Tower. Stairs, Windows & Doors

Once again I find myself in that age old conundrum.  What do I do first?

Before I can put finishings on I need to determine where my wiring for electric lights will go.  Before I can rout out wiring channels I need to know furniture placement and where the windows will be.  Also what are the most likely light sources for my cottage.

Window placement gets tricky since I need to adjust the windows I have or build them from scratch.  I've figured out it'll probably be a mix of the two.  For the tower, since the walls are pretty thin, I'll make some windows out of thinner wood, card board or mat board.

But I needed to cut out my doors and windows in the tower and the back walls.  I finally got up the nerve to do that this weekend.

I'm going to end up with a slight 'tunnel' effect for the upper wall door, but I don't really mind.

I got the stairs glued together completely. 

They came to the right height which is pretty good.

Then I got up the nerve to cut out the doors and verified that they would work with the door placement so I won't need to redo them at least.  I checked the ones for the ground floor to the second floor first.

Then I cut out the door for the second floor. It won't be directly above the first simply because the roof angle of the cottage won't allow for it.  The door would end up four feet high.  Not quite realistic.

 While I was waiting on the glue for the stairs to dry I got my sandpaper out and gave it some layers of paint and a coating of satin poly over it to keep it from getting too messed up once I put it on the tower.

Since I have to make the tower windows from scratch I made a template with the same Tudor arch to the top of them.  Since I got the stairs done I was able to place the windows and cut them out.

Then I got really brave and put the hinges on the tower.

I decided I wanted my windows on the ground floor and the second floor to be at least four feet from the floor.  That makes them smaller and a more reasonable height for a Tudor cottage.

Rather than build all the windows from scratch I'm cutting down the frames for the kits windows.  I'm not exactly thrilled with the windows for the kit, they seem a little haphazard to me.

I've got enough cut down to do the windows on the first floor, including my bay window in front.  I'll build up the window openings and cut out larger ones for the second floor later on.

The windows are odd, they'll only fit halfway into the walls, then the inner frame fits in the other half.  I guess the 'glass' goes in the middle?  Weird.  I'll build casement windows inside these frames which will make them look a bit more Tudor-like.

Not a bad weekend all in all.

Hope everyone's having a good weekend and a Happy Easter as well as a good Passover.