Working on the staircase

There are some parts of this house that are so much fun I hate to stop working on it, and other parts that are a pain. The staircase is one of those parts that doesn't seem to want to fit right no matter what I do. It's kind of a nice staircase, with interesting landings and things, but getting it to line up exactly right is next to impossible. I am going to leave it this way while it dries, then add another piece of wood to the ceiling so the back post on the landing will attach to that, since every time I tried to adjust one thing, something else went out of whack. (You can see where the back post of the landing doesn't attach right when you enlarge the photo by clicking on it).

I've got two clamps holding the top part until it dries, and a pair of pliers propping up the bottom part of the bannister until that dries. There are two more diagonal layers for the bannister, spaced with little wooden pieces, (you can see the lower one sticking up from the diagonal part that's on there), but I decided not to do any more on it until tomorrow when the glue is good and dry.

I've also been working on some of the accessories when I go up to help out my mother every day. I've got a wooden telephone booth almost done, the little wooden telephone that goes inside it is almost done, and I've been working on a little shoji lantern. The lantern will probably be cute when it's done, but it's horrible to build, because you have to cut some very tiny pieces of wood exactly to fit the paper that wraps around three sides of the tiny wooden frame you make. Then you have to make a little door for it. The pieces of wood are unbelievable tiny. The bells on the wooden phone were hard too, because they are the heads of some tiny brass nails you have to cut off and apply to the phone. Of course the heads of the nails would much rather stick to your fingers than they would to the phone! I also finished a very tiny little dressing table. I'll take pictures of all of that in a day or two, when I've finished the lantern and phone. Oh yeah, I also finished a little "shoe stone" thingy that's kind of interesting. I'll post photos of that later too.

I'm also working on cutting out some leaves that look like palm fronds for a plant. There are a ton of them, and they have a lot of tiny fronds sticking out on each leaf that need to be cut individually. The instructions say to cut them with an X-Acto knife, but I haven't had much luck doing it that way, so I'm using scissors instead. I've been cutting five per day. The photos of the plant completed look really nice, but I am not having fun with those leaves!

Anyway, I'll be glad to get the staircase done, because then I will be able to make and decorate another tatami room! Decorating the rooms is the best part, but the long boring things like shingles and tatami mats add so much to this house that they really are worth doing, even if I get tired of working on them.