A House in 22 days - Day 13 - Christmas Eve Eve

 The elves are thoroughly whipped and the house is thoroughly done!  The house wasn't quite 22 days, we actually did it in 13... with an average of 10 hours per day... each... so 260 hours all said and done.  I feel like I've run the Boston marathon!

The final trim bits have been glued in place, the paperclay is done on the chimney, and the cap is on (not pictured).  Ben and I came close to killing each other only once during the whole process which is pretty damn good if I do say so myself.

Things I would have done differently on this build - more time.  I hate a rush build, I like to agonize over placement of everything, this is a hobby that definitely appeals to my OCD tendencies.  I would have used a saw to cut the siding rather than a utility knife to get cleaner edges, and I would have added plexi glass to the sunroom rather than the GL plastic window.  I definitely wish we had taken the few extra hours to electrify the house.  I wouldn't use the wooden shingles again, I would go with paper clay and simulated the terra cotta shngles.

 Things I love about this house, I love the front entrance bash.  As much as some light was lost taking out the floor to ceiling windows I think the functioning doors and steps / planters more than make up for it.  The pink is growing on me, at first I really hated it but as everything came together I think it actually suits the house pretty well.

I really like the lay out of the kit, it's different than your standard four room box, I'm quite pleased with the stairway and we're already planning on getting some appliances for a kitchen set and finding a smaller dining room table for the "dining hall" (blue room).

I will actually be sad to see this house go in spite of my aggression towards it earlier today when I thought it might not be done in time for christmas :)

Glencroft - Day... who knows now

I'm not nearly as religious about blogging when working on my own wee house it seems, I suppose it doesn't help that the majority of us seem to show off our hard work at the green leaf forums these days!  Regardless, despite radio silence, I have been working diligently on the Glencroft in the desperate hopes of clearing off some table space so Ben might work on the house he was planning on giving his neice for Christmas, or should we fall behind schedule, her birthday.  Although it doesn't matter how much space is cleared off, it never seems to be enough, he may be intimidated by the amount of work these tiny houses appear to contain!

That said, here is my progress.

1.  The paper clay shingles.  Greenleaf supplies sheets of thin shingles with this kit.  I actually did consider using them until I realized that my house would look like thousands of other ones out there if I did that.  I also remember having a hell of a time getting them on straight, keeping them from migrating, and an even colouring throughout because of glue spots and whatnot.  I went with my tried and true method from the Chantilly and dug out the pasta maker then cut inch wide strips, notched the strips for the look of individal shingles and glued them on with modpodge.  Every couple of shingle rows I would go back with my knife and texture them to look a bit more like wood-grain, specifically pulling at the lower edge with the blade so that it both cut in a bit and pulled back.  I think this gives you more of a realistic yet story book illustration type of roofing shingle.

2.  The base coat - to get a colour variation between shingles, I applied a base wash of greys and yellows, mixing on the fly so no two shingles are actually the same colour.  It's painstaking, and to be honest I don't know if it actually makes a difference once you put the stain on.  I was thinking of leaving the shingles in grey tones but it was too much grey on the house between the stonework on the front/chimney.

3.  Wood stain - I coated the roof in Minwax "Provincial 211".  I definitely prefer the darker shingles, but love that it doesn't match up whatsoever with my timbering on the front of the house.

Last but not least, this is my first electrified house, for months the little roundwires have been played with by the kitten, tripped over, painted over, glued, taped, moved, trampled on and yanked upon.  At long last I was able to locate a transformer.  The unfortunate side to this story is that I wasn't able to test any of my lighting before moving forward.  I am currently sitting at a higher than expected success rate with all lights working but the upstairs ones.  I need to check bulbs at this point, if there's a break in the wiring I have no way to access them and the lights become purely ornamental.

1.  interior lighting shot of the living room

2.  Exterior shot of the ground level.

Next the interior progress.  I'm almost done since the last post anyways.  I have flooring left to do in the study and a bit of trimwork to figure out, but the interior finally made it over the slow hump or the ("to hell with this I'm leaving you on the side of the road" stage).  The floors on the bottom level are cut up lino tiles in a stone pattern and then grouted with spackle, toned with watercolours.  The second floor bedroom is strip wood stained and glued in place.  I also have the doors up and hinged aside from the dining room door, it is waiting patiently in the wings, and the windows leaded and half installed.  

Glencroft - Day 22

I've been terribly busy with work so the house has gone on the back burner so to speak.  I think I needed a break from it regardless, the interior work was dragging on terribly and after being left alone for a week or so, the house seems to almost be putting itself together!.

