The Arrival

Musical inspiration from one of my all time favorite bands:

It's here, huzzah!  The Strawberry Patch Miniature House has arrived.  And in only four days.  Kudos to Real Good Toys!

I carefully opened the large box so that it would create a work tray, a tidbit I picked up in one of the articles I've read about building dollhouses. Inside were approximately a skajillion tightly packed pieces of wood of all shapes and sizes, and a 16 page instruction booklet. I forgot to take a picture of the box when it was full but here are just a few of the smaller pieces inside the box/work tray:

Inventory

The booklet advised that the first thing to do is take a careful inventory and match every single piece of wood in the box to the parts list - a LONG list that takes up two whole pages of the instructions. I emptied the box, spread the pieces all around me as far as the eye could see, and got down to it. Many of the pieces are very similar, differing from each other only by fractions of an inch, so I had to measure each part and confirm that the dimensions and number of pieces matched the list. When I identified a part or parts, I was instructed to label it with a sticky note and check it off on the list. This took a couple of hours, because I am easily distracted when performing a task that is this boring. Also, in my opinion using sticky notes is a stupid idea, they fall off immediately. For years to come I will be finding little pieces of yellow paper around the house with incomprehensible notes like "307A - Side Facia Left."

When I was finally done, I realized that there were some errors on the parts list.  For example, it listed one side wall, whereas a house obviously needs two side walls. Also, a few of the smaller pieces on the list were missing, so as per the instructions I emailed Real Good Toys with the part number and measurements.

After the long process of inventory and a first daunting read through the instructions, I decided to call it a day. But with this part behind me, I can move on to the actual building phase!