Getting started

 

What am I building?

The McKinley is a shallow wall-hung dollshouse from the American company Greenleaf. It measures approximately 31" high by 31" wide but only 9" deep when completed.  It's their typical older model house, die-cut from poor quality thin plywood, and assembled via tab-and-slot construction (newer kits are cut from better plywood, or even laser-cut).  I had been admiring the house in Greenleaf advertisements for decades, and decided to go for it  in 2011 when Greenleaf had a 25% off sale.  They shipped it to the UK to me.  And there it sat in a closet for a few years until we moved house in 2013.  Then it sat in the new house for another 10 years.

About me

I am a lapsed miniaturist, but I still have a lot of dollshouses that I built and/or decorated back in the day.  I have built three Greenleaf kits in the past: a Fairfield which was a disaster because I had no idea what I was doing, then a Willowcrest which I turned into a craft store, and finally another Fairfield which I kit-bashed into a Carpenter Gothic. So I have some familiarity with the Greenleaf construction and dealing with their rubbish plywood.  I've always enjoyed the build more than the interior decoration - I like following instructions and interiors just require too much original thought and decisionmaking.

The last 10 years I haven't done much with miniatures except for building a part-work 1:20 Japanese ryokan, and putting together some of the Chinese kits from Ro-life. I don't think I've been to a dollshouse show since before COVID, there is no local DH club, and I no longer subscribe to a DH magazine.  So I'm pretty out of touch with the current state of the hobby apart from enjoying the surprising development of television reality competitions based on miniatures.  But I'm retired now, and I'm trying to tackle some of the older items on the 'to do' list before I get too old.  So I'm going to have a go at the McKinley.

Getting started

My dollshouse room is very crowded, so before I could even open the McKinley box, I had to make some room.  I've moved a few houses upstairs, put away a lot of miscellaneous bits lying around, and I bought an old Victorian dining table for 20 quid on Facebook Marketplace to use as a work table. It was missing its leaves so I popped in a bit of scrap wood to gain some more work surface.  I've also had a look at the Greenleaf forum at some McKinleys, and had a look on Youtube where there are some videos of construction and modifications - as well as cautionary pointers on what areas need to be finished before they get closed off permanently during construction.

Then I could open the box and take out the sheets of what passes for wood, and do an inventory.  Luckily all sheets are accounted for, nothing seems to be missing.  Several sheets are a little warped but not too badly, possibly because the kit has been standing against the wall for several years so they may have literally sagged under their own weight.

I've ordered some spray sealer from Amazon, and DH gave me a lift to the DIY store to pick up some filler, caulking, masking tape and wallpaper paste.  Not that I have much in the way of wallpaper  (do people still buy that, or is it 'print your own' nowadays?).  So I should be ready to start punching out the main pieces and doing a test dry fit with masking tape so I can look at the layout and see if I want to change anything.