Tower roof, tower decoration, chimney

 This week I've been finishing the exterior of the tower, above the porch.  I decided to go with the clapboard after all, and applied it up to the tower window level.  My husband agreed that stopping there looked a bit odd, so then I spent hours trying to shape pieces to go around the curved windows.  The siding I am using just splintered instantly if I tried to shape it, so I ended up using a mixture of thin plywood and even cardboard to fill in around the windows.  It still looks a bit odd, but less conspicuous.  The accumulation of error from the tower pieces not assembling into a perfect octogon continued to multiply, meaning that every piece of clapboard and trim had to be individually cut for its destination and it's all a bit asymetrical.  Maybe the owners hired a really bad carpenter :)

Eventually there will be pink or white roof brackets holding up the tower roof, on top of the deep pink board.

Tower roof

I strengthened the extension cone further with another layer of papier mache inside, and some wood glue into the tip.  I glued small pieces of coffee stirrer behind each protruding tower roof piece.  Once those were dry, I glued the extension cone down onto the tower overlapping the coffee stirrer pieces.  The end result is fairly sturdy.  I am procrastinating about attempting to shingle it.  When I was looking through my New England photos (see below) I found a great picture of a similar tower which is finished in lead or zinc, which would be a lot easier to simulate.

Chimney

I was getting ready to shingle the roof, and have glued on the strip wood at the bottom endge to lift the first row of shingles.  Luckily I suddenly remembered that the kit includes a chimney.  For some reason the chimney is only three sided and is open to the back.  So I cut a back piece from some scrap ply.  The kit also includes some weird pyramidal flues.  I've looked through my many photos of wooden Victorian houses from my New England holiday and none of their chimneys have flues like that, so I think I will just leave them off.  All the real chimneys were brick, so I will probably finish mine in brick as well.

Roof skylight, tower roof, porch side exterior decoration

 This project was in hiatus for a few weeks because I've been busy with some travel and other stuff.  I did visit the big dollshouse fair Miniatura hoping to find some more shingles, some roof finials and trim, a bed, and more stripwood - and found none of those things.  I did find a kit for two chairs for the living room, and a 3D printed wicker armchair for the tower room.

So after Miniatura, I ordered more shingles from Hobby's which luckily appear to be the same kind as what I've been using, plus some stripwood and also some plastic gable trim which looks interesting.  I also ordered a white metal bed kit from Dolls House Direct for the attic room.

Before I left, I had applied some clapboard on the porch side to either side of the tower, and started applying some pink shingles under the bedroom windows.  I've added some trim above the windows which I need to finesse to seal the cracks, but I don't really know what I am doing in terms of decorating the higher part of the tower.  I don't fancy cutting clapboard to fit around the windows - I did that on my Willowcrest and it's a PITB.

So I skipped ahead and assembled the tower roof - using the technique developed by other clever people, of assembling the eight panels with masking tape hinges upside down in a pot, then dropping in the top and bottom spacers with glue around the edges and leaving it all to dry.  However, I don't like the truncated peak of the kit roof and would prefer it to be a full point.  So I traced around one of the roof pieces beforehand, and extended the lines to create a pattern for an upper cone.  I cut the upper cone out in mat board and in the picture I am trying to solidify it with some glue in the joints and some paper towel applied over.  Then I can take it off and strengthen it some more from the inside.

I can't glue the tower roof on until I've shingled the main roof, and before I could do that, I needed to finish the skylight I previously cut in the back roof to let some light into the bathroom.  I framed the opening out with popsicle sticks and cut some plexiglas to fit the hole.

Roof light glued in place