Stuck on shingling

 While I haven't been working on this a whole lot, when I have, I've been shingling.  It was straightforward to shingle the rear (left) roof. I haven't decided how I will treat the ridgeline yet.

The front roof (right side of house) was a bit trickier, fitting shingles around the tower, but still fairly straightforward.

The gable roofs, however, are a total PITA and thus I have been procrastinating mightily.

All three roofs have a different slope.  So in order for the rows of shingles to line up visually the way the viewer expects, they have to be laid at different spacing on each roof.  I drew lines on the right slope before I realised this. So I'm having to attach shingles one row at a time, using the spacing on the left as my guideline, and eyeballing the line around the other two sides -supplemented by measurements taken from the bottom of the valley up along the edge of the roof to keep the two sides the same. At the same time, I have to cut partial shingles to fit into the two inner valleys.  It is slowly getting there but not fun.

Tower roof covering, chimney

 I decided to go for a metal roofing look, like the New England photo I found, for the tower roof covering rather than attempting shingles on the narrow points.  I used the pattern I had traced of the roof triangles prior to assembly, and cut out segments in two pieces to simulate metal sheets overlapping.  The seams were covered with narrow strips of kraft paper scored down the middle with an embossing tool.  I glued it all on with solvent UHU to avoid moisture warping.  For the top, I dug around in my stash and found a jewellry finding that looked similar to the scalloped tips in my New England photos with a little plier squeezing.

Then I sprayed it black.

Then I gave it a wash with dark grey paint, and a drybrush with Patina coloured paint to create a weathered metal look.  I finished off with a protective spray of matt varnish.

The finished result.  I like it, it looks less 'twee' than shingles and also a lot neater.

Chimney

I covered the chimney pieces from the kit in brick paper prior to assembly.  Because I had added a back to the chimney, my side trim pieces needed to be recut to be a little longer.  Then I glued all the pieces together as per the kit instructions. This also got a protective spray of varnish. The flues that come with the kit are quite ridiculous, wo instead I added some low-key cornice trim used upside down to the top then painted that and the interior matt black.

The chimney glues into a slot in the roof.  I will need to fill and finish the underside of the slot in the ceiling of the attic room now.

I've started drawing lines on the roof to align the shingles.  I've hit the usual problem with two roof planes intersecting - the eye expects the rows of shingles to line up across the valley of the adjoining roofs, yet due to geometry, the hypotenuse of the resulting triangle is much longer so the intervals between shingles on the middle roof are significantly further apart than on the gable roofs.  Plus it's hard to get the gable roof lines to match each other since the starting points aren't the same.  I will probably end up just eyeballing it which is what I've had to do on past roof jobs.

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

Porch decoration, shingling porch roof, shingling kitchen bay

 I glued on the rest of the porch pieces (apart from the basement trellis).  I found that the porch roof, even when seated correctly onto the tabs in the front and back porch pieces, sat well away from the house wall leaving a gap of c 3/16".  So after the porch had dried, I filled the fat gap with pieces of stripwood then shaved them down level with the roof after they dried.  I found that the gingerbread railing supports were not all the same height, so I had to do a bit of sanding to even them out before gluing on the railing.  I also found that positioning the fascia board along the porch top trim piece so that the amount of exposed brackets mirrored those of the front porch piece, resulted in the fascia sticking up too high for the roof to fit correctly.  So I had to trim and test a few times to cut the fascia down to the correct height.

For some reason, the kit doesn't include a top piece of trim for the back porch piece, to fill in above the two columns in symetry with the front porch piece.  So I painted up a spare piece of door trim and glued it in.  I still need to touch up the ceiling join.

I chose to glue on stripwood to trim the rough edges of the porch roof instead of painting up the kit's chunky trim.  I also glued on a thin bit of stripwood to lift up the first row of shingles to the correct angle.  In preparation for shingling, I drew on guidelines (I use my quilting rulers for this sort of job).

