Thank you, Mar!

I received a lovely surprise when I got a message through The Greenleaf Forum from Mar in the Netherlands. She has enjoyed reading this blog and has found it helpful for the renovation she is doing of an old Willowcrest house. She offered to send me an embroidery silks sample card to use in my quilting shop, as she was making up a few for some Dutch ladies. Of course I said yes, and yesterday it arrived. Not only was there the little card, but several more waiting to be cut out, and a HUGE bag of embroidery silks, and some linen fabric! Thank you so much, Mar, you are so nice and I can certainly use this in my quilt shop. I will use some of the silks as embroidery skeins, and likely wind some of the other into balls of 'wool' for the knitting shop. Here is a pic on the steps of my Willowcrest. As you can see, I now have the glass fitted to the shopfront.

It has been full steam ahead on the house whenever I can get some time. I am working full time now so it is harder to make time.

I tried out a stained glass window effect for the stair window, using Sharpie permanent markers to draw a pattern on plastic. I used a tip from Rik Pierce and painted clear nail polish on the external side - if you splodge it on, it makes the plastic look much more like glass. Don't paint nail polish on the coloured side, it will dissolve the marker pen color - ask me how I know this... This is a picture taken through the living room bay (ignore the cupboard, forgot to move it out of the pic) and you can see the window.

And I've started landscaping the base - starting with a coat of 'grass green' paint. Then I will flock it with foam flock to look like grass, then put in a few bushes.

Interior windows, and refinements

After four coats of paint, sanding in between each one, I declared the interior window frames 'done'. They still look rougher than commercially produced windows but it was time to move on. I think I mentioned before that the acetate windows that came with the kit were all scratched as when I opened the kit box I found them mixed in with all the shingles and clapboard sheets. I was able to purchase some heavy vinyl plastic from Maple Street (a dollshouse store here in the UK) and I re-cut replacement windows, using the originals as patterns. This worked well apart from it means I do not have any sashing strips in my windows (the originals had unconvincing white lines screen printed on them). I think this makes the windows look rather empty and not convincingly period, but my husband says it looks like the house has been updated with modern doubleglazing. I'm going to live with it for a while, I may decide to add wooden cross bars later.

I then glued the plastic to the inside of the frames with tacky glue, and weighted them with books while they dried. The finished windows were glued to the interior walls with quick grab solvent based glue. I was fairly, but not entirely, successful in keeping glue off of the window panes. As I said before, I found that the window frames and the window apertures were not identical in size, therefore I had to paint the back of the internal frames (because it shows from outside in some cases) and a rim of external colour on the interior walls (because this showed inside in some cases).

I haven't done the right side wall windows yet (bath and stair) because I may try to do a stained glass effect on them. I have now been starting the final refinements on the construction, tidying up various things, such as:

- covering up the angles of the dormer windows with right-angle moulding, to hide the tabs.

- I had stained the bedroom door frames, and it was bugging me that the unstained wall was showing through. So I stained some coffee stirrers, and covered up the wall for a more finished look.

- and before I put the glass into the front shop windows, I glued in some laser cut signs that I bought in Chicago - one for the quilting shop above where the sales counter will go, and one at an angle on the staircase to point customers upstairs to the knitting shop.

Exterior now more or less finished

Suddenly my exterior is more or less finished. There are still the windows to install, but as they go on the inside they don't really count as part of the exterior. The only thing I still need to do is the landscaping of the base. I've been trying harder to put time in on the Willowcrest because I want to get it finished so I can get busy with the house that I built in Chicago in a workshop with Rik Pierce.



After painting the plastic railings to look like verdigris, I installed them around the top roof fascia by drilling holes partway into the wood to accommodate the plastic posts. By carefully trimming the pieces of railing, I was able to achieve a seamless look although I haven't actually glued the seams yet. If I do glue them, I will use plastic modeller's glue. The posts themselves are fixed into the holes with tacky glue. I think the railing really adds an authentic 'Second Empire' look to the house. I may also install railing around the porch roof and fix a sign to it, but I will leave that decision until later.













Then I painted the Northeastern brackets that I bought in Chicago at the Three Blind Mice show. The brackets that came with the Willowcrest kit almost all fell apart, the inside of the veneer sandwich literally crumbling away in whole or in part from most of them. These Northeastern brackets are virtually the same size. They came in sets of four so I had enough to install two brackets at the rear of the house to give continuity, although I had to trim them narrower as the fascia does not protrude as much at the back. I think I mentioned earlier that my main fascia is not entirely level, so I had to trim the angle on several of my brackets to fit them into the not-90-degree positions.




I am now working on all the interior window mouldings, which I sealed and then gave a preliminary coat of emulsion prior to a thorough sanding and filling holes with smooth filler. Before I did all that, I glued some crown moulding on the 'sills' of most of the frames, to make them look more dimensional and realistic. It seems that each window will need individual attention, as the frames are not exact matches for the openings. Therefore on some windows you will see the underside of the interior frame from outside (so it will need to be painted in the interior colour) and on other windows you will see the interior edge of the opening protruding forward from the interior window frame (so it will need to be painted in the external colour).

I'm still going

Evidence to the contrary, I am still working on this house but things have stalled a bit the last month. I was away in Chicago for two weeks (building a house with Rik Pierce and attending the Tom Bishop show) and now I have started a new full time job which is demanding a lot of my energy.

I bought loads of accessories for the house at the Bishop show. But about the only thing I have done since I returned is to paint the railings to look like verdigris. These will be installed on top of some of the roof trim, like a typical Second Empire house.

Roof colour

I think I am just about there on the roof colour. Starting with a basecoat of Anita Rust Red, I washed over a thin coat of Anita Chocolate Brown. I then shaded under the shingle lines with Anita Hunter Green watered down. Since taking this photo I have also highlighted the upper edge of the shingle line with Games Workshop Foundation paint in a light red. I picked out the line of fishscale shingles in watery Hunter Green.

As you can see, despite best efforts, I have managed to get quite a bit of paint onto my blue trim, so the next job is to go back and touch up the blue and green paintwork.

Shingling finished, now deciding roof colour

The shingling is finished, and I could finally sweep away the kazillion little bits of shingle and splinters and sawdust littering my work area. It looks like a house now, and I feel like the end is in sight, even though there is still loads to do.

I have about three-quarters of a sheet of shingles left, even after wasting about a sheet on my false start, so there are plenty of shingles in the kit. In fact, I also found some more clapboard in my box which I had thought was shingle, so I had more clapboard left over than I thought also.

Now I have to decide what colour to paint the roof. I've put on a starting coat of Anita's Rust Red but I don't want this to be the final colour, it is too orangey and too much like the foundation. I'm not sure whether I want to go darker, or lighter. I've taken the left over shingles and mocked up a bit of 'shingled roof' on a scrap bit of MDF board, and I will try out a few paint possibilities on that. I want something that will look realistic, but also contrast with the blue and green colours. I am tempted to pick out the fishscale shingles in a different colour, but I did read that that wouldn't be historically accurate. I might do it anyway.

Right mansard roof shingled

Right mansard roof is now shingled. I introduced two rows of fishscale shingles for some period interest, and again used the cardboard shingles on the corners. On the back I shingled up to the level of the fascia board, then stopped to give the illusion that the fascia board continues around the back of the roof. I've bowed to family pressure and moved the house onto the small picnic table so that the family can have the dining table back. The red colour is only a base colour, I will be adding further washes over the red.