Since my last post I have finished wallpapering.  The smaller upstairs room is becoming a study and was papered with fabric swatches.  The larger room has been paneled, papered, and stucco'd using the TP Stucco method.  The bashed window in the now dining room has also been finished.  The leadwork was done with silver jewelers tape and transparency film - with a coat of clear nail polish over the finished product to give a glass look.

I had a bit of difficulty with the roof on this kit, I think that's the one part of every house that causes the most grief.  After several gluings however, it seems to now be sticking.

Tonight I tackled the paperclay exterior.  Riverstone for the chimney and flagstone for the main house structure.  I'll attach pictures but there will be another wash or two of colour to go on before the stone work can be called completed.

I've also hung the front door and started the interior doors.  These are by far the smallest "nails" I have ever encountered.  I got around the size issue by driving pilot holes with finishing nails, and then filling the holes with super glue.  Then I put the tiny nails into the hinge and lowered the hinge/nails into the pilot holes and clamped them in with pliers.  I've been swinging the door all evening and everything seems to be holding so I think this approach will work.

Glencroft - Day 4 through 6

I've been working sporadically on Glencroft while I was sick this last week, mostly because everything I need to finish off the Chantilly is still in a box, somewhere, probably wrapped in paper and dust.

I have the second floor installed and glued.  I put white cardstock up in the living room rather than try to plaster, and I was very sure I didn't want stucco on all the walls.  I then undertook the paperclay fireplace.

First off, Paperclay is vastly superior to the DAS modelling clay I used in the Chantilly.  It has virtually no odour, isn't sticky, and takes longer to dry so it is far easier to work with.  Also it goes through the pasta machine much slicker which is again because it isn't sticky.

I rolled out numerous strips of paper clay and glued them to the bare plywood, then with a moist paper towel I smoothed the pieces together and built up some texture.  Next the stones were shaped by pressing the lines in and pulling the clay towards the centre of the stone to add depth.

After the clay dried I added black watercolours to the cracks in the stone and blocked in stone colours with the left over paint on my watercolour palette.  A few dirty washes of grey with a bit of yellow or red and the tones were evened out quite nicely.

The wiring was a touch trickier than I thought, i dug out a channel for the right wall sconce with my dremel and built the clay up over top.  the left sconce and the candles on the second floor have individual holes for the wires to run through, at this point I know the power strip is either going in the chimney or in the foundation,either way the wires are traveling through the chimney to get to their destination.

When I built the baseboard in the living room I left them high enough to accomodate hardwood flooring, they will also accommodate the roundwire should I decide to add table or floor lamps.  The dining room / kitchen will have ceiling fixtures.The hardest part of the wiring so far has been the planning by a long shot.  It's hard to know where you will want lighting when all you have built is a portion of a large box!

Chantilly - Day 23

I finally have the chimney bricked and managed to get the rail to stay glued using a prop stick and lots of tape.

The chimney needs some crack fill looking at it this morning, and I need to sand out the fingerprint ridges, but overall I'm quite pleased with it.  I think the brickwork will be red brick.

Chantilly - Day 20

The day 20 post had to wait until the glue dried and the tape could come off!  I finally got the posts and trim painted and installed, along with the door!This house is almost ready to go in to a box for moving!!

I had to trim the side pieces to accommodate the siding (next house will have a complete dry fit with pencil markings).  The door was enameled and has 1/2 scale doorknobs glued on.

Chantilly - Day 19

Today was white day.  I've been working on the dining set for a couple of days now and finally I'm getting the enamel to cover the mahogany colour it once was.  I don't want the dining room to get dark and claustrophobic, and with that very dark floor the furniture was just way too dark.  This modelling enamel is amazing stuff but white in any media is difficult to work with.

To top it all off, I'm down to the trim on the house.  I started building the second layer of the window frames this evening, and got three coats of white on all the porch rails, eaves trim, door, and post trim.  I added another piece of dark trimming to the back of the house to neaten up the appearance from the back and started on the final mouldings for the two upstairs rooms.  It was much much easier to apply mouldings as I was building - note for the next project.

In this box of surprises I was delighted to find some doorway hinges, so I think I will be able to get a functioning doorway on this house, that would excite me greatly!

Chantilly - Day 18

Friday night siding marathon - that's about what I did while laundry was going.  I have all the siding on aside from 1/3 of the right side of the structure, which will be tackled tomorrow once the paint on the strips dry.  I have to say, siding on this house is so very, very persnickity.  But should anyone else be working on it, the angle of the gables is 120 degrees - get a handy dandy cutter and it will make your life much, much easier!

Chantilly - Day 17

For varying reasons I had ample time to work on siding tonight.  I'm so glad I painted the strips before installing them, it's making it much easier to complete this than if I had to go back and try to do these tiny tiny pieces of siding with a seemingly mammoth brush.  Coincidentally, I want a Paint Zoom (was watching infomercials while working on the siding lol).

