Painted Siding On the House!

So a very quick post to show all of you the painted siding now that its on the house.  Just two walls but you'll get a very good idea of how it will look. I actually have all the siding painted and on, I just didn't have time to do a dry fit to show you the whole thing yet.

Obviously I need to do a few touchups and there's no trim or windows, I'll probably paint those this weekend.

I need to hit Hobby Lobby for some balsa wood to make a sloped roof to go over the flat roof.  I'm hoping to do that tomorrow at lunch and then this weekend get it cut and do a dry fit of everything to see how it works. 

I also need to order another angle cutter because mine came apart on me last weekend.  I cannot survive without that thing. 

I was worried that once I got all that blue onto the siding that I wouldn't like it as much but I'm not having that problem.  I love that blue.  I think with white trim and the front door in either a neutral or maybe Cascade for some pop I'll love it even more.

What do all of you think?

Paint Color Picked

The great paint debate has been resolved. 

The big problem with Nautical (dark blue) was how the detail of the siding gets swallowed up by the color.  So I made a trip to home depot and had them mix up some sample paints for me in a primer included semi-gloss. 

Here are the results:

As you can see, the semi-gloss really makes a difference in the way the siding looks.  Still gets that great pop of color but the details of the siding are more easily seen.

So I think I'm going with the Nautical. 

However the Cascade is such a gorgeous color I'm thinking I might use it for the front door.  Have to see. 

I love this paint though, one or two coats and no primer needed.  Awesome.

I spent most of Saturday cleaning and organizing and now my desk isn't overrun with miniature stuff.  New bookshelves for the bedroom means the old bookshelf got moved to the dining room and filled with miniature supplies.  It's not a perfect system but it makes it a lot easier to dust. 

Yeah, not perfect, and definitely not very attractive but the desk looks much better without all that stuff stacked on top of it.

I really want to remove that stupid CD holder from between the side shelves.  All it does is catch and keep dust.  I'm also planning on adding some more tape to my cardboard back, to keep a certain Building Inspector from getting in. Tape will be easy, dealing with the CD rack will have to wait.  I've been dealing with cleaning and 1:1 furniture two weekends in a row now and I'm trying to be done with that for a while and make progress on 1:12 houses.

So I'm off to paint my siding.  I have to take my house apart to get some room for the pieces to lay out and dry and thankfully I numbered them on the back so I know where they go.

I'll probably paint all my window trim as well.  Except the skylight.  I want to wait on that until I'm sure of my roof materials.  Though I've got some wood shingles that might look very nice stained a walnut or cherry. 

Any suggestions on that? 

Paint Samples

I decided to get some of my siding scraps and paint them the two primary contenders for the siding color.

The pictures aren't great but they will give everyone a better idea of what the paint would look like on the house and how it will show on the siding.

With these it's much easier to see what Brae meant about the detail of the siding disappearing with the darker color.  I still love how the blue pops against the white.

These are chalk paints though, and I can't seem to find the same colors in regular paints.  I wonder if I took the bottles to Home Depot if they could mix up some paint samples for me?  I'd like to get some of that paint that has the primer in it since I've noticed paint tends to seep into the wood quite a bit.

The colors are Folk Art's Home Decor chalk paint in Nautical (dark blue) and Cascade (teal).

One last look at the paint on the siding, against the trim and stonework.

Any more opinions?  Or suggestions for paint matches that aren't chalk paint?  I think if I found something that's a semi gloss the detail of the siding might come out more.

It's Already JUNE!

And oh yes, I am so shouting that.

I feel like I'm finally making some progress with the dollhouse.  As you know I've had bits and pieces of the inside that I've worked on and lately I've been concentrating on the exterior. 

I managed to get the mortar on the stone wainscoting last weekend but since it takes twenty four hours to cure I really couldn't do much past that.  I don't have a lot of time in the evening during the week, or at least it feels like I don't, due to various issues.  So I had to wait until this weekend to work on the rest of the exterior.

