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It's A Summer Fun Update! |
It has been well past a year since my acquisition of a 3 level dollhouse that I had intended to modify from a modern fashion dreamhouse to a paramiltary base of operations for my collection of Cool Girls . This was to be my summer project last year , but as sometimes happens , life got in the way and work never commenced aside from the oddbit of various conceptual images for the interiors . The hiccup this year was the crash of my PC which took all my interior concepts with it , but on the high side I had the same 3D architecture program on my Mac so I decided I would work up some new interiors .  As regards the interiors , the loss of my previous conception designs was not a major catastrophe , none of them really had me thrilled . I decided , as I began work on this new batch , to concentrate less on an overall idea and focus purely on the room itself . I wanted an interior that I could get a lot of mileage from when it came to " location " , and figured to try a design that would allow me to create modular wall components that could be installed or removed depending on the type of scene I wanted to portray . When considering an interior , you really need to include a minimum of features , a " main area " of course , and an " entrance/exit " ; this one has the bonus of a " hallway " simply by virtue of the layout of the dollhouse frame . Once my design was complete , I then had the software program ( which , since I've not yet mentioned it , is SketchUp! ) calculate the dimensions for me .  A Humble Beginning . . .
The first thing I did was remove the hardboard back panel and give it a generous coat of flat gray spray primer , forever obscuring " Barbie's " bedroom ( thank god! ) Since the outer frame of this dollhouse is solid wood , and the exterior wall panels are hardboard the structural solidity is pretty sound which meant I did not need to use any materials for the wall components to enhance the strength of the room , thus they are constructed only of matboard . Why matboard , you may wonder ? A couple reasons ; A , I had it readily available . B , I could cut the various panels with my matt cutter for beveled edges allowing me to create mitered edges for nice crisp corners , and also once glued together mitered edges provide a very strong joint . C , the cardboard should be thin enough , that I can experiment with creating modular feature details such as pictures , vents , cabinets , shelving units etc . that attach via magnets .   The Magnet Test
As I was creating the doorway for this interior wall panel I thot that this would also be a good time to test out the magnetic attachment system for room details . The test objects were A: my Betty Boop refrigerator magnet , and B : a metal sphere from one of my Magnetix sets . I used the magnets from the Magnetix set as my anchor points due to their small and unobtrusive size ( only about 1/4 inch ) . It took 5 to hold the Boopster , being that she's a heavy little thing and but one to hold the metal sphere . I chalked this test down as a success . Being able to utilize magnets as a way to attach room details regardless of what they might be certainly adds a great deal of potential to making this interior a very modular scenic as well as allowing me the benefit of not having to mar the walls with velcro or tape or glue . A note about the construction of the modular wall panel and the doorway , since there might be a few folks reading this that might have questions or concerns about the structural strength . As I mentioned previously , I am using matboard for the wall panels , and cutting beveled edges with a mat cutter . Sobo white craft glue is used to glue the pieces of matboard together at the edges , I use Sobo solely for its fast dry time and its suitability for gluing porous surfaces . To further strengthen the wall joints I have also used a hot glue gun to run a line of glue on the back of the joint . Makes for a quick and durable bond . The total depth of this panel is around 1 inch and 3/4's , the door will be set in 1/2 inch on either side . My plan is to make the exterior side wall panel hinged so that I may adjust magnet placement as the need arises and also to allow changes in door styles . Right now I am creating it to be an electronic sliding door but I hope to also design the jamb in such a way as to also allow me to modify it to function as an ordinary hinged door as well . One last note , as you probably have noticed , there is a bit of a sway in the floor , so I am going to need to go in and add some foamcore or something to level out the floor's surface . Creating a Door  I wanted a high tech looking door for this set , and it would need to be stable enough to withstand a lot of opening and closing . The body of the door is foamcore , and to create the surface of stainless steel and flat black poly alloy I simply used poster board , measured and cut to shape . The poster board was glued on with trusty old Sobo Glue .  | CG HQ Pt2 | cghqUpdate | | CoolGirlCustoms | WildRoses | CoolGirl Collection | CoolGirl Collection2 | CoolGirl Collection3 | TheToysmith | CoolGirl Collection4 | CoolGirl Collection 5 | CoolGirl Collection 6 | CoolGirl Collection 7 | CoolGirl Collection8 | Kill All Robots CyberHuntress | CoolGirl Collection 9 | CoolGirl Collection 10 | Bad Amy | Buckaroo Betty | SimpleDetails | CoolGirl Collection 11 | coolgirlHQ | Cool Girl Comics | Cool Girl collection 12 | KisaragiKustom | AlternativeCutey | coolgirl_collection9 | DX-Style Yuni | DX Style Sanchez | Cool Girl _Akiko Fuji | CG Gallery | Samurai Figures | Cool Girl Collection13 | Cool Links | Triad_2 | Playscale ResourceCenter | Sword and Sorcery | | ReelArts Blue Bulleteer | Shocker Toys | Cool Girls | Triad Toys | KiniKomix | KiniKomix2 | Custom Action Figures | eBay Auctions | AppleseedTribute | Macross Valkyrie | Planet of the Apes | Horse Sense | WeaversUpholsteryToo | ToyBiz_Iron Man | Dirty Pair | On Display | The OTHER Gorby | Obitsu | | Return Home | Updates | The Archive | Gorby Site Map | Geeb-O-Rama's Model Workshop | Geeb's Toy Box | Geeb-O-Rama Goodies | Movie Madness | World Of The Bizarre | Cool Beans | |
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