Front door, internal windows

 Front Door

I painted the wrong side of the inner door in a contrast colour, to show through the 'panelling' openings in the exterior door.  I had already stained the inner door side facing into the interior, but felt it looked a little plain.  So I added a bit more 'panelling' on the inside using some strip wood.  The two doors are sandwiched together around the acrylic window plastic, and then glued in place. 

 However, I found that I had a funny gap at the top of the door opening, above the exterior door piece.  Also, some of the interior flooring was showing under the door.  I solved both problems by painting some thin molding and gluing it in place.

Looking at these pictures, I've just realised that I should have simulated a mail slot on the inside of the door as well.  Add it to the list.

Internal Windows

The Greenleaf windows for the Mckinley are assembled from separate components rather than being a 'window' that you just glue in.  On the outside is a window sill that sits into the window opening, then two upright sticks framing the opening, topped by a curved hood.  Over top of that construction, a second curved hood with deeper legs sits, as architectural trim.

On the inside, you glue the acrylic plastic screenprinted window to the inner wall, then once again add an inner window sill, two uprights, and a curved hood.  It all sounds fine, but in practice a lot of the die cut pieces are not quite the same size as each other, or do not match the window openings. And the window openings themselves are not quite in line with each other, so that the three windows of a bay can be slightly higher or lower than each other.  And the multi-sandwich construction results in a lot of layers visible around a window opening including the raw edge of the actual house side. Due to the many discrepancies, this multi-layer sandwich can look very untidy and misaligned.

For example, the one-piece oval window frames supplied for the tower windows were all bigger than the actual openings in the tower walls, yet not exactly the same size as each other.  I had to carve out the tower window openings with a dremel to enlarge them to the same size as the frames. 

So when it came time to glue the plastic windows to the interior of the openings, I realised I had a lot of tidying up to do.  I applied filler to the openings to try to level out or at least improve the look of the sandwich, and two more coats of paint over the filler.  Trying very hard not to get paint into my finished interior/exterior surfaces.  I found that the plastic windows, apart from the tower ovals, were all too tall for the openings and needed to be cut down so that the plastic wouldn't protrude beyond the interior trim.   The internal sill is not very deep so the window can't protrude much at all at the bottom of the opening - I'm going to need to glue in some additional trim under the window sills in a few places to hide the plastic.  I glued the windows in with Deluxe Materials Glue & Glaze, which is a water soluble glue.  Due to the discrepancies in the window openings, I had to be careful to line up the sash bars visually. Obviously I tried very hard NOT to get glue on the windows but failed in a few places and had to wipe it off with a damp towel later.  Having all the windows in suddenly makes it look like a proper house.

I've made a start on applying the inner trim. The window sills in the bedroom tower had protruded into the room, which I hadn't realised at the time was something I should have trimmed flush.  So I had to cut the plastic windows to rest on the sills, and I had to cut the inner window sill to fit around the protrusion.  I also found that in the Tower bay windows, the sills would hit each other so I had to trim the side window sills on the fly.  You could plan ahead and mitre the sills so that they fit together as one solid sill.  The kitchen bay was fine, the sills don't hit each other.

Bedroom

living room

kitchen/dining room

Inside the tower

A lot of the inner side trim sticks are either too long or too short and have to be trimmed, or are leaving gaps that I need to think how to deal with. And of course every piece of trim I apply, I am trying NOT to get glue spreading onto the window.  Then it gets on the window, and I try to wipe it away and make a bigger mess, then have to clean that up.... sigh.