Saturday I was dealing with 1:1 scale furniture and the resultant mess that comes from transferring books to different shelves and then doing the same with clothing.  Man, books can get dusty!  The good news is the master bedroom has a new headboard and nightstands which fit better and have working drawers.  My dresser and book shelves are now more organized which is nice and I have another set of shelves to store miniatures stuff on.  I haven't moved stuff off the desk to put them on the shelves but maybe next weekend.  One day on 1:1 scale stuff is enough for a weekend.

The bad news is last night I was feeling every bit of my forty plus (plus, plus) years after all the bending, moving and then breaking down of cardboard boxes. 

Still, today the aches aren't as bad and I'm back to dollhousing.  Yes, I made a new verb, it's a verb we all deserve and use a lot of the time so why not. 

I wanted to protect the stone and mortar so I got some quick dry satin poly finish and gave the wainscoting a quick coat.  You can barely tell its there but it makes me feel better. 

I did some research on craftsman houses and how they look with wainscoting and I've noticed that white is a big color for the trim.  Which I actually like. Its a nice contrast with the stone and will pop against the siding color.  So I painted up some lengths of basswood and glued them on.  I've still got the tape to hold everything in place since the glue takes a while to dry.

Siding color.  I am sooooo dithering over this.  I've got a few colors sampled on a board.  I want the house to look somewhat traditional but not over the top khaki, brown or green the way a lot of craftsman houses are.

I mean this is pretty, but not what I want to look at everyday.

This is more my style.

Or this.

I really like that blue. I've got a similar color that I'm sampling. 

I don't think I can pull off the additional detailing in brown for the upper portions of the gables though.  Am I using that word right? Gables?  The triangle parts of the walls that go up to the roofline.  Geez, you'd never know English was my first language.

Anyway, the simplicity of the kit doesn't lend itself to more than a couple of colors on the outside, at least not as I've got it pictured.  So the wainscoting, white trim, siding color and then a pop of a different color for the door, or maybe a stained wood.  Not sure on the door yet. 

It feels like I've got so much to figure out and do and less than six months to do it. 

But here are my colors up against the wainscoting and trim.  What do you think?

I'm leaning towards that dark blue. Though I really like the teal, it's cheerful. The khaki color is just a little blah to me and the grey is barely there.  It feels like the blue is more earthy. 

What do all of you think?  I can't paint until I get all the siding cut out so I've got some time. 

Stone, Hinges & Chimney

Progress this week isn't really super visible.  I got the chimney covered in stone and the rest of the wainscoting done and finished with the Delta Ceramcoat Finish.  It requires a full day to dry so that ate up a lot of time.

Originally I was going to keep the inset under the wainscoting and use some of the texture paint to make it look like concrete.  But I felt it would make it look clumsy and unfinished so I added a strip of the flagstone to the bottom.

I do have a few pictures for you.  Here's the chimney covered with stone and the bottom strip of wainscoting added.

I actually like how it looks.  I'm hoping to add the mortar to the flagstones today so that can dry for a few days before I add the finish to it.

But before I got much further with the wainscoting I wanted to get my two walls hinged together.  Maybe I would have had an easier time with that if I'd done it before I added the stone, but I managed to get some channels routed out and the hinges added.  The glue is drying now but the walls fit together at a right angle and that's what I was concerned about.

I've got some tape over the strip wood reinforcing the hinges while everything dries.  I'll take that off and get the raw wood taped off so I can spray some primer on the hinges so they aren't quite so obvious.

The color of the stone should (I think) darken slightly once I get the finish on, at least that's what the pictures show.  Once I know what color the stone will end up I'll have to choose a finish for the woodwork and the paint color for the siding.  I can add the siding though so if I can't do the grout/mortar I might try to start on that for the rest of today.  We'll see.

Either way, I need to make a start on that. 

The other thing I'm working on, (in my head mostly) is a way to make the bathroom something I can slide out so the kitchen isn't too hard to access.  I think a very thin floor, with a paper tile, so that it matches the height of the wood floor for the rest of the house.  Sort of a wooden box I can slide in and out with its own lights. 

