Westville advice

[Just One More]

I'm actually considering building another Westville. There are so many ways to bash this house and still not lose the original design. All these ideas have me really interested in another. It's a good size for me now too. I kept the stairs open in the bedroom in mine. I usually don't like stairs going into a bedroom but it makes the room seem bigger. I hung an afghan over the banister. I hung a non-working swag light over the stairs connected through the attic floor and roof joining. I just used baseboard to separate the up and down portion of the stair wall. Upstairs is plastered and down is papered. I've never thought of not using baseboard since it continues to the front wall. I have pics in the gallery. I think this is becoming my favorite house.

[fov]

I spent another two hours shingling today. The picture below shows how far I got. I'm having a real hard time cutting these thick shingles at an angle without splitting them. I finished the area around the gable roof and it looks a bit hacked up but I can live with it. I'm dreading doing the front where the two pieces of the roof meet, though. Rather than trying to cut the shingles at an angle, I was thinking maybe I could stain a few spare siding strips to match, and glue those down at the point where the two pieces of roof meet. Then I wouldn't bother cutting the shingles and would just place whole shingles as close to the seam as they'll fit, with the stained siding strip underneath (hopefully) filling in the gap where there isn't an angled shingle.

(Does that make sense? Do you think it would look okay?)

In retrospect, I should have just used the shingles that came with the kit. I wanted shingles that looked more like the Fairfield's, which is why I bought these, but they're so bulky and really don't look too different than fishscales once they're glued on. Oh well, lesson learned!

Also, a few days ago I wallpapered the smaller bedroom. I brilliantly cut one of the wallpaper pieces with the flowers upside down. Luckily the dollhouse shop had *one* sheet left. It was a little wrinkled and beat up but now that it's in place you can't tell... much. I'm planning to make furniture for this room from the "Built-In Beauty" project shown here.

[havanaholly]

If ever a house called out for Retro, it's the Westville! I see what you mean about the shiny shingles; maybe a matte sealer?

[Just One More]

I have one of my houses with the Roosevelt rose pattern upside down on one wall. I was going to change it but it really isn't that noticeable with the bed in front of it. I did it with the Majestic pattern too by a stairway. Some patterns are easy to mix up that way.

[fov]

In this case it was me being dumb -- I didn't double-check the wallpaper before I cut. The sticker on the back was upside down and I made an assumption about which way the flowers were going. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

Holly, good idea on the sealer, I thought of that too. I have some spray sealer and also some matte varnish that you brush on, I'll give one or the other of those a try after I finish this part of the roof and hopefully it'll tone down the shine. (Also, the pictures make it look a bit worse than it is due to the flash.)

[fov]

I finished shingling the first side of the roof tonight. I'm still pretty unthrilled with these shingles but it's too late to turn back now...

I'm using Quick Grip to attach them instead of my usual hot glue... it's working fine but I'm using up a lot of glue! And that stuff isn't cheap. (Good thing there's always a Michael's coupon...)

[havanaholly]

For shingles I run a small bead along the previous row of shingles and another just gelow the line where the tops of the next row's shingles go, and have at it. Quick Grab must come in a really small container! Also, when I use shaped shingles I line them up with the edge of the roof so that the first row hits the edge of the roof at the widest part, so no rof shows. Otherwise they really pop with that pale blue. I think the window trim sort of fades into the woodwork, so to speak, though; white or a pale, pale yellow might work better.

I really like the dormer!

[fov]

Hee, the window trim hasn't been painted yet! I'll be white like the house and the rest of the windows. (Yeah, that's actually white, not blue. But my accent color on the shutters *is* going to be pale blue...) I'll also add some trim at the bottom of the dormer so it doesn't look so crooked.

I have done that at the bottom before (had the shingles overhang the roof a little bit so the roof doesn't show) but these shingles are so bulky and large, I didn't want that much shingle hanging off the edge.

[havanaholly]

It's interesting the optical illusions that certain colors have in juxtaposition with other colors.

[fov]

Wow, and I thought shingles were tedious! This weekend, to take a break from shingling, I worked on the shutters. I've always loved the effect of these shutters but never really thought about how much work goes into them! Sanding, wood filling, sanding again, painting, sanding, painting again... I've spent several hours already and I feel like I've barely made a dent. After this I'm *really* looking forward to a laser-cut house for my next build.

Here's an early look (after only one coat of paint). I've posted more pictures of the process on my blog.

I realized that since I'm not using a few of the windows that came with the kit, I can swap the plain plastic inserts in my Houseworks dormer and casement windows with inserts from the kit, so they'll have the same designs as the rest of the windows. I'm using the porch window insert for the dormer, here's how it'll look:

For the casement window (which is where the kitchen/porch window would have been), I have two options. Which do you guys like better? Or do you think I should stick with clear?

[havanaholly]

Aren't the second set of inserts the Westville's? IMO a touch or two of Gallery Glass might liven up those casements. We had a RL stained glass window over the landing of our staircase in our big old house in OH, it was in shades of yellow & clear, and quite nice.