Tennyson Construction

Page six: Wiring and Finishing

Note: Images can be clicked for a larger view.

The dollhouse is almost done!!

This image shows the house after the wiring was done. The porch rails and some eaves brackets still need to be finished and attached to the house.

On the base, you may notice rows of switches. The house is wired so that all the lights are on seperate circuits and can be turned off, or turned on in either a 'bright' or a 'dim' setting. I also wanted the switches for the lights to be located in one location, rather than in each room.

I did not use a dollhouse transformer, or dollhouse wiring parts to wire the house. Ed, my man, enjoys electronics, so he offered to help me with the wiring. He suggested that I not buy any dollhouse electrical parts, except for the lights, the outlets, and the wire. He claimed that it would be less expensive than using parts specially made for dollhouses. (It turned out to not be less expensive, but I have 15 wonderful switches that look and work the way I want them to!)

We made a list of parts we needed. We mail-ordered a transformer, the toggle switches, and some variable resistors. The rest of the parts we needed were salvaged from various retired electronic devices.

I made a control panel out of basswood. We drilled holes in it for the switches and I printed and decopaged a label to it. Once the control panel was glued to the base of the house, we were ready to wire.

The photograph to the left shows the bottom of the house and the mess of wires that were there before the wiring was complete. The transformer is located under the house, so the only electrical thing external to the house is a plain power cord going out the back.

I don't claim to know anything about electronics. However, I do have a circuit diagram of the wiring we did.

One of my favorite parts of the construction was building the stone foundation. The stones are made of plaster. I laid out the stones on my table and figured out how to make them fit. After gluing them on the house, I used dollhouse stucco for mortar.

The last thing to do was to finish the porch. I cut and painted some craft sticks and glued them around the base to make a skirting. I attached the steps, then installed the handrails. Doing the handrails was probably my least favorite part of building the house.

This is a view of the front of the completed house. It took me one year to do it. I started on May 15, 1997, and finished the kitchen appliances on May 14, 1998.

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