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The Bronte House

Entries in this blog

Moving Right Along

August 12, 2013 I’ve been trying to get my hands to cooperate with me so I can cut the hay bales on the mini saw and finish off the coop. Unfortunately carpel tunnel is relentless and my hands are just too weak and shaky to confidently power up that saw. The CP is bad enough, cutting off a finger – not in the game plan, so I’ve set that aside for now and moved on to something more manageable – building a needlepoint stand and creating a mini needlepoint piece for the Bronte House. I was

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Always Read The Fine Print

June 27,2013 Picked up a cute little hot house on eBay. I wasn't supposed to get anything else this week, but I had to make myself feel better. My chicken arrived today, and I'm really bummed. The hen and her chicks are perfect, beautifully made - the problem??? She's wayyyyyyyyytoo big. The listing said miniature and I went with that. Ought to know better, need to scroll down and read the whole thing - it's 3inches wide and 3inches tall. She's bigger than the chicken coop!

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Three More Ladies Join the Party

June 23, 2013 Today three more lovely ladies and two little chicks have joined the community at Chicken Coop Lane: As soon as I can get these shaky hands to cooperate with me I’ll try firing up the mini saw to cut the hay bales to add them to the coop area.

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Assembling the goodies

June 4, 2013 Well the last of my supplies for the chicken coop arrived today – my grass mat. So I assembled my supplies and got started. I’m using 3M Super 77 spray adhesive, mini hay bales from Woodcrafters.com, grass mat from SFCDirect and in keeping with trying to build the coop using only the things on hand I have a piece of foam core board I salvaged from a previous delivery. First I sprayed the foam board with the adhesi

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Finishing the Chicken Coop

May 18, 2013 The next step is some touchup staining, a little distressing and then mounting it on its own grass-covered base and adding the hay and the chickens.

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Adding Coop Sides

May 8, 2013 My two side pieces are finally dry and I’ve attached them to the coop with Aleene’s tacky glue and held them in place with masking tape until they dry. I also permanently glued the shelf inside the coop and attached the ramp to the nesting area.

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New Stain Arrived

May 1, 2013 Yea! My stain has finally arrived. I bought two jars of Doctor Ben’s stain and I am using a color called Pacific Redwood. The color came out exactly the way I wanted it and is an almost perfect match for my inspiration photo below. Now, here is another of those learn as you go moments. If you’re going to try this make sure you stain your wood before you add th

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To Stain or Not To Stain

April 18, 2013 Well, after waiting several days for the stain to arrive it’s finally here. Unfortunately the color is all wrong. I ordered “Red Mahogany” and apparently my idea of red is grossly different from that of the manufacturer because this stain is brown. So back to the drawing board I go to find the right color. But I have not let this slow me down too much. Had better luck with the other items ordered. I received the fireplace that I’m going to change for Mr. Bronte

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Adding to the Chicken Coop

April 8, 2013 Hello again. Well it’s been a bit of a layoff, and I do apologize for the delay in posting. Unfortunately health problems have not allowed me to work on my minis and I am only now just getting back in the saddle. Still have some physical therapy to endure but hopefully my hands will be back to normal or as close to it as possible soon. So let’s get going. Today I added the wire mesh to the bottom three pieces of the coop. While the glue dried on tha

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January 13, 2013

January 13, 2013 Well it’s been a while, but I have not been idle. I’ll start of this year’s entries with updates on the outhouse. The first thing I did was add a darker paint finish to the wagon wheel and then I changed the moss on the wheel, roof and sides of the house. I used a small bit of household bleach to further change the look of the moss. It’s not quite as light as I would like it, but it will suffice for now and I will probably apply a second coating of bleach to further li

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Back to the Outhouse

November 12, 2012: Well it’s been quite a while since I’ve updated my blog, and I apologize for that, but as we all know, real life has a penchant for getting in the way of the things we want to do most. So with that said I’ll get to the first update, which is the Outhouse. I used simple craft paint Ceramcoat by Delta in combinations of blue, brown and grey to give the house a weathered look. I also used my Dremel to distress the roof, base and sides of the house by carvin

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Finishing the bed

July 18, 2012: Well it’s been a layoff of about 2 weeks since I’ve updated my blog, but although not writing, I have been busy. During this time, while sweltering in 95+ degree heat I managed to poly the bed frame and canopy and attach the two. While waiting for the poly to dry my fabric arrived, and I made the bed draperies and used Velcro to attach them to the bed. The bed originally had a mattress and pillow that were basically made of a small piece of plywood with foam batting and a

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Footboard Finials

June 29, 2012 After staining the finials and trying to glue them into place to no avail, I finally used a Dremel cutter to make a mortis hole in the side of the finial. Trial and error, the best learning tools ever LOL. I then glued the finials to the side rails and now I’m just waiting for them to dry before fitting the footboard into place.

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Finishing the Tub and moving on

Monday June 11, 2012: I topped off the laundry tub, added some small beads for soap bubbles, and added a puddle of water around the base of the tub. Switching gears back to the bed, I searched through my lumber stash for parts I could use to make the canopy portion of the bed. I stained the pieces and gave the bed a second coat of stain. June 26, 2012 After staining I cut the trim pieces

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Switching Gears

Saturday June 9, 2012: I started the day by switching up on my small projects. I figured since I have such a long way to go and this house will probably take me about 2 years to finish, this plan of attack will keep me engaged in the project and prevent me from becoming bored or burned out. So today I started work on the little laundry tub. This is my inspiration photo: I’m using Realistic Water by Woodland Scenic’s a metal washtub, scrap mater

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The Bronte House

Today will be the beginning of my very first blog. Not exactly sure where to start in all of this, so I guess I’ll just jump right in. The house I’ve chosen to re-create is the Haworth Parsonage, better known as The Brontë House, home of famed writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë. The girls occupied this house in the early 1800’s with their pastor father Patrick and their artist/writer brother Branwell. The kit I’ll be using is the smooth finish “Hancock” made by the wonderful folks ove

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