Sunday, October 16, 2011

Glencroft - Day 18

Day 18 was a relatively short day focused only on the windows for the dining room.  I managed to get the 5 remaining panes leaded, stained, and sealed.  The leading is done with silver jeweler's tape, the staining with sharpie markers, and sealed with clear nail polish to dissolve the film on the transparency sheets.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Glencroft - Day 17

Happy thanksgiving everyone!  Now that my gut is full of turkey, I figured rather than cleaning up the kitchen I'd put some work into this ever-growing house that is the Glencroft.  I really can't believe how big this house is, and it just seems to be getting more massive daily!

I've been working mostly on the cantilevered window casing for the dining room.  I have the case built and have started on the windows themselves.  I picked up some silver jewelers tape and cut it down to a size which may still be too big, I have to sit on this one window and try to make my decision from there.  The centre window will be open while the other two will be closed.  I'm thinking the upper portions of the window will have some sort of stained glass effect.

I've also papered the upper floors.  I will continue with the paneling on the larger room and stucco on the lower portion of the library room.  The library is "papered" with fabric and mod-podge (matte) so seepage isn't an issue. lol I will never use mod-podge again for hanging paper however, it's only good for fabric.

I've also picked up some fabric bags from the dollar store which will be used to make seat cushions and possibly draping for the lower floors.  That's still up in the air however.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Glencroft - Day 14

Well the move is finally over and the boxes are rapidly approaching "unpacked".  I even have the place to myself tonight so I dove head first into the miniature land and worked on my Glencroft with fervor for the first time in weeks.

I had been debating the idea of making larger, oriel windows in the smaller main floor room of the house because I want to use it as a dining room.  With a sample dining set in there the windows are far too high for the room to function at all in this capacity.  I had been debating building a larger window before I got the kit, and this approach is far out of my comfort zone, but I knew I wouldn't be happy with the finished product if I didn't try.

The trusty dremel eventually made it through the wood and I ripped the window opening on the right hand side down an additional two inches, and thus became committed to figuring out how to build windows from scratch.  Tonight I started building the oriel casement but soon realized that it was a bit much to take on considering I have no idea how to build scratch windows.  Instead I am building a cantilevered window with a tall exterior casing.  I want to add carving detail to the upper "cabinet" of the structure, or possibly just stucco the upper portion and frame it in Jacobean stained wood.

I am happy with the results so far, it's really opened up the room.  I briefly toyed with expanding the front window slot to allow for two smaller windows to be installed to centre them more from the interior.  It may still happen, nothing has been ruled out yet :)


I then wanted to feel like I got something done so I started on the stucco for the outside of the house.  I knew I didn't want to use the spackle and paint method because of the small spaces between the 2nd floor brackets, plus I find the texture is too "big" for this scale I'm working in.  I went with the toilet paper stucco approach and I think it's pretty bang on - not to mention easy!




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