Re-designing the Front Porch

For today's musical inspiration, this was the only song I could think of that had "front porch" in the lyrics.

We had to take the center front panel off in order to add the porch. The first part was easy to install because both the top and bottom part had pre-drilled holes for the posts.

The next part was a little trickier. From the beginning I wasn't in love with the design of the porch on this house.  The proportions just seem wrong.
 

I'm not crazy about the design of the porch

I think the x-shaped ballusters make the railings too high.   I don't understand the railing in front of the door at all, and I think there should be a railing on the third floor instead.  When I was mulling over this idea, I came across this blog post:  1930s Glam Townhouse from "Diary of a Dollhouse" blog

This an amazingly creative and beautiful dollhouse, which was "bashed" from an existing Strawberry Patch dollhouse.  The blogger did quite a bit of renovation to the structure, including something very similar to what I envisioned for the front porch.  It looked great, and this confirmed that I was on the right track. 

Since I wanted the railings to be shorter, I decided to just cut the existing ballusters in half.  I was really happy with the way they came out.  I think the shorter look is more elegant.

Cutting the ballusters in half gave a look that I preferred.
Painting all of the ballusters and getting them to line up
inside the railings was a big pain in the neck.

Since the original design didn't call for the railing on the third floor, it presents a few issues.  First, I'll have to find or somehow make additional posts and porch railing pieces, because the railing in front of the door didn't extend around to the sides (with balusters in half, I have plenty of those so I don't need to find more).  Second, there will be no pre-drilled holes to insert the posts into, so it will be a little trickier to get everything to line up properly.

Well, for now the porch is halfway done and I think the finished product is going to look good.

My re-designed porch, awaiting the purchase
of more pieces so I can add railing to the third floor. 

A final thought:  anyone who wants to build a Miniature House should definitely get a small mitre box.  I got the one below from Amazon for about $15.00 and I have used it constantly for this project - for example, cutting the ballusters in half.