I won’t, I mustn’t, I shouldn’t, ….but

I’m never good at resisting temptation with a mini kit I’m afraid! Each new technique holds a fascination for me.  After all, at 63 I need to keep my brain active and keep learning new things, to help prevent dementia! I drink lots of water, have given up caffeine, am trying to walk more (I’m not good at exercise) and we eat healthy vegetarian meals, lots of vegetables and fruit.  I love learning and would return to university in a flash but that would mean giving up my hobbies again and I like having a life - so I learn through my hobbies.  That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it ! :)

So after ignoring the Station Master’s Cottage calls of  ‘make me, make me!’ for a while, and reading the instructions through a couple of times very carefully I couldn’t resist any longer.  There’s a saying that you can’t stop temptation flying overhead but you don’t have to allow it to perch on your shoulder.  I guess that by reading the instructions, I allowed temptation to perch on my shoulder - and it had a firm grip there!  I am in the middle of madly doing some swaps that I must get completed, but I can only sit at them for a certain period of time.  I squeeze this in between, in odd moments.

First step was to paint both sides of the base with Weldbond (a glue) in preparation for doing them with Creative paperclay, to prevent warping from the moisture.  I don’t have any acrylic spray sealer left or I would have used that instead (3 coats each side).  I also painted the exterior walls with Weldbond because they were going to be done with spakfilla, an interior filler product we have in Australia.  The new finish that the cottage has uses an interior filler instead of paperclay.

It didn’t take too long for the glue to to dry, but I did leave it overnight to make sure it was thoroughly dried through.  Next day I could paperclay the floors for the main ground floor room and the little annexe on the left.  I put the wall between these two rooms temporarily in place over the paperclay to mark where I needed to cut out the clay so the walls would slide in afterwards.  This part isn’t in the instructions since it is a basic kit, and the model has floorboards in all rooms but I like the ‘flagstone’ effect.  The room on the right will have floorboards so I painted that dark brown in readiness.  I also painted the 1^st floor dark brown because that will have floorboards as well. 

The wall between the main room and the annexe on the left has a doorway and I used this as a template to add a doorway on the right wall too.  I wanted that room to have an opening door to the main room rather than a faux door.  Here I made a big mistake when I was assembling the cottage, though I thought of it as I was gluing the two sections of this wall together.  I should have had a door prepared in advance, with a piece of fine material to use as a hinge, that could be sandwiched between the two sections of wall.  Now I will just sit the door in position and glue it open, but it won’t be able to open and close.

I also painted all the interior walls with a coat of white paint as I always do.  Then after painting the flagstones with a wash of dirty grey water for the grouting colour I let that dry once again.  The usual sponging with various shades of grey and a touch of brown followed.  While everything was drying thoroughly I painted the trims, underside of the ceilings and roofs etc.

After that I could assemble the cottage, and that was quite straightforward.

All that was preparatory to doing the external finish.  I started off by using some ready-mix spakfilla that I already had, rather than the powder form as per the instructions but it was too thick and dry to manage easily.  And impossible to spread in as thin a layer as the instructions say. Soon I had bought a packet of the powdered form and did the rest in that.  It was certainly easier to apply. 

I left all the plaster overnight to dry, and in the morning I sanded it off with some sandpaper that Peter gave me from his electrical sander.  It is 60grit, and I don’t have anything nearly that coarse in my stash.  It was very effective for removing stray bits off the edges and for smoothing the surface to a level that I was happy with.

Here are some photos of the various parts after sanding.

Main removable front section

Right side walls

but on the removable front I made the mistake of smoothing it too much.  So I did another skim coat over that, to give it a bit more texture.  This was too thick so I had to sand some of it off again :)  Then I sanded too much away from around the bay window, so had to add some more to fill in that space.  But it eventually got there!

Adding extra around the bay window area

Bow window fits better now

A couple of tips:
*When doing the plaster on the walls, make sure you make allowances for the roof.  On the removable front, the roof of the bay window overhangs the sides a bit, so put the roof on as per the instructions and draw around it and the window to mark where the area needs to be kept clear of the filler.

* Where the side sections meet the main room, the front pavements won’t meet the main front pavements if you add plaster to the sides of the removable fronts.  Be sure to follow the instructions and leave the sides free of plaster where they will butt up against the walls of the middle section.  However the outer edges of the walls will look better if they have the filler on them, and will match up with the walls in thickness.

Scribing the blocks of stone into the surface isn’t difficult.  First, decide on the size you want the stones to be, then follow Bea’s instructions. I couldn’t find my scribing tool so I used a tapestry needle.  That proved to be rather hard on the fingers after while but it was quite effective.  Note to self: go have a look in the caravan and try to find the scribing tool!

On the rear of the building I also did the filler treatment, but on the middle wall I scraped the filler off from the level of the first floor down.  That’s because I decided that I might want to put an extra room at the back of the house. At first I thought that I would make the room on the right side into the master bedroom, with a small piece taken out for the entry hall, but when I checked I realised that I had put the door between this room and the main middle room too far in the centre of the wall to allow me to do this and still leave enough room for a bedroom.  So in order to have two bedrooms I will probably add a room at the rear – if I change my mind I can easily plaster over that area later.

I mixed some paint to try and match the lightest colour that Bea has in the paint samples in the instructions (by the way, I think these might be mislabelled.  I rather prefer the pale yellowish ochre colour as the light sand colour).  For this I experimented with a mixture of tan, white, a touch of brown, some yellow, even some green, and a drop of black and got a pretty good match in the end.  Here’s a photo of the two small fronts after they’ve been scribed and painted with this base colour

Base colour on two small removable fronts

I finished scribing the horizontal lines for the blocks on the house tonight.  It sure makes a difference to have the scribing tool instead of trying to do it with the needle!  But I do find the needle good for going over some of the lines to give them added definition.  Here’s how I made a scribing tool when I first started doing PPs, because I couldn’t find one in the shops: 

As you can see, this is an embossing tool, with one end (the smaller end) just sanded to a sharp point.  It actually doesn’t take as long as I thought it would to sand the ball off and sharpen the end if you start with a small embossing tool size. The first one I did, has both ends sanded to points.    When they get a bit blunt I just sand them some more.

As I was nearing the end of the horizontal lines and about halfway through the vertical ones, I really felt that I had made them too small and that they look more like bricks than blocks of stone.  I have had a look at Bea’s photos of the cottage, in large format, and counted the number of rows of stone blocks on each section.  I have the same number between the bow window and upper window, the same number on the small fronts, but more rows on some of the other parts.  Even on the parts that have the same number of rows, I feel that I might like my blocks to be larger.  At the moment they measure around 1.8” high x 3/16” long, more or less – I have made them various sizes, to give some interest but that is the average (if there is any such thing) size.  But that only equates to 6” x 9” in real size. I love Bea's cottage but for mine I'd like them to be a bit larger – I think.  Mmmmm.  I’ll have to sleep on that one!   I’ve put a lot of work in already, but there’s no use continuing if I’m not happy with the size of the stone blocks.