Sunday, March 5, 2017

The Barbies Furnish the Mansion: Wallpaper and Floors

Hi, I've been busy in the Barbie Mansion REDO. We had two weeks, where the Grand wasn't here, so I took the opportunity to do some work on the house.

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I started on the third level bedroom, where the boys have been banished too. The Pink graphics were not exactly gender friendly. The third level does have the deck where the boys can hang out. 

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Here the guys and chill, and munch popcorn on some vintage/used chairs. 
This gives them a little-girl-free place to hide. 


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I made a wardrobe out of a photo box. The blue stripes were perfect. Space up here, is pretty tight.
We are adding a  double-bunkbed for the 4 guy dolls.


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I wallpapered the bottom in a denim scrapbook paper and the top with a very small shirt stripe. The 
football and sports motifs are stickers. Most stickers are perfect size for fashion doll scale of 1:6.
I still have to hand paint the windows. 

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Here's a closer look. I will show you how I preserved the original graphics under this sports look. 


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In an earlier POST, I showed you how I masked and then sprayed
 the heck out of the entire pink-magenta house.

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Choosing a ivory satin spray paint for plastic, 
I masked the appliances off, but painted everything else.
The goal here was to get rid of the magenta ceiling-the windows were sprayed as a 
base coat for when I decide what color the trim will be. Covering the Barbie pinks and magentas require several coats of anything. 



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I chose another scrapbook paper for the wallpaper REDO. The contemporary circles, were a nice modern scale, with pinks, blues, greens, tans and white. Perfect to make the two houses blend, and something a real person might use in a real kitchen. My goal here is realistic play. 

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Here was my secret for applying the wallpaper. Dormtack a product that is basically a lightweight sticky on one side tape, that is removable. I found this at Michael's, and it promised to stick to anything, and still be able to be removed.

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I cut the tape down the center to make it thinner, because I was just trying to hold up paper. The secret is to twist the gooey side out into long pieces of stickum. Here you can see it applied to a piece cut for the window edge. Unlike gum stickums this laid very flat when it was applied.


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Here I have outlined the pieces with the rolled tape. I basically 'traced' the window shapes with a finger nail in the ridge of the plastic, then trimmed with a scissors.

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Pressed down the tape was light enough in weight to disappear, but super strong to hold to the painted walls. It worked very well on the existing graphics on the third floor which had a shiny finish.

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I just have to go back and do the windows, white, I think, and hang some white cupboards on the walls with velcro. I used the white tape at the top to make up the difference in the length of the wallpaper, it looks like clapboard or molding and again will be removable.

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'

Then there was the HOT PINK, UGH!--floor. Too much pink for me. Since, I see this house everyday, some pink had to go. I sprayed the textured floor with the ivory spray paint. Because of the texture of the floor, it was matte looking except in the Barbie squares, which stayed shiny? 

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Trying to unify the two houses, I planned to use the same sticky shelf liner in white squares 'grouted' in pink. You have to have some pink.  Well, I started at the back, working forward. I knew I only had enough paper for one shot. The trim around the elevator will be hand painted white, as will the pillars.


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It sorta worked. But, the textured painted surface of the tile paper really only stuck in some places--the shiny parts and itself. The tile design blends nice into the dining room, but I'm hoping it will work well enough once all the little doll feet walk on it, (or contact spray). I can always peel from the back and use removable contact spray?

So the townhouse side is pretty much done except to describe 
where the OLD and REDO furnishings in another post. 



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The second floor REDO is on the Victorian Mansion side. Here you can see the second floor is quite shallow compared to the first. The goal is to extend the second floor to the left to the end of the green floor,  and forward the entire floor forward approximately 3" to match the green sticking out on the far right. This will almost double the square footage on the second floor in Barbie scale, 1:6.

The Victorian house REDO: the peach will probably have to go. But first is the issue of the built-in vanity/tub, where the closet will go when the new floor is installed. Who, wouldn't want a walk-in dressing room--especially six Barbie's with LOTS of wardrobe.


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Problem: Here's the built-in tub/sinkvanity. The vanity tips forward and a pink tub appears. This has fittings molded into the wall with canister to the left and a pipe thing behind on the right.

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Well this isn't pretty, but I hacked at this with a Dremel tool circular saw and managed to get the tub out whole. Eventually I smoothed it out. I saved the tub to be used as a hot-tub in the  house 'yard'. Very cute graphics on this wall, I will paper over the lower part with some coordinating paper to go with the bathroom and the bedroom. 

So on to the second floor next week, the closet, and the bedroom, if the weather warms up like they promise and I can do some spray painting.


Thanks always for visiting. 
I will try and respond to every comment and answer every question.

All the opinions and photographs in this blog are my own, I have not been paid or reimbursed in anyway for my opinions, posts or any products shown. Please do not use photos without linking back to this blog without my permission. Thank you for your cooperation, Sandi Magle

I will be sharing at these fine Parties!






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