Thursday, 3rd June 2010

Pressing on Regardless

I couldn’t wait any longer. There’s still no word from Sue Herber about the order or about the flooring paper; I think there are some shows on at the moment or soon, and perhaps she is preparing for or away at those. So while Peter was off collecting Nathan from the workshop and taking him for an appointment, I went on with constructing the cottage, having decided that I will fit the flooring paper inside later.

As I said before, piecing the paper together on the ground floor has resulted in a bit of a mess and there isn’t enough left to do the first floor at all. I do have enough to do the conservatory but the idea of doing it in black and white tiles appealed to me. I left the pieced paper on the ground floor, and went ahead with adding the walls to the floor.


And here the instructions are a little bit confusing. The diagram associated with this step shows the wall placement, but it shows all the walls attached. And the instructions do not specify that you do not attach wall E, in which the front door is located, until later. It is only when you read further that you realise that you don’t add Wall E at this stage. But the instructions are also not specific as to when you attach the two side walls for the front entry section. These are added at this stage. In this respect it would help to have slightly clearer instructions, perhaps photos like the Sea Shanty had.

I decided that because of the small area inside I would put the floor in after I had done the wallpapering. I’m not sure that was a good idea now. To try and make sure the floor went in even, I first marked the line where the ceiling/first floor would go then did the wallpapering as instructed. The wallpaper is very pretty and delicate, and I love the little border on the top one, which is cut off and put along between the two sections.


The photo was taken before the wallpaper was properly dry so it isn’t trimmed properly yet. I think I will have enough left after I do the conservatory part to trim around the front door as well, or perhaps around the archway into the front entranceway.

Finally I fitted the floor and glued it in place. But it was very tricky getting it to sit even, in spite of the line marked on the walls. It kept wanting to dip down at one corner or another and I’d even it up only to find that it had slipped down out of position when I clamped it to hold it in place to dry. Very frustrating indeed. I think I got it straight in the end though.

And I experimented with some black and white paper for the conservatory floor. I had to trim the middle down and t hen trim the border to fit of course but I think it looks okay. When I printed it out it came out with a bit of a greyish tinge but it’s not bad. I will spray it with some preservative and probably some semi gloss finish, to make it a bit more like tiles. In this photo it looks blue rather than black but it isn’t. And it isn’t glued to the floor yet either.

So I’m very happy with the progress tonight! It was a pretty tedious day – bad headache from high blood pressure, tedious time unzipping several hundred backup files that I’ve moved over to my new computer (yet another long story!), then I found that we could have visited our friends after all when we thought it was off – so I figured I deserved some indulgence tonight and sure did have some lol!

But I have been busy the last few nights too – and have come to the conclusion that the clematis vine is probably not the best 1:48 flower kit for a beginner to start with lol! Those tiny leaves are just 1/8” long and there are nine of the teeny things to every stem, each cluster being a bare ½” long. Now I like my clematis vine to be rather lush but I have to say that my idea of the size it was going to end up being has steadily reduced! It really has been a slow process and to my mind the vine still isn’t as lush as I would like it to be.

I have made all the flowers – they were quite quick to do in comparison to the leaves. But I want to add more to the vine itself before I add the flowers.

The first photo shows the vine. Here in the second photo you can see the size of the vine, being held in my hand. And in the third photo you can see a closer view of the individual leaves. At first I had thought that I would make the vine quite long, to go up the side of a door or garden arbour and over the top. It was also quite generous in order to go around behind the arbour or along part of a wall as well. I might still lengthen it, if I have the

patience to make sufficient leaves. I’ll see how it looks when I’ve made up all the leaves.

I’ve also made up a birdhouse kit from SDK Miniatures (as is the Clematis kit) and finished the ivy vine around the stand it stands on. That was not nearly as fiddly as the clematis! I still have the flowers to go around the base, so I haven’t taken photos of it yet.

It is a great feeling to have progress to report and to see things starting to take shape.