Tower assembly, more decorating, defeated by a window kit

 The additional wallpaper showed up for the attic.  This is being custom printed on A4 paper by an etsy seller and you can choose landscape or portrait format.  Last time I went for portrait because I had the tall peak of the big attic room to cover.  This time I had asked for landscape, thinking that I would get more wallpaper for matching.  So I was perplexed when I was attempting to match the paper I cut for one of the false walls, with the existing paper on the tower, and it just would not match.  Comparison of the new sheets with the old sheets revealed that the scale on the new sheets is slightly different, and larger, than on the old sheets.  I will not be ordering custom print A4 wallpaper again in future, I don't think.  

Anyway, with the new wallpaper, I could go ahead and paper, then glue in, the false walls in the attic. I've boxed in the corner of the big room, and applied a narrow false wall to the side of the bathroom to hide the eaves.

Tower assembly

I cut a false ceiling for the tower roof from matboard, and decorated the right side of that with a print out of handpainted starry night sky.

For the tower assembly, I decided to keep the tower ceiling unglued and just use it to help hold the sides in place while their glue dried.  This involved lots of masking tape and clamps.  I glued in the back piece first that rests on the new false wall, so I could wrap the paper around the corner.

Then I added the other pieces in one by one.

    Once it was all dry, I could remove all the apparatus, and then take off the top of the tower which gave me a lot more access for working on the interior.  First I cut a very odd template for the remaining wallpaper, then glued the remaining paper into place.

The Tower roof back in place, but I won't glue it until I've applied the border and the inside window trim pieces.

The remaining attic roof pieces I am going to leave off for now, for better access until I've  applied a floor in the main room and the border and trim.  But it looks from pictures online like the smaller room is going to be quite closed in and dark. I've chosen not to electrify this house, because that's a time consuming and expensive job and I find with my other houses that have lighting, that I almost never put the lights on.  Partly because I'm terrified a bulb will go and will be impossible to replace, but mainly because it's a faff to plug the power supply in etc.  So to get a bit more light into the small room, I've cut out a skylight in the rear roof piece which I will cover with some of my new perspex set into a wooden frame. I considered putting a bigger skylight in the side roof, but this way the roofline and shingling won't be visually interrupted.

Decorating

I had stained the cases of  two pre-made doors, and then painted the doors themselves with white paint, trying not to get white paint onto the stained portions.  It wasn't until I was actually applying the door handles that I realised something wasn't quite right:  one door (probably the one I got on a de-stash table) was upside down compared to the other.  I'd managed at this point to apply stain, varnish, three coats of paint, and another of varnish without ever noticing that the two doors didn't match.  So then I had to break off the bottom of one door, and pull the door off of its pin hinges to flip it over.  I also glued on pre-stained wood strip inside the door frame so that the door sits away from the wall - splitting the thickness of the pre-made door evenly  across the skinny walls of the kit.  Then finally I could glue the doors into the wider holes I cut some weeks ago, and add the interior frames.

With doors in place, I could cut the skirting boards for the hall and study.  I quickly discovered that the Deep Victorian Skirting I had ordered from Dolls House Mouldings was too high for my miter box, making it impossible to cut a clean miter with my razor saw.  After screwing up a few cuts, I instead turned to my little belt sander and improvised a 45 degree guide from a quilting ruler.  This is working fairly well: it gives a clean miter with minimal effort and it's easy to fine tune the length if I don't get it quite right.  I am chopping the lengths using a cheap chop saw from Amazon.

I'm pleased with the finished effect.

I fought the window, and the window won

I had cut a wider opening in the study wall to accept an old House of Miniatures sash window kit that I got for £2.50 in a de-stash sale at some time in the dim past.  So I had stained the surround  of the pre-made frame, and carefully painted the interior grooves white. I had also painted all the sash window frame pieces white, being careful to apply very little paint so that I didn't get build up.  The plastic 'glass'that came with the kit had darkened to amber, so I ordered some replacement 1.5mm perspex from Hobbies which turned up yesterday. With some difficulty I cut replacement panes using a Stanley knife to match the original size of the kit panes.

I'd already had trouble attempting to glue the side sash frame pieces to their end pieces, because there is so little gluing surface, but after two attempts had managed it.  But when I tried to slide the replacement perspex into the grooves cut into the sash frames, they wouldn't go in at all.  Neither would the original panes. Partly due to paint buildup and raised wood grain, and partly due to the tiniest misalignment of the grooves when I glued the pieces together.  Not until I had sanded away most of the thin coat of paint, could I get the original pane to slide in and by then I had already broken one of the sashes again.  Doing a belated dry fit, I discovered that not only were the original 'glass' panes too short and left a gap, but also that the completed framed sash would not slide into the main frame.  Much sanding ensued before I could get the sash window to slide into the main frame, plus I had to cut two more replacement perspex 'glass' panes that were a bit taller (I found it much easier to cut these using my electric fret saw). By this point, all the glue joints had broken and it had become obvious that the tolerances of the kit were so small, that I was never going to be able to assemble a sash frame independently that had any hope of sliding into the main frame.

So I gave up on the idea of a working sash window and have glued the sash pieces directly into the main frame, adding the perspex and the top pieces and tweaking it all until it looks square and correct.  I will need to touch up the paint carefully.  And the windows are supposed to have tiny wooden mullions applied in a grid across the glass but I don't know if I can face those.