The Building

Baseboard, Crown, Door and Window Moldings

Almost each room in the dollhouse, as well as in the real house, has a different molding crossection. This beautiful woodwork, which adds a great deal of charm to the house, includes the door frame and window frame moldings, the moldings on the doors themselves, the baseboard molding, the crown molding, the chair rails in the dining room and kitchen and the bead board wainscoting in the bathrooms. All of these moldings were milled from 1/16 or 1/8" sheets of maple. In some cases, where the molding was very complex, the molding was constructed from two separate sheets glued together with Elmer's Carpenters Glue.

Click on photograph to enlarge

Shown on the following photographs are the steps required to make the inside window moldings. An 8" strip of maple is clamped to the sliding milling machine table ready for the first cut which is a concave cut.
On the second pass, a thin round grove is cut into the wood as shown on the right.
The thin grove is smoothed first with a steel file and then the molding is carefully sanded with 120 grade sand paper and wiped clean. The line drawn on the wood strip shows where the molding will be cut with the table saw. After the final cut with the table saw the molding is sanded again and wiped clean ready for painting. Except for the window moldings, which are painted after being glued to the window frame, all of the moldings were given two primer coats and two finishing coats before being attached to the dollhouse shell.
The photograph on the right shows some of the great variety of moldings that were milled for the dollhouse.
Shown here is a detail of the chair rail in the dining room.
This is a closeup look at the bathroom wainscoting.

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