Wiring complete - and it all works Yaaaay!

Well, it did until the very last step when I attached the battery switch to the base.  But to start at the beginning - the beginning of the final phase that is!

The other night my darling husband cut another piece of plywood to extend the base in order for me to have a tree beside the house.  He also purchased some moulding to go around the sides of the base and cut it to fit. This took rather longer than I had hoped, but finally it is all together and the house is glued in place.  

I extended the wires whilst waiting for the base to be ready, had them nicely in their shrink tubes and labelled so I don't get them confused when attaching them to the switches.  By the way, make sure that any plastic surface is well protected when using a heat gun on the shrink tubes.  What makes me say this?  The photo below might give you a hint.

Oooops!

Uh oh!  Reminder to self: heat doesn't just melt shrink tubes!  So I will have to order some more windows to replace these.  You live and learn they say but I guess I still have to learn not to push on with things when I am really too tired!  

The wires that were brought down in front of the house in the two groups needed to be extended as they were too short to be taken through the base.  So the set from the verandah were joined to one set of wires and the set from the interior lights were joined to another set of wires. 

This meant that for the verandah, two red wires needed to be joined to one red wire; two green wires needed to be joined to one black wire.  For the interior, four red wires were joined to one red wire, and four green wires to one black wire.  For extra strength I did solder these joins, though that isn't really necessary.  But I just wanted that peace of mind because this is a much more complicated wiring setup than normal and there are lots more joins than normal.  I promise I will show you a more straight-forward setup next time I do one :)  After the joins were soldered I folded the joined pieces flat against the wire and slipped the shrink tube over them, then used my heat gun to shrink them.  

The wires were then fed down through the hole in the base - just four wires now instead of that large bundle 

Then they could finally be joined permanently to the short wires that lead to the battery itself. Because the small moulding around the base wasn't quite deep enough for the switches to be inserted into them after all, I cut a shallow area into the base itself to insert the switches into.  They are held in place with double-sided tape.  I prefer that to the original plan now - it will keep the switches a bit less accessible to little grandchildren's fingers and to curious onlookers at mini fairs but will be still easily reached by the older grandchildren or by me.  

Wires through base, joined to battery holder wires.  Note the groove on the right for the switches (no the photo isn't upside down)

Heat applied with heat gun to shrink tubes - notice difference in size between the two on the left and those on the right.

The batteries are also held in place by double-sided tape and I have just used painters blue tape to hold the wires down neatly.  The whole thing except for the switches will be covered with brown paper or something, like the back of a painting, to make it all neat and tidy.  

So I tested the wires and everything worked.  Then added the shrink tubes and stuck the batteries and switches in place.  The interior lights worked.  Good.  Tested the verandah lights.  Nothing!  Fiddled a bit.  Still nothing.  Changed batteries.  No luck.  After trying everything I could think of I cut out the join and redid it - with another battery holder just to be sure and everything worked! Whew!

The chimney is sitting in front of the wall of the house, also held in place by double-sided tape to allow access if required.  I know this photo looks as though it has snowed but that is the sulpt-a-mold.  But I keep looking at it and thinking it would make a great Christmas house!

While I was waiting for the base the other night I also went through my collection of flower kits and dug out any for flowers that bloom into the early autumn.  I know I'm pushing the boundaries a bit to have autumn colouring on the trees and flowers blooming that finish with the first frost but that's what we have in Australia so I'm sticking with it.   And now I am working on the garden.  It has taken me three days to complete the camellia bush - not working on it constantly of course, but a lot of the time.  I have also made sunflowers, gerberas, chrysanthemums and some yellow flowers that are just from left-over petals I had.  Now I'm attempting some more.  Pictures soon I hope. You can see a bit of the camellia bush in the photo above but it's not positioned very well.  In reality it has a lot of flowers on it.  And in fact I have a lot more flowers made up too.  Maybe I'll do some more leaf stems and make a second bush.