A six-month build completed: finishing touches

 So I started this build on 11 June 2024 and I finished it today (apart from the hearth) on 29 December 2024 so it has taken me just over six months of off & on construction.  The siding and the shingling were pretty time consuming, so if you weren't doing either of those then it would be quicker.

The last week or so I've been been doing a number of small finishing jobs:

- touching up all the exterior paint where the glue used for the siding had seeped onto boards and was a bit shiny in the light.

- filling in the gaps in the interior window trim with a bit of wood glue applied with a fine tip glue bottle, then painting over that.

- Applying the gable finishing boards to the rear roof edges.

- touching up the paint in various places where I had either spilled over another bit of colour, or perhaps not quite got into a difficult corner.

- fashioning an inner mailbox aperture for the front door (to correspond to the mailbox cover on the exterior)

I built a faux non-functioning bathroom door for the attic and glued it into place.  As you can see by the scale figure, this would be an 'old house quirky door', as an adult will have to bend their head to go through.  But then there isn't a lot of headroom in the bathroom either, definitely a remodel to squeeze in an ensuite for the master bedroom.

I applied the fancy gable trim to the rear roof edges (purchased from Hobby's, and sprayed with two coats of white primer) and touched it all up with acrylic white paint to blend in.

I used my Brother Scan & Cut to cut out fancy trim from cardstock for the tower under eave area, sealing the cardstock with matt varnish then giving it a light coat of white acrylic paint. I didn't use the crude kit-supplied brackets, but maybe if I find some nice brackets in future, that aren't too big, then I could install them at the corners of the tower sides in between the trim pieces.

I'm fashioning a hearth for the fireplace and will give it a few coats of satin varnish then install it.

I installed the self-adhesive flock carpet that I bought from Poppets Dolly Bits into the bedroom, which was extremely tricky: as well as trying to get the carpet to stick into all the nooks and crannies without wrinkles, I also had to join two pieces while matching the pattern.  It came out pretty well, DH couldn't see the join.  I'm a bit nervous about using a self-adhesive product, I've found in the past that adhesive products such as doublesided tape, foam sticky pads etc. do not  stand up to the test of time and start letting go after several years, but we'll see.

So apart from gluing in the hearth, and thinking about how I could add a dust cover, the build is basically done I think.  Now it needs furnishing and accessorising, which is the part I struggle with.  I have some furniture ready to go in or kits ready to be built, but not nearly enough.  I'm contemplating taking some things out of other houses with a view to downsizing in future as well.  Plus I need to find somewhere in my real house to hang it on the wall.

Conclusion

This is a house I've had my eye on for decades, so it feels satisfying that I have finally accomplished the build - especially after the kit sat around waiting for 13 years for me to build it.  Given what I started with, I think it's turned out fairly well. I did not have access to much variety in Arts & Crafts style wallpaper but I'm pleased with what I chose. I like several of the Greenleaf house designs, they are so much more innovative than the typical boring 'bookcase' style house that is so popular here in the UK.  On the other hand, the wood quality is terrible in the Greenleaf diecut kits, with many pieces delaminating or even crumbling as you take them out of the sheets.  The scale of the trim, windows and doors is clunky; openings are not symetrical in size or location (bay windows I'm looking at you) and overall there is a definite children's play toy vibe rather than an accurate collector's scale replica.  Yes, you could put in a ton more work than I did and buy or make many more replacements such as better windows and doors, and turn out a stunning product by just using the base kit as a foundation. I chose a middle ground where I have retained the 80s play house vibe on the exterior but increased the accuracy in scale for the interior.

One of the initial difficulties I faced was the lack of clear close-up photos online of other McKinley builds.  The photos on the Greenleaf Forum are of poor quality and don't enlarge well, and the videos I found on Youtube, and a few other build blogs, don't always show the details that you want to see: like how big is the smaller attic room and how does it connect to the bigger attic room, and that sort of thing.  So I hope this blog might help other builders who are just starting out with their McKinley kit.  Good luck and enjoy the process!