A Little House

Rachel and I delivered a replica of the Little House on the Prairie to the Puyallup fair today. We started this project 3 years ago, when Rachel first started homeschooling. She wanted to study pioneers and our intention was to build the Little House and electrify the fireplace using a paper clip switch. Three years later we are finally done! Well, done enough to take to the fair anyway. We still have some work to do.

We started out using a kit made by Dura Craft. However, after reading "Little House on the Prairie" by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and consulting "The World of Little House" by Carolyn Strom Collins, we realized we needed to completely modify the kit. My intention was for our house to replicate the size of the real little house on a 1/12 miniature scale, but our kit wouldn't allow for that, so our house is a little small (in more ways then one!). We used pictures from the website of the official historic site near Independence, Kansas to replicate where the door and windows would have been.

First, I redesigned the layout of the house, sticking to the size of the wood "logs" as provided on our kit. I did have to cut some to allow for the change in window and door position. Instead of using logs for the floor, as directed in our kit instructions, I used a solid plywood floor, thus allowing for extra logs, which were the ones I cut as needed. Rachel painstakingly glued all the logs together using tacky glue. She did an amazing job. And all this gluing was done three years ago. Then, the walls, floor, roof and door sat gathering dust while we waited to stain everything and put it together. That finally happened last weekend! I mentioned to Rachel that the fair was coming up and asked her if she wanted to enter our little house for judging. Of course she did! So, we had a huge weekend project. We went from pieces to an almost finished house in one week.

On Friday we put the walls and roof together. We used grout to chink our logs, and let it dry overnight.

We started staining everything on Saturday. It was a big job, and messy!

After the stain dried, I started building the stone chimney. This was a painstaking job, as I could only glue one row on at a time, then wait until it was mostly dry to glue the next row. I used Tacky Glue. If I had a better glue, it would have probably gone much more quickly. The top of the chimney will be made with sticks, and then the whole thing will be grouted, once our house returns from the fair.

This is how the little house looked the day before we took it to the fair.

We have some really cool details in our house. My favorites are Ma's blue china doll on the mantle and Pa's fiddle. We also have Jack the bulldog, and even the one tin cup shared by Laura and Mary. Our scale is a little off. The house is around 15" long and 12" wide. To be true to Pa's actual cabin, it should be 16" long by 15" wide. We were limited by our "logs". Also, our family is small - probably 3/4 of an inch rather then the 1 inch scale, so some of our accessories are a little large - like our rocking chair, fiddle (which is really a violin), cradle and spinning wheel. We still love it!

In addition to the chimney, there are a few other things to be finished when our house returns home. The front door has to fastened on. I used leather strap hinges fastened with tiny black screws. The lantern hanging from the roof beam needs to be ordered and fastened on. We created a praire grass base on which to display the house. We also have an outhouse which will conceal our mini-generator which will power our fireplace and candles! ( No more paper clip switch.)

It was hard to leave our house. We walked away, picturing it falling or being knocked over. Well, I hope it stays safe. And maybe it will even win!