Step Q - Fascia and Corner Boards, and Base

I'm still undecided about colour, so I have sent away for an Amazon.com book on authentic paint colours for Victorian houses. While I am waiting for that to come, I am getting on with more interior trim, and preparing the outside for shingling and siding. I'm slowly marking all the pencil lines on the sides and roof as guidelines for applying the shingling/siding, and I've been working through Step Q - Fascia Trim and Corner Boards.


Preliminary step: you need to sand flush any protruding tabs on your corners or where you will be gluing the fascia strips, so that the trim will lie flat. Do this before you try to glue the strip on and get glue everywhere (ask me how I know this...)


Step Q.a - Main Roof Fascia - I haven't put this on yet because I'm not sure if I want it to go on top of the shingles, or have the shingles butt up to it.




Step Q.b - Mansard Roof Fascia. Straightforward, apart from all four short pieces being significantly wider than the long side pieces, so I had to trim off a good 1/8th inch off their width. The two back wall pieces were also a bit too long, and had to be trimmed down.













Step Q.c - Corner Boards sub-assembly. I did not pre-glue these into an L-shape off the house (which is what the instructions say) because that just seemed highly unlikely to be successful. It doesn't give you any wiggle room if your wall isn't quite flat, or straight, or not 90 degrees at the corner. Instead I glued these directly on the house, one corner at a time. Where I had electric wires in the way, I used my Dremel tool to make a slight groove for the wire to pass under. Two sets were a bit too short, one board on another corner was slightly too long and had to be trimmed. Clamping these required a fair bit of creativity. Obviously lots of masking tape, and then some clamps hooked into nearby windows etc.













Step Q.d - Kitchen and Living Room Bay Fascia. Kitchen was straightforward - both side short pieces needed trimming in length. The Living Room Bay was a bit trickier. I bevelled with the Dremel tool again, but there were gaps that had to be filled afterwards.


































Step Q.e - Kitchen Bay Corner Boards - straightforward, miniature versions of the main house corner boards.




















Base - I decided (as I pivoted the house 360 degrees for the nth time) that the house needed a base to protect the foundation paperclay and give me an easier way to turn the house/move the house. I don't have a lot of room, so I kept the base fairly small, just slightly wider than the house on three sides and allowing for the porch steps at the front. My base measures 2 feet wide by 20 inches deep. It is 15mm MDF (multidensity fibreboard). I still want to be able to lift the house off, so I hot-glued some blocks onto the base (after tracing around the house with pencil) in strategic places to hold the house in place. These required a certain amount of fine-tuning, but luckily you can pry the hot glue off again if you get it wrong. Once I was happy with them, I put two chipboard screws into each block.