Baseboard, Crown, Door and Window Moldings

Almost every room in the dollhouse, as in the real house, has different molding cross-sections. This beautiful woodwork, which adds a great deal of interest and charm to the house, includes the door frames, window frames, the moldings on the doors themselves, baseboard moldings, crown moldings, 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 deep and very complex,  the moldings were constructed from two separate sheets of wood glued together with Elmer's Carpenter's Glue.

Click on photograph to enlarge

Shown in the following photographs are the steps required to make the interior window moldings. An 8" strip of maple is clamped to the sliding milling machine table ready for the first concave cut.
On the second pass, a thin round grove is cut into the wood as shown on the right.
This 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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