Monday 12th July, 2010

Three trades in one day

Plastering, painting and bricking – that’s not bad, is it? Unfortunately it is in miniature and not real life or I would be really good at DIY lol!


I wasn’t all that pleased with the finish of the plaster – it was too smooth for my liking. So I redid it today with another layer, and made it a lot rougher, both inside and out. I’m much happier with it now.


While I was thinking about the paints for weathering, I went ahead with the chimney, even though this step was supposed to be done after the painting part.  Peter cut me a board and  two strips 1/’8” thick ply so I could roll the Paperclay evenly the right thickness for the chimney. I covered the board with plastic wrap taped tightly down to protect the clay. It will come in for lots of use from now on, I have a lot of Creative Paperclay in my future. It's really nice stuff to handle and it covered the chimney quite well. I had an old credit card that I cut up to use for marking the lines of bricks. One part  has an end just 1/8” wide for the height of the bricks, and another part I used for the horizontal lines. And another part has a right angle which is handy for making sure those corner lines go evenly round in narrow places.  I should have used the index card provided though because the lines are a bit too deep.

It didn’t take too long to glue the Paperclay on to the wooden chimney but obviously marking the bricks was a lengthy process. Then while the lower chimney was drying for the first hour I did the upper chimney, going through the same process, and put a ‘donut’ on the top after marking the bricks on that part. Here's a photo before I did the next step.

By then the lower chimney had been drying for an hour so as instructed I went over it with a toothpick that has had the point rounded off with sandpaper, to clean out the grooves a bit more and define the bricks more clearly. This really did take a long time, because I shaped each brick individually, rounding corners and giving the bricks an individual, hand-made look. On some of them I dug out a corner or piece of the brick, or made a ‘crack’ in them. I’m really pleased with the result too.

After quite a bit of thought I decided I didn’t want to wait to get the medium and oil paint, and just used the usual acrylic paint for aging. I experimented with a few different combinations of washes and finally came up with one that seemed okay. I used a really watery wash then rubbed it with a cloth to remove some, leaving it darker in the corners and at the bottoms of the walls.  But the first effort was far too dark. 

I had to go over again with water and rub even more off. The photos still make it look even darker than the darker effort!  On the outside I did leave it slightly darker all over, and slightly more so at the bottom of the walls and the entrance section. The photos of the outside are rather closer to the true colour.

Then I could permanently attach the rear wing roof and roof extension. The roof extensions are to give the roof a really curved shape, as though it is sagging with age. Here is the rear wing roof still taped into position while it dries and the first floor just sitting in place ready to be glued.  Even though I have lightened the wash inside here, it still came out far too dark in the photo.

When I did glue in the first floor, I added a little strip of wood to cover the bit of wall that was left bare. And I also went over the rest of the interior patching up some other little bits that needed a bit of tidying up, such as a slight mark that showed where the floor joined the wall and such.


And now I will leave the Paperclay to dry thoroughly. I have already damaged it several times while fiddling with other parts of the cottage, forgetting and putting my hand on it accidently or leaning the chimney on something while I worked on the rear section. So I have put it aside and left it in peace now.


I spent the rest of the evening painting the shingle strips that I have snipped already, and trying out different arrangement of the base pieces to try and decide whether I will use them as in the model or differently.


And that was as far as I could go today – what a good day’s work it was too.

But to finish, here are a couple more photos. First, a close-up of the finish on the exterior entrance.

And below is another picture of the cottage front, slightly side view.