Sugarplum Cottage to Monarch Cottage 07

 Work on the porch and benches continues.

The timbers have been glued in place. The porch with its attached benches is also glued in place. 

I like using Aileen's Tacky Glue for this as the tackiness helps hold the bits in place while permitting some adjustments. Clamps or masking tape hold the pieces together while the glue dries. 

Sometimes it's hard to wait while the glue dries. It helps to remember that good things come to those who wait.

Here is a detail that shows some blemishes that need to be addressed. The slots and the gap where the back and side did not quite come together will be filled with Spackle to fill them. The same will be done on the other bench and anywhere else on the house where the tabs & slots are visible. 

I have the kind of Spackle that goes on pink and turns white when it dries. A flexible palette knife works well for this step. Once the Spackle is dry, a few dabs of matching paint will complete the cover up.

The pieces from this kit are coming out of the sheet with fairly smooth edges. If a piece of wood is dry or has started to delaminate beyond what sanding can accomplish, rubbing Spackled along the edges can make them nice and smooth.

When the touch-up paint dries, the benches will be aged with some brownish-to-dark greenish-to-blackish watercolor overlay. I like the green, but it is too bright, too new looking to blend with the aging cottage.

Beacon Hill Tower Roof (Step 5) Aging the Copper Panels

Before applying the aging mix, the copper was cleaned with a window cleaner containing ammonia. The half-and-half salt and white distilled vinegar mix was painted on the copper panels, taking care not to let is drip. The salt did not dissolve, as is evident in the photo. The salt grains will turn greenish blue to become the smoke-and-mirrors iteration of verdigris.  (Click photos for larger image.)

On line discussion indicates that humidity will enhance the aging process, to the tower roof has been tented, taking care not to let the plastic touch the copper areas.

Coming soon, the Great Reveal! ♫♪♬

Aging and Staging

During the profound silence here the past few days, the shingling got finished. Today I had fun installing the roof sections, aging many surfaces, and even did a little bit of staging.

The paint flew as I aged the more parts of the outside wood and chimney and the inside floors. Tedious. The roof is painted raw umber. It may get some mossy green color and texture, but I got tired of playing with the roof and moved on to the chimney. The siding got some black wash in a few places, as did the porch floor, columns and railings. I scribbled a pattern on the porch posts. They're a little shaky and need to be worked on. If you poke the photos, you can see more details -- like the "pet" on the front porch.

The skeleton/witch is too big to go inside the house. Even in death she is bigger than life. I put her on the roof. With some tweaking, I think that's where she'll stay, although she may move to the chimney side.

The black wash worked well on the white trim. You can see some of the scribbled designs on the porch posts in this picture. Gotta work on that. Messy. I have a few containers of dollhouse stuff that found its way to me but is definitely not high end and/or had no place in any of the current builds. Perfect for a haunted house! I found a couple suits of armor and a couple skeleton dinosaurs that begged to become house pets. How could I say no?

A couple of gargoyles hopped up on the roof, and a giant skull bounced into the attic and claimed the window.

The furniture is probably not where it will end up. I haven't figured out the use of the rooms yet. One of the skeletons moved in and gave approval to the rather rustic--yet upholstered in velvet--chair and sofa. The fireplaces are primed and need to be painted and aged. Not sure about the stove; don't like the stove pipe venting into the living room, but there isn't another place for it in that room. It may go. Skeletons don't need to cook, do they? There's no bed in there. Do skeletons need to sleep?

The skeleton had an operation on his knees so he can sit down. I'm going to have fun posing the rest of the gang when they figure out what they're going to be doing.

Washington 2.0 has become a Haunted House!

Five years ago -- yes, five years ago, before this blog was born -- I started building a Greenleaf Washington 2.0 with my goddaughter, Mollie. She was eleven years old and I was ... never mind! Anyway, apparently our combined attention span was that of a two year old. The house, which was meant to be a farmhouse populated by a family Mollie was babysitting for, was put to one side and ignored. I don't know why, but it began to attract Hallowe'en items. Witches, skeletons, pumpkins, a pirate's chest by Nuttiwebgal and other scary things.

A few days ago the Washington gave out a raucous cry that could not be ignored. There it sat, stuffed with skeletons and covered in dust. How could I pass it by? If you poke the photo and look closely, you can see a weary witch collapsed on the roof. Not a good state of affairs.

I emptied it out and gave it a good cleaning. It cleaned up so well that it didn't look at all abandoned except for a little buckling in some of the scrapbook paper we used on the walls.

I discovered that the roof was not glued, which will make working on the attic a lot easier. I found some crackle medium, which got me to thinking about aging the house. I slapped on a coat of raw umber acrylic, which aged it in a hurry! A friend came by and said she thought it looked great that way, and I tended to agree with her.

Note the position of the porch posts in this photo. The instructions indicate there should be two full posts spaced across the front with the half post on the left corner. Having not read the instructions -- this is an easy house, eh? -- I managed to put the two full posts in the wrong place.

The more I looked at the house, the louder the crackle medium hollered at me. So this afternoon I used it in some spots and then put a layer of Ceramcoat Buttercream paint over the raw umber. It didn't crackle as much as I thought it might. (What? Some of you actually test a new technique before applying it? What a concept!) I thinned the paint a bit so it would not cover completely. Between the modest amount of crackle and the undercoat showing through, this technique did produce a nicely aged finish. Check out the porch posts. I made a duplicate and glued it in place. Nobody will know there are one too many unless you tell them.

While waiting for various layers of paint to dry, I hot glued shingles on the porch roof sections. Here is one painted raw umber. I'll wash them with some dark green and black before installing.

When I took this house out of mothballs I figured a day or two would do to make it spooky enough to display. Ha. You'd think I'd know better by now!