Staining Shingles

Another weekend of not accomplishing much on the dollhouse.  Mostly because I'm worn out from working on the real house.

We had some loose tiles in our back bathroom so I made my first foray into the world of tile, thin-set and grout.

My knees and back are protesting.

But I did get my shingles stained.  The first layer I used Rustoleum's Weathered Grey.

I like it but its very light.

So I let it dry overnight and then mixed up some black paint with a bit of grey and then watered it down.

I coated the shingles and then wiped off the excess just like I would a stain.

I still have a little bit of what looks like raw wood showing but it's more like layers of color rather than one flat stain.

That's it so far.  I need to paint trim and get it added to the upper portion of the house as well as get some rafters cut for under the eaves.  And work on the porch and columns for it.  That's not even including the furniture that needs to be made, or the window seat cushion and bedding.

I've got a list.

Hopefully I'll get a little more energy this afternoon and get a few more things accomplished but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Shingles! And Flashing

Not that sort of flashing.

I don't want to scare people.

The sort that goes around a chimney.  You know, copper, steel...that sort of thing? 

I thought about bronze, I really did.  But nothing else on the outside of the house is bronze.  So I decided to go with black metallic. 

I love thin cardboard.  It's so versatile.  I painted it black and then black metallic over it. 

A bit of glue still sticking to it but I'll fix that with some tweezers and paint touch up after I finish the roof.

You can see I've started shingling already.

That was time consuming until I found my glue gun. Then it went much faster.  Simple too, no dormers or gables so no angle cutting on the shingles. Yay!

Here's the main roof with the chimney cap and the skylight in place.  Fits very nicely.

Then I started on the smaller roof.

I'll  get some of my grey weathered stain and do that in a few days, then add a wash of black paint if the grey looks too light.

While that's drying I'll start back up on the porch.

I keep looking at my ladder and wondering if I should sand it and paint it or just leave the stain the way it is?  I might sand and soften a few spots strategically where hands would grip the rails.

But that's my big accomplishment for the weekend. Not much I'm afraid. 

Hope everyone else had a good time.

A Weekend's Work

My weekend saw one big thing (at least to me) accomplished for the dollhouse but due to a weeks worth of sleep deficit I really didn't accomplish much else.

Why was she not sleeping you ask?  Oh boy.

You all recall the plumbing issue we had to have dealt with?  That happened on Monday.  A broken stop valve under the sink was dripping steadily for goodness knows how long.  I keep extra makeup bags, cottonballs and a few other things under the sink so I didn't hear any dripping.  Needless to say everything under the sink was pretty much trashed.

The cabinet base looked so bad the plumber gave us a card for a company that deals with water damage.  They came out on Tuesday.

When they left on Tuesday, this is what they left behind. (Pictures courtesy of my husband's phone.)  He was awesome the whole week.

In case none of you recognize this equipment, they are dehumidifiers, heaters/fans.  They spent from Tuesday morning until Friday morning in our house, giving us a new appreciation of how quiet it is without them.  It's a bit like being inside a wind tunnel.

So...not much sleep this past week.  All the cabinets are a dead loss, as is the drywall on both sides of the wall and the carpet in the bedroom.

The process of getting it all replaced starts next week around Thursday after the insurance company gives us the go-ahead.

So this weekend I was moving in semi-slow motion because I haven't felt quite awake.  My husband was worse off than I was.  To accomplish anything for the dollhouse was a minor miracle.

Because I was so tired I neglected to take any in progress shots.  But you'll recall I was working on a topper for the chimney? So it would look realistic?

I got the stone on the chimney, and got it grouted and coated with ceramcoat.  So it looks pretty good.  Then I got to work on the topper.

A layer of bass wood covered in stucco and smoothed to look as much like concrete as I could manage serves as the edge of the chimney.  A cage made of scrap wood, painted black and some spare vinyl screen from an old door partially hides the stacks inside.  They're actually the inner plastic of a calculator tape roll.  You accountants out there will know what I mean.  And the roof to keep water out is actually painted cardboard.  It was the easiest to work with when it came to fussing with the angles.  Geometry is not my friend.

I wanted the roof angles to match the house a bit, so I was playing around with them.

And here's a close up of the cage part.  No birds or squirrels will next in this chimney.

I have an idea for the flashing and once that's on I'll start to shingle the roof.

Now I just want to flop on the couch and recover from the crazy week a bit more.

How are the rest of you doing?  I hope everyone else's week was a bit easier?

Cat With a Death Wish

You all remember my NOLA House?  That I slaved away on for a year and obsessed over?

The Building Inspector has a death wish.

Pardon the terrible quality of these photos.  All I had was my phone when I spotted where she was.

Insane!  This cat is insane.  And to get up and down she had to jump and walk all over the Beach Bungalow.

My husband says she has more balls than brains.  Since she's female I don't think she's been blessed with an abundance of either.

Lots of Little Things & the Chimney

Oh! And the lamp which suffered from sudden Cat! syndrome and broke has been repaired.  Seriously, these lamps have lived with us more than sixteen years and my husband actually likes them so I really had to repair the one that Tali and/or Miho broke.

The glue is drying but that I managed to find all the pieces and glue it together is a triumph in and of itself.

