I Found My Wire!

Well, I found some of my wire. God knows where the rest of it got to.  But luckily the wire I did find was bronze-ish/copper and a decent gauge so it worked for what I wanted.

I also found a couple of little eyelets.  I think that's what they're called, the little screw ins with circles on the ends?  Whatever they are, I found a couple that would work in my stash of beads and stuff.

After some eyeballing and measuring I figured out where I need to screw the eyelets into the ladder.  Then got my wire bent/shaped to the right length and size and screwed holes into the floor and loft edge for the wire track to go into.

I would like to say that my normal procedure would be to put the wire in with glue, then curse because I forgot to attach the ladder first.  Thankfully I skipped that step this time around and managed to get the ladder on the wire track before the final glue was in.  Yay me.

So here's the finished product.

I did clean up the extra glue afterwards so there won't be random splotches of it on my loft floor.

The ladder stands up pretty well when it has the loft to brace against so I'm pleased.  And when it comes down it won't hit the sliding door of the bathroom either. Yay.

I found some pretty shampoo and body wash bottles on Etsy, in Stephanie Scott's shop, and I really like how they look.  Not name brand but our home owner is more the organic shampoo type anyway.

Not bad right?  I might add a little jar of bath salts to hide behind the shower curtain, just for fun and because I'll know it's there.  We'll see.  I've got some stuff to make a loofah too which is another project for today.

The major project for Saturday was the front porch pillars.  So I started with mortar for the stone.

And while that dried I started on the cap and tapered columns.  I made the cap from some mitered wood of the same width as the wainscoting lip.

Then a little step up detail to the cap, which I widened a bit more with some strip wood.

Because I noticed on a lot of the Craftsman houses I've seen there's a squared base and then the tapered columns begin after the trim and I'd inadvertently made my little step up the same width as my tapered column base.

The tapered columns were a bit tricky but the website I found, actually a blog, was super helpful. I don't know if Mr. Katz ever thought he'd be helping miniaturists build their dollhouses but his blog is excellent.

The trick is determining your base width and your top width and then centering your top measurement over your base with the length/height of your column in the middle.  Then you cut from point to point.  I started with an inch and a quarter and cut that in half for my top width.  That's for the front and back. The sides you need to remove the width of the boards you're using. 1/8 bass and balsa in my case.  So your side column pieces are narrower.  Then you sandwich them together and glue.  And tape.  And pray.

Then you test fit.  With tape still in place with the glue dries so I could untape and make adjustments if I needed to.

I had to do some sanding and then I started adding trim to the base of the tapered column.

And then to the top of the columns. Otherwise they look unfinished to me.

Before I painted I went over everything with wood putty to fill in any little cracks and to smooth things out.

And waiting for that to dry was a pain but I managed.

Sanding and paint.  And glue them into place.

 And I added the trim to the top of the porch so it looks more finished.

Voila! The porch is pretty much done.

I have a doorknocker that I'm waiting on to arrive, and a mailbox to put up but apart from some plants that's pretty much it.

Here's a question for you, should the columns have a wooden cuff around the bottom of the stone?  Something in white to echo the white columns above it?

Here's a few pics with the wood raw just to give you an idea.

Not so great pictures off my phone but you get the idea.  It just feels like the stone needs some transition to the wood porch floor.  Does that make sense?

I also need to measure for a base so I can have some landscaping and something solid for the whole thing to go on.

So that was my entire Saturday and my Sunday morning folks.  What do you think?  And what have the rest of you been up to?

Oh! Also we've gotten the go ahead from the insurance company to get everything repaired from the water damage.  And won't that be fun to pay for the remainder with our deductible but hopefully it'll start getting rebuilt this week.  Yay! Doors on my cabinets and shelves inside again.  Very exciting.