes. The layout of the rooms stays and the corner fireplaces stay. I would like the door between the living and dining rooms, but that is not necessary. The hallway could be narrower but I like the idea of a "sort-of" library in the hallway and the only way that is possible is if the hall is not less than 10 3/8" wide.

I think I just gave myself a headache.

Behind the Build (#2): Abner Raleigh House, Williamsburg, Virginia.

Well, one thing about thinking and gathering info Fall, 2008, is that, depending on the calmness of ones life, one may or may not find all the notes -- to say nothing of being able to remember what no longer can be found (as yet). For one, I had elevation drawings of the house. A lot of the "missing" are not very important since I am not making an exact scale model -- but just an anoyance.

I did find some notes:

The Lightfoot House is 28' - 6" in width (east to west) by 31' - 3" in depth (north to south).

The exterior colors and the numbers used to designate them in the color files of Colonial Williamsburg: the exterior -off-white (#696); the outside surface to the exterior doors, the blinds, and basement windows are a dark blue green (#187); porch floors and the treads of the steps are light brown (#25).

The floors throughout the house are face grain, yellow pine boards, varying in width from four to eight or nine inches.

The wall heights from finished floor to fininshed ceiling height of the first floor is approximately 9' - 9"; the second floor is approximately 7' - 10 1/2 ".

As I mentioned, the Abner Raleigh House will be 28" x 28". I will try to replicate to exterior colors (I am a liitle leary of duplicating the dark blue green color). I will use yellow pine random-width flooring boards.

There is always a big debate about ceiling heights in our dollhouses. For the Original Rowbottom Manse and the 1/8" plywood kits, I kept the approximate 8 - 8 1/2" ceiling height. I really dislike having such low ceilings in a dollhouse. Somehow, it looks lower than actual 8' ceilings in a real house. Also, it is hard to work with low ceilings--for me anyway.

So.....The first floor ceiling height will be 10" as in the real house; the second 8 or 9". At first, I was thinking of 9" first-floor ceilings, but then I decided to go for 10". I think that 9" ceilings should be the minimum, at least on the non-basement, second, and attic floors--just for good looks and ease of decorating. Of course, all this is a personal decision. Of course, it also makes planning easier if all the ceiling heights are the same--just one height to remember!

The new floor plans:

Abner Raleigh House. First floor plan, living and dining room to have corner fireplaces.

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Abner Raleigh House. Second floor plan, both bedrooms room to have corner fireplaces.

Right now, I am thinking of corner fireplaces in all the rooms, or not. I am not sure if the kitchen is large enough--the house will not be made larger, just a two-story bump-out for more room.

I am about to begin a very basic floor layout on a 28 x 28-inch piece of cardboard. I have some furniture for the house (thanks to my sister) to place on the board. At some point in the near future (I hope), I will buy the plywood and have the woodworker's shop cut most of the pieces. Then I will start a mock-up using plywood. I still have to work out the angle of the Mansard since I want a decent amount of room on the second floor. The little people hate it when they hit their heads on the ceilings! I also have to work out exactly where I want the interior doors. And then on to laying out where the tape wire will go, and if I will need more than one transformer.

Behind the Build (#1): Abner Raleigh House, Williamsburg, Virginia.

The William Lightfoot House, constructed before 1782, Williamsburg, Virginia. (This photo and the next two are from Colonial Houses: The Historic Homes of Williamsburg by Hugh Howard.)

View from other side. This is a good view of the details of the front with its Mansard roof.

 

Floor plan of the house, more or less present day, but with the structure (size, interior walls, fireplaces, etc.) of the original, to the best of my knowledge.)

A step back in time (Fall 2008):
Back in the fall of 2008, I was in a funk because the dollhouse I wanted to buy from DHE was no longer being made and the RGT one that I could have used as a substitute (with modifications) was too expensive. It was to be a glorious Edwardian. It wasn’t as if we didn’t have houses to finish, it’s just that I like to be thinking of the next project, be it however far down the road. Thinking about the next house is always relaxing – no pressure to start it; no pressure to finish it--just something to think about while watching the grass grow.

While I was in this “bad mood”, I decided to re-read Colonial Houses: The Historic Homes of Williamsburg (by Hugh Howard and published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. in 2004) as therapy. (I love the houses and gardens of Colonial Williamsburg.) All of a sudden, on page 107, my eyes rested upon the most delightful little colonial -- the William Lightfoot House (constructed before 1782) on Duke of Gloucester Street. This house was nothing like the Edwardian that I had wanted to contemplate, but I was charmed! To heck with dollhouse manufacturers and their whims, I would just scratch-build. I discussed this with my family and they immediately wondered where we would put this house--but for the moment we didn’t need a spot since this was a house for planning and daydreaming!

The build of this house will follow our usual: my husband cuts the wood (the woodworker’s shop also offered to cut some of the wood), I build, and my sister furnishes.

Design Features:
The design and floor plan of the William Lightfoot house was used as the model. I will take the spirit of the house but make some changes as my whimsy takes me. I wanted to keep the house small and I thought I could keep the footprint at 24” wide by 28” deep but the kitchen addition required a “bump-out” to have a proper size. I didn’t like this look, so the house grew to 28” x 28”. Besides the photos from the book, I have actual plans and historic references to the house from various Virginia archives and the Library of Congress.

The house will open front and back for the main floor, and the Mansard roof will flip up. I am considering a two-door opening front: one from the left edge to the hall wall and the other from there to the right edge. I still have a lot of thinking to do for how the house will open on the main floor since there are porches front and back

The house is being built from 3/8” Baltic Birch plywood. The house is two rooms deep. The outside will look as close to the William Lightfoot house as possible. MDF clapboard siding (from HBS) will be used on the exterior and the roof will be wood shakes. I will build the corner fireplaces, or I may buy them from Jim Coates on eBay. (I love his fireplaces). I will buy standard “pinned” doors and change them to hinged doors. The ground floor windows have been purchased from the Dolls’ House Emporium and are 6/6 wooden, working windows. I had wanted to use Timberbrook 6/6 wooden working windows in the attic, but the company seems to be no longer--too bad, the company made great products. Since the roof is a Mansard, I will build my own dormers; I think that this is easier than trying to modify the size and slope of the standard commercial 45 degree dormers. I had to do that once before for Hawthorne’s Rare Books bookshop, and was doable but tricky

Fast forward to the present (December 2011):
I have been following a numbers of builds of houses this year and I am thinking of a build also. I have much to do yet on a number of my houses but…so I have pulled out my project notes (transcribed above) for William Lightfoot. Since this house is in private hands, I am calling mine the Abner Raleigh House and it will be, as all my houses are, set in the present, and as a renovated ca. 1792 house.

Shortly, I will post some more pictures.

Irony:
A couple of years ago, my sister surprised me with a RGT Foxhall Manor so that at some point in time I could have my Edwardian! It is lying flat in its boxes under the guest room bed until its time comes.