Beacon Hill - The beginning

I finally have a measurable amount of work done on the Beacon hill kit that arrived a few weeks back.  I can tell already this is a very persnickity build.  The two sub-assemblies went together rather easily, the stairs are complicated but all in all I can't say they were terribly difficult.  However getting the stairs into the sub-assemblies.. well that's a different story!

As I'm not one to build and then decorate, most of the work has been determining where lighting will go, how I will conceal it, and then figuring out the priority in which to get the paper on the wall and the paint on the ceiling!

I went with a floral fabric for the hall/dining room paper.  It's bold, but I am still reasonably convinced I can pull this off.  It lends an over the top victorian aspect to the staircase, and I'm sure that once the room is filled with dark furnishings it will be toned down considerably.

For some reason the photos always make the paper more yellow than it actually is, the background on this fabric is cream, not yellow - but you get the idea :)

As far as the exterior goes, I've been waffling between two styles of masonry, but I think I have finally decided to go with the red brick.  Every BH I've seen (with the exception of one) has had siding, so I want to avoid that at all costs.  So here is my inspiration photo, lol and I'm about to learn a lot about bricking in minature!

Scratch build - Days 1 -- 3

 Now that I've had some practice on three kit builds I have decided it's time to put that humongous bundle of windows and doors to good use and make my own house from scratch.  To the right is my inspiration photo from a set of blueprints dated in the early 1900's.

I have no idea how I'm going to do the roof on the tower yet, or how to tackle the bay windows (mainly because I have to fashion my existing windows into skinnier versions of themselves) but I will cross that bridge when I get to it.

Day 1 was spent making a pattern out of foam core in an attempt to conceptualize the house.  Now that I'm in the middle of the build however all this has gone out the window - at this point I find myself winging it and I have no idea where to put the stairs!  There have been a couple of points where I found myself longing for a kit build so I could feel like I was making some progress - but today I got a table saw and it's sped things up considerably - I am now making straight cuts and not spending hours sanding the wood down to square up corners.

Access to the two "tower" rooms will be from a side opening much like in the Lily kit.  If I get truly adventurous / confident I will hinge a wall there so when the lights are on it doesn't cast strange light all over the place.

So far I think it's managed to avoid making "a box with windows" - that's the one type of little house I can't stand.  I'm not sure what it is about them that drives me mental - maybe because I think anyone can build a box.  I love the Greenleaf kits because none of them, even the colonials, have such a boxy look.

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 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.

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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Glencroft - Day 10

Day 10 is something I haven't attempted before, plasterwork.  I picked up Poly spackling compound and thinned it out with white latex paint, it mixes to about the consistency of oatmeal and not much smoother than that it seems.  I started out dabbing it on with a brush but I really really hate stucco.  after doing two walls in bumpy stucco I decided "to hell with this" and grabbed a discard piece of wood, loaded it up, and started smooshing the plaster on to the wall.

The photo is the first coat, I will put a second on, sand lightly, seal, and add timbering trim / beams.  Plastering is actually a helluva lot of fun, I have to say it's been my favourite wall effect to date.

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!