So that was my Real Life 1:1 scale drama.  After I post this I need to clean everything off of the bathroom counter that I won't need for tomorrow morning.  Which is frustrating because it's a lot of stuff that I need in the morning.  But somehow I'll manage.

On to the fun stuff.  Minis!

I decided to bite the bullet and put the stone on the chimney.  So that's all done and the glue is drying.  I'm working on making the chimney cap and I've been reading about flashing too so I have high hopes of making it look authentic.

Once I get all of that figured out and done I can start to add the shingles.  I found the extras I had but they're hexagon shingles so I probably need to go buy some more.

I started to mess around with decorating, at least a bit, trying different things out on the built ins and the mantle.  I need some art to go on the chimney bump out I think.

I took a picture from the small window just inside the entrance so I could see how the bench and fireplace built ins looked before I started adding accessories.

I've also added the kick plate to the kitchen cabinets as well as some wine bottles, canisters and a nice little bread box.

I had purchased some of Jodi's dinnerware from Shapeways and decided to try an ombre look.  I have mixed feelings about how they turned out.

I only painted two place settings so if I really hate how they turn out I can do something else with the rest of the dinnerware.

The last thing I did was try out a couple of rugs in the bathroom.  The cream colored rug is simpler, but the striped one picks up the color on the walls and the tiles in the main space.

 Anyone else have an opinion?  Obviously I need to iron the cream colored rug.

I'm working on the measurements for the porch since it's going to be a bit bigger than the standard porch for the kit.  Once I get that established I'll know how many columns I have to make and where to place them.

Still haven't found my wire so I can attach the ladder.  It's getting a little frustrating actually.  Have to keep looking.

Hope everyone else has had a good weekend.

Small Morning Project

So this morning I opened a couple of packages I'd gotten from Etsy and found the first of my Tiny Craftsman resident's wardrobe pieces.  I have in mind that this house is located up north, maybe outside of Chicago where I grew up, so sweaters are a necessity.





I'm planning on making a few 'display' pieces of clothing, slacks hanging over a hanger, maybe a shirt or two depending on how ambitious I get.  I've got my clothing rack already.

So I needed to make some hangers.

I found a tutorial on Pinterest to make miniature hangers out of paperclips.  (And every time I try to link to it something goes wrong so my apologies.)  I have some silver paperclips but I really wanted the colorful hangers that you buy in bulk at Walmart.  So I used my rubber covered color paperclips.

I'll admit it, I sat on the couch this morning and watched Fixer Upper and made hangers.

They didn't turn out badly.

I won't necessarily use all of them but I wanted to have enough to fill the rack.  Just in case.

The sweaters I bought came with their own pretty hangers but they weren't quite to scale so I put the sweaters on my homemade hangers.  They work pretty well.

I'll probably pin the sleeves down so they look a little more realistic.

I got the sweaters from Dragonfly Knit Designs on Etsy.  They're so cute!  Can't get over them.

I can be pretty lazy when it comes to sewing so I'd love to buy a bunch more clothes but we have to have a plumber out to the house on Monday so there will be some economizing going on for a while.  I have a very bad feeling about Monday.

In order to put that out of my mind I'm going to do some research on roofing and figure out a color for my shingles.  Not sure if I have enough of them or not.  Might have to buy a bag or so at Hobby Lobby on my way home from work next week.  I thought I had another bag around somewhere so I need to hunt them down along with my wire before I go spending money.

And I'll spend part of my day working on my chimney and figuring out the front porch with hits steps and columns.

What are the rest of you doing today?

Trim and Ceiling Lights

While I let my brain mull over the fail of the shampoo bottles I decided to work on some of the exterior trim.  This is more of the paint, glue and wait stuff so I started to do a few things at a time in the hopes of making actual progress.

I had already drilled the holes for my can lights and finally routed out the wire channels on the roof side.  Before I added the 'cans' I needed to paint.

I taped off the 'ceiling' part of the roof and painted the white underside of the eaves so I wouldn't have to do it later.  Then after that dried I painted the ceiling and glued the 'cans' in.  Then the lights.

Waiting for the glue to dry on that I started to work on the skylight.  I changed the interior trim to match the rest of the house's craftsman style, stained it cherry and glued it in.  The exterior is painted black metallic and I didn't glue it in yet.  I want the option of removing it in order to take pictures.

Glue is still drying but so far so good.

The can lights will run off four AAA batteries which will be hidden in the chimney.    I've started to build the chimney but it isn't finished yet.

While all that was drying I glued on the exterior trim for the windows and a bit of the trim on the roofline and porch.  I like how it looks so far.

The picture window is also removable, at least from the inside.  Again, I wanted the option of multiple picture taking angles.  The rest of the windows open and close but the front window doesn't so I can't stick a camera through it without removing the glass.  I'll use some sticky wax to hold it in place when I'm done.

My corners don't look as nice as I'd like so I need to adjust and trim them out a bit more.  The wainscoting ledges don't meet properly.  Live and learn.

I've got to work on the rest of the trim and then begin to build the porch and columns for it.  I'll need to add stone to the chimney as well.  Plus it needs some stacks and more detail to look realistic.

Then its figuring out the base and some landscaping while I work on the furniture.

We lost the internet for fourteen hours today so I actually got most of this done today and yesterday afternoon.

How's everyone else doing?  I need to go catch up on the postings!