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 1st 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.
.JPG)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