I'm using an ancient part bag of cedar shingles which may well be left over from my first ever dollshouse (built c 1981) because they are the perfect colour, just like the picture on the box lid (probably because they are the same era as the house design).  I shouldn't use them really, because I won't have enough for the main roof, but I couldn't resist.  I wonder if I will be able to find matching ones.  I'm gluing them on with nice solvent-filled UHU glue that I was able to order online (shops only sell the non-solvent kind now which doesn't stick well). It works great and grabs quickly, the only drawback is getting cobwebby strings of glue floating around. When I need to shape the shingles, I trim them with my increasingly-dull cutting shears or just with scissors, but it's tricky as they are very splitty.

I added a bit more bling with some painted wooden balls and domes.

I did the kitchen bay roof in the same way, and filled in the gaps between the roof sides with some stained kebab skewer.

The house is looking more like its finished silhouette.

Now that the porch roof is shingled, I can continue with the exterior treatment on that side.

Siding finished on kitchen wall; exterior treatment inside porch area.

 The siding is done on the kitchen bay side of the house.  I finished the top with a white strip as it was going to be too awkward trying to fit siding under the deep eaves of the roofline.  I've touched up the cut ends and it looks pretty good now.

Porch interior

It seemed much easier to finish the exterior treatment inside the porch area, before installing the rest of the porch pieces.  So I positioned the porch roof temporarily and drew along it to define the working area.

I applied siding to the base of the bay in the same way I did the kitchen bay.  Above the windows, I started the siding with a piece of moulding painted white, then continued up into the roof contours. Then I touched up the cut edges with blue paint as before.

I also wanted to add some 'painted lady' type touches. As the front door is located on this side, I feel it is the front of the house, so deserves a bit of bling.  I had a bag of 1/24th scale shingles left over from the Fairfield kit, and thought I could do something simple with those.  I've seen a lot of fishscale shingle decoration on wooden houses in my travels.  Unfortunately my shingles are all different widths, so I had to create a temporary panel on a piece of card, sticking the rows down with doublesided tape, to work out a motif that looked right to the eye.  Then I disassembled the panel into separate rows that I could paint, before reassembling it on the actual house.  I'm considering painting the front door in the purple colour to tie it all in.

I'm ready to assemble and glue on the porch pieces now.

Windows and siding

 With the blue paint sorted out, I could glue on the exterior window frames.  Annoyingly, the curved hoods require the side pieces to overlap the window openings in order to meet properly, instead of lining up with the opening.  So the actual house wall will be recessed between the interior and exterior frames, which means I need to paint the inside edges of the frames a little as they will show.  A job for the future.

Siding

With the windows in place, I could think about where I wanted to place the siding.  First of all, I glued on the kitchen bay roof.  It turns out that the roof pieces rest on the window hoods in two places, so you definitely need to glue the window trim on first. I also found that I had some pretty big gaps between my three roof pieces, and between them and the wall, so I filled those in with some narrow strip wood.

I finished the 'basement' area with some brick paper, and added a strip of painted wood as a dividing line.

 I'm using some Greenleaf siding strips left over from the Willowcrest house kit - a sort of rough thin wood which is probably the same stuff they cut shingles from.  But it cuts quite easily.  I've drawn lines 5/8th of an inch apart in the areas where I want clapboard, and I'm gluing the siding on with UHU.  I'm butting the strips up to the bay roof pieces.  On the front narrow edge, I glued the narrow pieces on first for each row, then cut the adjoining kitchen bay piece at a slight angle to meet closely in the corner, before proceeding to the next row. 

For now, I have left the bay window corners exposed, planning to touch up with paint when I'm finished.   When I did the Willowcrest, I mitred all the bay corner siding (pic below)

But I think with the less realistic Mckinley, I will just leave it exposed (and touched up with blue paint).

On the front door/tower side of the house, I will aim to doing something a bit fancier, perhaps with some coloured fishtail shingles as accents.

Meanwhile I am toiling through the sanding/filling/painting cycle of finishing the porch pieces ready to install once the porch exterior wall is finished.