A New Name

So I was calling the house that my boyfriend and his family passed along to me the 'little blue house'.   But one day shortly after I wrote the last post I decided to name it the (Insert his last name) Mini Mansion.  S.M.M  or simply  The Mini Mansion.   Is this really anywhere near a mansion?  NO!   But that is what makes it even more fun!   And besides, who wants to call it a little blue house?  What if I repaint it a different color other than blue? Theoretically in a few years I could be calling a white house the 'little blue house'.  That would be ridiculous!  So it has been dubbed a new name!

So much has happened, with the Mini Mansion in terms of planning, thoughts and ideas!  And yes, the work has just recently commenced.

When I wrote last I was contemplating a bathroom.  I really loved the idea of a closed off room with an open door looking into a 'hint' of a bathroom.  I thought of different ways to accomplish it, but then......

I threw a cook stove into the kitchen and a cabinet.   I loved it! 

 I knew it would need a little table under the window and when I found a more 'farm like' table I quickly swapped out the smaller table from the log cabin.  The original log cabin table works PERFECTLY (sorry no picture).  I am toying with doing a wainscoting in the kitchen.  The cabinet, stove and table really take up the whole room so I knew that this was going to be a primitive kitchen. (No running water sink as there just wasn't room!)  I was ok with this. 

I settled on 'turn of the century' for this house.  Right around 1900!

The primitive kitchen threw me for a loop though.  You see, I don't mind having a house that isn't exactly historically accurate but having a 20-40's bathroom with running water but no running water in the kitchen bothered me too much.  So I nixed the idea for the bathroom and started to contemplate the upstairs rooms?   A bedroom and a nursery?  Yes that is what I was leaning toward.  

And then I threw some furniture in the living room.  

The picture is old, I believe I am going to turn the steps around the other way...and the chair and sideboard closest to the back are going to be swapped with each other.  Minor changes.  But the room really can't hold much more than those three pieces of furniture (And yes, they will be 'reupholstered' because that pattern is so not working!)   So how would I have an extra bedroom and person living there when there wasn't room?  (the kitchen table really only has room for two of the chairs...so it's small all around)   Well shucks!  Back do the drawing board.

A few days later......Ahhhhhh a sewing room for the lady of the house!   Fabulous!   I have nothing for it!  In fact, I can make this the house of a spinster or widow!  WOO HOO

I looked at color schemes for the outside and settled upon this color scheme

I actually have picked up some really cool features (paper for the walls in two rooms, a tea set, etc) for the Mini Mansion.   I can't wait! 

The 1900's timeframe only presented one difficulty.  I wanted to dabble in electricity in the Mini Mansion.  Why  not?  What better time than now to experiment, and something small would be perfect!  But seriously, 1900's would be a bit early for electricity.   I started scanning lights and saw that I could buy 'powered' oil lamps and lanterns.  Great!  I was back on track.  The plans were made!   I just needed to get the wiring kit and get started.   I asked for it for my birthday!

My parents lived up to the birthday expectations and I got the wiring kit.  I chose the tape wire as the option that I wanted to attempt.  Last night I went to work on the electricity.

I ran my first few inches of tape and hooked in the junction box and transformer.  After a bit of figuring things out I got the test probe to light up!  I was in business!  I ran my whole line of uncut/un-spliced tape throughout the house.  There were no splices so I didn't test it until the end.   There was NO POWER!   ARRRGGGHHH  There was no power anywhere.  Not even where I had first tested it!  I fiddled.  I moved things.  I became frustrated.

I stepped back and with the help of some Ben and Jerry's Ice cream calmed down.  I went to bed.  And in the middle of the night I had an epiphany.   There was a screw on the junction box....if that screw had popped into one of those copper conductors in the tape, it could be messing me up.

I woke up in the morning and checked...the screw had definitely pierced the tape in a bad location.  I fixed that and pulled out the test probe.  Sadly, it still didn't work.  But I was undaunted.  I had one other idea. 

The Mini Mansion has very thin walls.  The prongs/probes go almost the whole way through the wall.  I checked the opposing side of the junction box.  Sure enough, the prongs were piercing that piece of tape.  In essence I was short circuiting my electricity!  I added a bend on the outside of the house so that the junction box would be somewhere else and ran my test probe.    

VICTORY!   I checked and I had electricity the whole way to the end of my laid tape!

 I will be  making a splice and running another line of tape off of the first line!  

 I have the lights picked out, I just need to buy them!  But that will come.  I have to completely run the electricity lines first...then attaché wall paper, wainscoting,  siding, paint and position those steps (and put up the new rails on the steps!).  I have some time and quite a bit of work to do before I need those lights!

Meanwhile, the log cabin still does not have a bed finished........

AND the big news?  For my birthday my boyfriend bought my the Greenleaf McKinley!!!!!