Slatefloor.jpg

This looks great! I've been obsessed with faux slate floors for a while.  Sanding the cardboard to lift the plies is clever! I'm about to try to grout my own faux slate floor (made with formica samples).  Do you find spackle works well? 

The spackle worked really well for me, but my cardboard was much thinner than formica.

The cardboard I used is probably close to the thickness of a cereal box. The spackle I used was also very smooth, but since I am working with 1/20th scale, my tile spacing was pretty close together, so the smoothness doesn't show.

Since I am fairly new to faux stonework, you might want to look and see what others use before you take my word for it, in case there are better options. I just used it because I had some left over from covering slots and things in the dollhouses I built for the boys last Christmas.

Hmm... well, I've dived in and used spackle (have seen others suggesting it) and so far it seems to work well, though i guess the test is in how well it holds up over time. I've spaced my tiles slightly wider than i wish I had, so I think I'm going to try tinting the spackle with watered down grey paint to make it less obvious.  Curious if that will work! 

I expect that the watered down grey should work. If the spackle isn't fully dry, I would wait for it to dry fully to check for shrinkage though.

1 hour ago, kathi17 said:

I expect that the watered down grey should work. If the spackle isn't fully dry, I would wait for it to dry fully to check for shrinkage though.

Good point! I'm noticing the spackle has shrunk down in to the cracks a little bit, but that just adds realism -- it still seems to be filling them fairly well side-to-side.  What i didn't mention earlier is that i actually put my spackle in a plastic ziploc with a little hole, and then i piped the spackle in to the cracks (with the plastic bag nozzle right down in between the tiles) so i think that really helped me ensure the whole space was filled. 

Piping it in was a great idea! I expect you did get denser spackle that way than the way I dd it.

I think I found a suggestion to pipe it somewhere on these boards -- i ran a bunch of searches on tile and grouting recently.  It was pretty satisfying! I use the exact same ziploc piping technique to ice my christmas gingerbread cookies  

I have been considering doing a slate (faux) roof on the Chantilly, so thanks for giving me something to think about. I was resisting paper clay for it.

I was looking for something easy too Amy. Besides, I really needed something that wasn't too thick, or this floor wouldn't look right, but I wanted it to have a little dimension, but not be too rough. I thought about it for days, then it dawned on me that I had those sheets of thin cardboard. It worked out quite well.

Now that you mention it, I do think I remember seeing someone use cereal boxes in sort of the same way for a slate roof, so it should work!