Exterior progress and lighting started....

I am really pleased with the appearance of this house.  And it is a total pleasure to put together.  The parts are all beautifully labelled in their various bags and precision cut so they fit perfectly.  It is easy enough to construct that anyone could do it and yet has enough detail and complexity to make it interesting to do.


Last night I really made great progress with the 'stucco' effect on the exterior.  Some very, very fine sand was included with the kit to mix with the paint for the exterior.  I mixed it to a good consistency - thinner than toothpaste but not too liquid.  I used a small brush with stiff bristles, at first because I needed to do small areas such as the front of the steps etc, then just because I was using it so kept on with it.  Using a dabbing motion with the end of the bristles rather than a painting motion meant that the paint mixture went on really well.  After it had been on for a little while I went over it again with the end of the bristles to get the effect I wanted, and that made an even finer finish.  


This is what it looks like after the first coat, the first one with a ruler beside it to give some idea of the size and scale of the stucco:

Front steps and small column

Side view showing rear steps

Overview of porch

The instructions say to go over it with another coat of just paint now.  I still have some of the sand-paint mixture, covered with foil overnight to keep it moist; so I guess if any areas need some more texture I can add some more.


After I did the verandah columns and foundation I did the house foundations in the areas that won't be covered by the porch.

Right side

Left side and front

Rear

Here they are together

Front

Left Side

And here they are with the verandah roof just sitting on top.

Front view with roof sitting in place (not attached)

Side view with roof sitting in place

Before I started all this though I had mapped out where I wanted the lights to go inside the ground floor and on the verandah.  If you look closely at the photo just above you will see some pencil marks where I had been working out where I want the porch lights to be. I am using LEDs, the new tiny chip ones that I get from Evan Designs (click here) and they are really, really tiny.  Until now I have been using the small LEDs and have found them excellent, including the fire ones (see them in Cockleshell Cottage here) but I like the thought of these even tinier lights. 


And they are tiny!  Here is a set beside a ruler.  I apologise for the quality of this and the following photos, my camera settings have gone haywire for some reason and I can't get them back to normal. The black thing nearly an inch across is the battery holder; the battery is in the blue packet beside it and the tiny yellow dot about 2mm across is the LED chip light!

It took a while to work out how to do the wiring for the ground floor interior.  I wanted one light in the dining room (smaller room on the right) and two in the living area on the left.  Normally I would put the wires through a hole in the floor, have a channel in the upper side of the floor to take the wires to where they would be fed out through the wall, then lay the floorboards over them.   This time I forgot to do this, and didn't know where I could take them anyway until I got more of a feel of the house.  I should have thought it through more thoroughly, worked it out and made a groove down the exterior walls as well to feed the wires down to the base, before I put the cladding on the outside or even the foundations on the ground floor.  But in my enthusiasm I didn't do this.  Serves me right.


However, I have worked out that I can take all the wires through channels in the ceiling to the sides, then feed them into the empty spaces on the first floor.  There is an attic on each side of the bedroom there as well as empty roof space.  I will need to take all the wires to one exit hole behind the chimney, down the exterior behind the chimney, through a hole in the base and then join them together to the wires leading to the battery.  


At first I was just going to have one light on the verandah, then decided to have one near the door and steps, and another at the corner so that the whole verandah could be lit.  The light will be attached to the ceiling underneath and the wires will go up into an attic space then through a hole in the front wall again, and down behind the chimney to underneath the base of the house.  


The battery slides into the holder like this.  It is important that you insert the battery so that the + sign on the battery goes in on the side of the holder with the + sign.  Don't ask me how I know.  

It is a coin battery and will support up to 10 LED lights if you want them on the same circuit.  If you want to be able to turn the lights on separately you would join them to different batteries.  So I might join the porch lights to one battery for example, the ground floor to another and the first floor to a third.  Each battery has it's own on/off switch, which I will attach to the base.    Here's the battery and switch:

The battery/batteries will also be attached to the bottom of the base with adhesive backed velcro dots.  Unless my base is an irregular shape I usually surround it with a bit of moulding to give it a nice finish and this is ideal to make a small hole to bring the switches through for easy access.  I have yet to decide what to do with this one for the base..Whatever shape it ends up I will want to raise it slightly to make room for the batteries and switches.


So here are the grooves in the ceiling for the wires and lights

Here I am testing them to make sure they work after I have glued them into the grooves the first time.  (I had to remove them and deepen the grooves after this because when I spackled over them it became obvious that there would be lumps and bumps and perhaps damaged wires.  So I did the first coat of white on the ceiling while I was at it)

To test the lights, the ends of the red wires are twisted together then twisted with the bare end of the red wire from the battery.  Again, I am sorry for the photo quality! The green wires from the lights are also twisted together at their ends and twisted with the bare ends of the black wire from the battery wire.  It isn't permanent at this stage so doesn't have to look pretty.  

Red and green wires separated

Wires twisted together then attached to battery wires by twisting again

Turn on the switch and hopefully there will be light, as there was when I tested these ones.


Here they are spackled over.  

After this was dry (the second go that is), I put the spacers in that have been supplied to make sure the 1st floor is positioned evenly, and slid the ceiling into place with the wires leading upward onto the floor.  Then I re-connected the wires to the batteries to test them again.

Floor temporarily in place, wires re-connected

And now the ceiling is in place and the lights are being re-tested.  As you can see, one of them doesn't work, so now I have to check whether it is because the wires weren't twisted together properly or whether I've damaged one sanding the spackling.

Hope this is of some help to you Jan from the Beehive - I've promised that I will show you step-by-step how I do it, but of course it will take a while to get it done.  This is just a start.  So keep watching :) - there's lots more to come!