Disaster Strikes!

By now, if you're following along with me and building your dollhouse, you're probably stuck.  I'm deducing this, because it happened to me the first time I built a dollhouse.  And the second.  And...the fourth.  I think the fifth dollhouse was the first dollhouse I actually finished.  I'd be going along, reasonably happily, and then something horrible would happen.  I'd regard my workbench in mute horror, feet rooted to the floor, as realization washed over me.  "Oh, no!  This is the end!"  Inevitably, I'd become so discouraged that I'd give up.  Don't let this happen to you!

Is it boils in your wallpaper?  Flooring that just doesn't stick to the floor?  Post your issue, and while I can't promise to fix it, I can certainly offer my best "how to get un-stuck" advice.

In the meantime, I recently had quite the disaster in my own studio.  I had this great idea for a new flooring idea--hand painted marble tiles.  If you visit my website, then you know that I love faux finishes.  I figured, hey, I know how to faux finish a tabletop, so I must also know how to faux finish a floor.  So, I gathered up my wood blanks (about 40 1" tiles for one small bathroom in my current dollhouse), sanded, gessoed and painted them.  These last three steps represented about half a day's worth of work.  Seriously, faux finishing can be labor intensive.  I finished the tiles, sat back and admired them...little did I know!  Disaster lurked just over the horizon....

I epoxied the tiles into place in the bathroom.  Those tiles should have been there for the rest of my life.  I weighted them, and I let them dry.  Overnight, I let them dry.  I removed the weights and I applied a coat of Mod Podge.  Now, as you know, if you're a regular reader of this blog, I use Mod Podge all the time--and I lay floors all the time.  I use exactly the same technique when I lay parquet floors.  Secure in the knowledge that the floor is going to look great, I went to dinner.  When I came back from dinner, lo! and behold, my floor dreams were now nightmares.  I had never seen such extreme warping in my entire life.  Needless to say, I tried to fix the problem.  I tried everything: glue, weights, sanding, cutting, everything I could think of.  It was horrible.  Eventually, two days later, I had to admit that all of my efforts at salvaging the floor only made it worse.  So, I did what any smart girl would do--I attacked the dollhouse with a chisel.  Specifically, I used a chisel to remove the floor.  An hour, and some sweat and tears (but, luckily, no blood) later, I was back to square one.  I sanded down the plywood and did what I probably should have done in the first place--laid a nice commercially available tile sheet.

If you're in this position right now, then it's important to hang tough.  Mistakes are the price of innovation and experimentation.  Yes, if we stick to what we know, then we get predictable results.  Now, I'm not knocking predictable results--it's important to build up an arsenal of techniques.  99.9% of the time, we're going to be using that arsenal.  However, there's only one way to add to that arsenal--and it isn't doing the same thing over and over again.  The risk we take, here, is that we become so comfortable that our work stagnates.  All of our rooms begin to look the same.  We become boring.  No!  Sure, you lose a few hours, or even days or weeks, of time--not to mention, occasionally, a wealth of supplies.  But really, who are you doing this for?  You're not a miniaturist to please someone else.  This isn't a race, although sometimes it can feel like one.  Remember, you're not making mistakes, you're learning new skills.  Hang in there, you can do it!