I feel like I'm further behind in my progress this year than the same time last year, but I'm trying not to stress over it. 

As someone married to a veteran I'm a little more...cognizant of the meaning of Memorial Day.  So I hope everyone else is having a happy Memorial Day and we keep in our hearts all our absent friends.

Flagstone Wainscoting & Chimney

Last week I didn't get much done besides spending money.  Unfortunately the money wasn't for mini house stuff.  It was for big house stuff.  Gotta love buying new mattresses.  For the next year we'll be paying the amount of a car note but at least its interest free.

New mattresses mean a lot of clean up and clearing things so the guys had room to take the old ones out and put the new ones in.  So I was fairly exhausted.  But I did get to make a trip to drop things off at Goodwill.  We've got a center in town that takes donations seven days a week.  So Saturday, cleaning, clearing and delivery.  Sunday get rid of all the stuff I cleared out.

This week is a different story.  I'd been trying to figure out how big a bump out I'd need for the exterior chimney.  I also had to remove some of the stone I put on because I forgot I was putting a chimney in.  What can I say, two steps forward, one step back.

But I got the stone removed and then did another dry fit to measure just how deep the eaves of the roof would be.  I want the chimney to go under the eaves, not over, if that makes sense.

See the vertical lines?  Yeah, I forgot those are supposed to represent the chimney when I put the stone on. Oh well.

So my chimney is about three quarters of an inch deep.  It doesn't look like much now but I did match the angle of the roofline for the top and the little bumps to fit under the foundation.

Glue is still drying so I'm not sure if I'll get to add stone to it today or not.

It's balsa and bass wood with some interior bracing to keep it steady under the weight of the plaster stone. 

I'm actually getting excited about this build again.  Mostly thanks to the stone being pretty much done.  It takes me forever to get it laid out and glued.  It's like a puzzle without a picture to match it.

The bare spot under the front door is for the porch.

I'm thinking I might order another bag of the stone just in case. I need to go around the porch supports and also I need it for my pillars for the porch as well.

But my renewed enthusiasm is also because when I did my dry fit I put the fireplace and window seat build ins inside the build and make sure they fit.

Yay they fit!  The rallying cry of miniaturists everywhere.

I'm so excited that they fit. And they look pretty good I think. 

So the question is how to finish the interior chimney, I was debating using the flagstones again but I think I'd rather make it look like a drywall bump out.  I think any other stonework would look too busy and detract from the tiles.

I'm going to do a dry fit of my windows and tape the trim in place.  I need to make a lip for the wainscoting and it might necessitate changing the exterior window trim somewhat.  While I'm at it I might mess around with the windows and see how they look with mullions.  But first, see if my chimney glue has dried.

Well I'm off to check my glue and hopefully hinge a couple of walls together.  We'll see how that goes.

How is everyone else doing? 

Mortar and Brick and Stone

As the post title suggests I've been working with a few of the messier things this weekend.  I'd added some poly finish to my fireplace bricks and also to the woodwork during the week and it was about time to bite the bullet and add the grout.

Even without paint added to it the grout came out very light against the brick.

I honestly could barely tell the difference between the mortar I used for the brick and the grout for the tiles.  But I was planning on aging the brick so I left it as it was and continued on.

A sponge brush, black paint and grey chalk paint diluted with water helped to age the brick and the back of the chimney.  And I put my insert for glowing coals in to verify I'd actually gotten the depth right.  Yay it fits!

A bit better I think.

Had to let all that dry and so I decided I would get started on my exterior stone wainscoting.  Not too bad looking.  It'll darken up some once I get the finish on it.

I like how it looks but wow, my brain was bending in twisty shapes trying to make it all fit without looking bad.

I did a little more gardening on Saturday morning, but that wasn't too labor intensive.  And some house cleaning, again, thankfully not too labor intensive.

But this was the extent of my mini-ing for the weekend. 

How'd all of you do?