Anyway, I got some more siding installed, progress pictures below, total work time today was only four hours - still it's pretty good progress considering I forgot to take my clay out of the freezer!

Chantilly - Day 16

Siding is no longer new and exciting, in fact I'm still a bit disheartened by the window framing fiasco.  I did manage to get a bit more on this evening but it got rather persnickity up around the eaves.  I then decided to frame out around the central upstairs window.  On the bay window and inside this frame I will make scalloped shingles out of clay and paint them the same colour as the clapboard.  It won't be obnoxious but will still add some textural diversity to the house and pay homage to the high victorian siding styles found on older farmhouses along the coast.

However I soon tired of this as well and decided to do some more work on the shingles.  The watercolours have  firmly set and the shingles are now quite dry, so I added a coat of pecan stain to even out the tones a bit and saturate the cracks between shingles.  It's given the shingles a bit of warmth and has toned that blue/purple tinge out of them quite nicely.

The stain was applied heavily with a sponge brush.  I started in the corners and worked my way out (the idea to have darker shingles where moisture would tend to collect, lighter where the roof would be baked by the sun).  I'm debating adding moss to the shingles with my oil paints and a stiff brush.  It could either be really great or really not... I may need to make a practice roof :)

Chantilly - Day 12

Today the clay was dry enough to through the first coat of paint on the shingles.  I used a thin wash of watercolours, burnt sienna and black.  It's going to be difficult to get paint in to all the cracks and crevices on this roof, I may have to go back with a detail brush and fill them in with black to add a bit of interest to the roof.  Overall I'm quite pleased, the roof isn't uniform and yet isn't blotchy either.  Once this first coat dries thoroughly and the cracks are tackled, I will put on another wash of a grey which will just hit the tips of the shingles to add some weathering.

Chantilly - Day 11

Well I finished the shingles tonight, and I have to say I'm glad that's over.  It's very monotonousness to say the least.  I am so pleased with the end result however.  I think this roof is going to look bloody amazing once it's painted up.

Siding is the next dilemma, but first I need to work on the porch and build up some rafters as I'm pretty sure I want to put a slope on the veranda roof... and then I guess that means more shingles... boooo

Anywhere, here's a picture of the final product.

Chantilly - Day 10

Day 10 wasn't terribly exciting, I sanded / varathaned the floors, this should be their last coat as they're starting to have a pretty good sheen to them.  I continued shingling, now all that's left is 1 & 1/4 roof sections, I should be able to paint it by Monday.

I'm still debating if I want to go with wooden siding or use these fettuccine strips as siding, I think I will have to do a test board - it will either work really well or not at all.  I have however pretty much ruled out stucco, stone, or any combo of the two - but brick would look sharp.  This would make it look more like an Ontario country house than a maritime country house.. decisions decisions.

I am happy to report however that there was no cracking whatsoever!  I think I may have nailed this technique :)

Chantilly - Day 9

Day 9 was spent shingling the roof which was glued on yesterday.  I figure 24 hours of excessive taping should result in a well secured roof.  I've looked at a couple of different methods of finishing off the roof.  There was the option of going with the railroad scale corrugated roofing, making shingles out of sandpaper, wooden shingles (which in my opinion are never the right scale for the house and look out of place), painting the roof, or fashioning a roof out of clay.  My intention from the beginning of this project was to have an end result that looks like it's out of the pages of a childhood book.  Mother is crafty, loves folk art and Americana, new and pristine would just not be what I feel would be a proper fit.

I searched high and low over the last few weeks for a tutorial on how these amazing little clay shingles were made but everyone is quite tight lipped about the whole procedure.  After examining some of the pictures, I formulated an idea - so far it's working,

1.  run your air dry clay through a pasta press several times until you get a uniform rectangle of clay

2.  Run your rectangle through the fettucini portion of the pasta press to get strips.  Lay your strips on a moist towel so they don't dry out.  I also spritzed the strips with my plant mister occassionally.

3.  Cut the strips about 3/4 of the way through their width to make individual "shingles"

4.  Apply glue to the roof section of your house and then lay the strip over the glue.  The air dry clay soaks up moisture so I'm not concerned at all about this stuff sticking, I am concerned however about cracking. Start at the bottom of your roof.  If you have gables, work both sides of the gable towards the top so your shingles are even.

5.  Every couple of rows, go back and texture your shingles with the edge of your knife

6.  Wrap corners with individual shingles, secure with glue.

I used white tacky glue in this case.  I will follow up with the state of the clay roof tomorrow, cracks and all

I will colour the shingles with washes of watercolour and then seal with a urethane, the urethane should still sink in if I use watercolours and add strength to the finished roof.