Sunday, January 27, 2013

Onward with the cottage!

So, I said to myself, self, why are you just looking at that shell of a cottage and not working further on it?  Other than doing actual work of course, that has to be done.  But I felt the need to work on my cottage, a real drawing towards it.  It was pulling me in, saying "please work on me".  So I thought what better way to spend a cold afternoon and jumped right in! 


I wanted to install the bottom flooring today, but saw other little things that needed to be done first.  I thought I should finish painting the inside walls before I put the flooring in.  I wanted the walls to have a splotchy look, worn and somewhat dirty - but too dirty.  It's very hard to see in the pictures but the walls are painted and look great in person.  The coloring doesn't show up well in the pictures.  I may add a bit more of the "dirty" look later.  








I next decided to finish the two front windows.  I stained them, as a lot of the trim on the cottage will be stained wood.  I then cut out "glass" to put in them.  I am always saving any sturdy clear plastic packaging that I come across because it's always useful in miniature work!  Cut it to fit and glue in place.  Later I'll go back and add trim around the windows inside and out.


I then glued the windows in place though I didn't really need to because it was a good tight fit.  But I didn't want them falling out later down the road.  



I slid the main floor into place just to see how things were going to look.  I then glued all around the edges of the floor and put it into place.  



I have Coke bottles, BBQ sauce bottles and Karo syrup bottles all around the outside of the walls to keep everything tight fitting in place until the glue dries and can hold things together itself.


Looks like I'm preparing a
feast in my workroom! LOL!



I did promise to share all ups and downs on this build.  So here is my problem... When I added the additional space onto the side room I did not brace the walls properly, and did not notice this until after I had put spackling on - but the side room is completely off center!!  It in no way square! LOL!!  So now I must work with my mistake and learn from it.  But I will make it work!  I'll just have a cottage that's not square on one side!  To help make this work out I have made a pattern for the side floor (all off angles) and cut out a lop-sided floor.  And to my surprise - it works!  After the main floor has dried over night I will join the two floors.  In the pictures below you can really see how crooked my side room floor is!  LOL!



Well, at least it will be an interesting cottage!  So, learn from my mistake and make sure all of your walls are square before all the glue dries!  Unless of course you'd like a crooked house, then just contact me and I'll be glad to help! :) 

Once the floors are all in place I'll then start on the roof, which I'm very excited about because of the wood veneering I'll be using.  Thanks for stopping by for a spell and visit often!

 

5 comments:

  1. A little crookedness will give the cottage a lot of character! The floors look great; I love the colors you chose for the stain.

    ReplyDelete
  2. From what I can see your walls look great, really effective. I'm excited to see more. Love the windows too. x

    ReplyDelete
  3. creo que estas haciendo un buen trabajo , ademas de los errores siempre es posible aprender

    besitos

    Mari

    ReplyDelete
  4. Me encanta, las paredes quedan genial!!
    besitos ascension

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hello:)
    I like your project, this will be lovely house!
    Magda

    ReplyDelete