Steps L & M

Finally, some glorious gluing (and some bad words when I found out that I had painted the wrong side of one piece, and lost another piece completely - I eventually found it tucked under the box flap of the box I am using to spray into).

I also realised that I hadn't enabled comments for non-members - I've fixed that now and I do hope that some of you will leave comments. Either suggestions for improving the blog, or for improving the house (!) or just cheer me on - it will be much appreciated.

Step L.2 - straightforward.

Step L.3 - straightforward, although disappointingly there is a rather large gap (1/8th inch) on the front side of the bay because the Kitchen Bay/Right Wall didn't seem quite wide enough.

Step L.5 - again some noticeable gapping. I can understand why the Greenleaf books recommend decorating the bay windows with stucco, to cover all the gaps and tabs etc.

Step L.6 - straightforward.

Step L.7 - these required a bit of finessing to get them to fit in, and the front angle has a huge gap between it and the Living Room Bay / Front wall. It also didn't line up very well with that same wall at the bottom but I am likely going to cover the foundation with paperclay which will hide the lump.

Step M.A2 and M.A3 - I found it easier to interlock the attic walls while still on the table, then fit the whole thing onto the house.

Step M.A4 - I needed lots of clamps to hold these walls on while the glue dried, as they wanted to gap in several places.

Step M.B - straightforward. I also glued in the front dormer walls at the same time (Step M.D2 ).

Step M.C2 - I'm afraid I had to get the hammer out for this one again, even though I made sure all the slots were wide enough to accept an offcut first (using the Dremel router bit to widen any narrow slots. It hardly needed gluing after the tight fit, but I did smear glue into the joints.

Step M.C3 - straightforward

Step M.D.3 - it was a bit tricky to wiggle these into position. The back edge should be flush with the angle of the attic wall cutout, while the top edges should meet without a gap. Have some masking tape ready because gravity makes the first piece want to fall inward while you are trying to insert the second piece.

Step M.E - straightforward, although some of my slots had to be widened slightly. As far as I can see from the directions, the attic doesn't actually have a ceiling, so I will have to look into creating one myself. I don't like the look of leaving the roof void open with the supports showing.

Step M.F - I have skipped this step for now because I'm not sure I like the look of these floor edge trims.

Step M.G - I am showing a picture of what this sub assembly would look like if you did install it, but like many other Willowcrest builders, I am actually going to cut the chimney off at the attic ceiling line.

One thing I am finding is that my box of wood sheets is rapidly turning into a random box of pick-up sticks, because the constant shifting through the sheets looking for the pieces I need is causing lots of other pieces to fall out. Whenever I notice this, I grab the loose pieces and label them with the sheet number they came out of, but it is a losing battle. Thank god all the individual pieces are labelled in pencil. In a well run world, you would have a whole table just to lay the sheets out that you aren't using, but I am having to keep mine all in the box under my work table.