Glowworm Posted December 18, 2015 Share Posted December 18, 2015 Thank you Deborah for all of the links. I will definitely refer to them when I get to that point. Can't wait to get started. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havanaholly Posted December 18, 2015 Share Posted December 18, 2015 Glenna, I use sandpaper to make bricks. Yes, it's very tedious, but it looks nice when done. I bricked the interiors of all my Fairfields' fireplaces, as well as the chimneys; you can sort of see how it looks in the upstairs fireplace here: 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Debsrand56 Posted December 18, 2015 Author Share Posted December 18, 2015 Ooh, you built the Fairfield! Sandpaper is an interesting way to make bricks, and I'll bet it looks really good in person. That would give the bricks a nice texture. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havanaholly Posted December 18, 2015 Share Posted December 18, 2015 I actually built two Fairfields, one of them inside out so it's a mirror-image (almost), to be the two halves of a Bar Harbor summer "cottage". I bashed the bejeezis out of them, put in a stairway to the third floor, attached the tower to the attic in one to make another bathroom/ utility room and closed off the front entry in another to make a Foucault's Pendulum. The "1:24" furniture sets I had gotten ready made turned out to be closer to 1:32 when I set them up with the 1:24 items I'd made from kits or from a DIY project and the dolls I'd made, which were in sale with the kit and scratch items but not the ready made things. I ended up making nearly every stick of furniture in them! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glowworm Posted December 18, 2015 Share Posted December 18, 2015 Your brick work looks nice Holly. Not sure if I'd have the patience to cut out as many as I will need for my project. Hmmm. So you had to glue each brick down one by one? Then did you paint the sandpaper? It's hard for me to tell in the photo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havanaholly Posted December 18, 2015 Share Posted December 18, 2015 I colored the sandpaper with chalk pastels and blended them with a paper towel before cutting them into "bricks". I describe the process in my part of the Team Glencroft blog. I ended up with a lifetime supply of sandpaper bricks; enough to do the Glencroft's lower exterior wall, the brickwork on the McKinley, the interior fireplaces on a couple of other 1:12 builds; then I cut them in half for the Fairfields. I finished them off on the foundation of the Washington 2.0 farmhouse. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Debsrand56 Posted December 18, 2015 Author Share Posted December 18, 2015 I tried uploading some images from the bungalow, and it appears to have worked (although I managed to get duplicates that I had to then delete). They should be in recent images. Havanaholly-- I looked at your pictures and am very impressed. I am always amazed when people can bash a kit and make it truly their own. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glowworm Posted December 19, 2015 Share Posted December 19, 2015 Love your house Deborah. You are doing a great job! I'm not sure if I understand the "dry fit" technique. I've read that before. Do you basically tape the whole house together to make sure the pieces all fit and then take it all apart and begin gluing? My kit came today and I've opened the box to see all of the pieces. Oh my!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Debsrand56 Posted December 19, 2015 Author Share Posted December 19, 2015 Yep. It's all in the instructions. I think about a third of the pages have to do with the dry fit. :-) It's totally worth it, though, because you can really see how things will go together and mark where you will be painting. That's important, because, for example, part of the "floor" is inside the house and part is actually the porch floor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glowworm Posted December 19, 2015 Share Posted December 19, 2015 That makes sense. It looks like you put a wooden plank floor in your living room. And I love your kitchen floor. Where did you order those? I haven't even thought of the front porch floor. Don't a lot of bungalows have painted wooden floors? It seems like my grandma's did. The instructions say to go ahead and paint the outer clapboard walls first. So I guess that will be ok to do before marking right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havanaholly Posted December 19, 2015 Share Posted December 19, 2015 Thank you, Deborah, I started fiddling with kits to "make them mine" with the second kit I built. Glenna, you can paint your floors or use paint chips cut into "tiles" for floors like Deborah's kitchen floor; I have also painted paper and cut it into tiles, and I have spread a thin coat of spackling compound over a primed floor and marked grout lines with a pointed toothpick and colored it when dry: The iron-on wood veneer strip that comes in a roll at the hardware store can be cut easily with a pair of scissor or a utility knife. You don't have to dry fit the entire shell at one time, especially with a larger kit, if you don't want to. I do it to see how the kit goes together & what it will look like, and whilst I'm doing it the house begins to talk to me and tell me its story and how it wants to look. The Glencroft pub in the above picture is a case in point; I immediately thought I'd make it into a cottage,, like Miss Jane Marple's; but NO, it wanted to become a pub! I scribed the wooden floors into the kit wood with the back side of my utility knife blade and a steel straight edge. Dry fitting accomplishes several goals for me; I can sand/ shave the tabs & slots for a more perfect fit (I guess not needed for a RGT kit), once the house is together I have pretty much figured out the instructions, the house tells me how it wants to look, so I can plan what to stain and what to prime (you can always paint over stain, but staining over paint just doesn't look right and I'm not good at simulating wood grain realistically and in scale with paint), and I can see which areas I need to go ahead and begin decorating before I actually glue the house together and no longer be able to fit a hand inside. Whatever I'm going to paint (or wallpaper, or whatever treatment I'm going to put on wood) I first prime, especially if I'm going to mark anything.. I usually wait to prime & paint the exterior until the whole house is together, but whatever works for you. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Debsrand56 Posted December 19, 2015 Author Share Posted December 19, 2015 What a fun bathroom! I love that the houses tell you what they want to become--the mark of a true artist. :-) Glenna-- As Holly suggested, my living room floor is, in fact, wood veneer, cut into strips and glued to a piece of card stock cut to the fit the room, then sanded, stained and varnished. The secret to my kitchen floor is that I simply "stole" images of linoleum tile, sized them and arranged them, printed the whole floor on card stock, then coated it with a little Mod Podge. Way simpler than cutting out tiles, though cut out tiles would likely look more realistic. RGT recommends a first coat of paint on the siding right away to protect it, because the wood is quite soft. I did go ahead and do that. The other up-side is that you get to pick your colors and actually feel like you're doing something fun on the house. Which brings me to a question for Holly--it looks to me that with Greenleaf houses, you need to cut and apply your own siding. Is that correct? Does siding come with the kits, or do you have to purchase it separately? With RGT, the siding is already part of the sides and front of the house. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Debsrand56 Posted December 19, 2015 Author Share Posted December 19, 2015 Forgot to answer--my porch has a painted floor. My real life house is what is called a "Berkeley bungalow"--not as fancy as my half scale one, but a Craftsman era home, and we have a painted front porch floor. :-) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havanaholly Posted December 19, 2015 Share Posted December 19, 2015 The old all-wood Dura-Craft kits used to come with milled-in siding for the exterior walls. You can buy siding for the Greenleaf and Corona Concepts kits from the Greenleaf store, or you can cut strips of chipboard or matboard or poster board or other cardboard and use them for clapboard siding (the siding strip also work for floorboards). I very seldom use clapboard siding to finish off a house; the RL house I live in now is the very first house I've ever lived in that had clapboard siding (and its actually vinyl, NOT real), so my mind doesn't work that way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glowworm Posted December 20, 2015 Share Posted December 20, 2015 Thank you both for all of the tips. Wow - I'm impressed with all of your clever ways to make floors, etc.. I hope I can figure it out. So far I have gone through and checked off all of the parts and have painted the outter clapboard walls a first coat. Not sure how much time I'll have to work on it until after Christmas but I'm anxious to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glowworm Posted December 22, 2015 Share Posted December 22, 2015 Holly - you mentioned that you described your "brick" technique in the Team Glencroft blog but I can't figure out how to find that. Can you send me the link? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havanaholly Posted December 22, 2015 Share Posted December 22, 2015 3 hours ago, Glowworm said: Holly - you mentioned that you described your "brick" technique in the Team Glencroft blog but I can't figure out how to find that. Can you send me the link? http://www.greenleafdollhouses.com/forum/?app=core&module=search&controller=search&tags=Follow%20havanaholly%26%2339%3Bs%20Glencroft read the entries for August 22,23 & 24. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glowworm Posted December 23, 2015 Share Posted December 23, 2015 Thank you Holly. Once you glued all of the bricks down did you go over them with any kind of coating or spray. I saw where you sprayed the sheets of sandpaper with hair spray before cutting. I was just curious if there are any steps once I glue down the bricks. And I will need to figure out the size I'll need to cut for my half scale house. They will be tiny. Deborah - did you have to trim down your porch rails a bit since you put the stones on your porch posts? I haven't got to that step yet but looking ahead I'm wondering how to do the brick work around the posts. I suppose I would do the brick work and then attach the rails after? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havanaholly Posted December 23, 2015 Share Posted December 23, 2015 The colors were so bright I used a dirty wash (traces of black & white paint in water) to tone them down. I didn't use the wash when I used them for the Fairfields. For that build I cut the bits of sandpaper in half and used them. I have since figured out that bricks 1/12 the size of the ones used to build Ft Morgan would be 2 picas by 6 picas on a printer's ruler (1/3" x 1"), so if you can get your paws on a printer's ruler your bricks could be 1 pica X 3 picas, 1/6" X 1/2". I also ran across some garnet sandpaper in a local hardware store that yields the most realistic red brick color, I used those on the foundation of my 1:12 farmhouse. I do whatever treatments I'm going to do before attaching porch parts. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glowworm Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 Deborah - I found the link regarding dying the shingles with vinegar but was wondering.....did you paint each individual shingle with the dye or did you put them all in a bucket and let them soak for a bit? Thank you. I love your house by the way. Mine is coming along slowly but surely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Debsrand56 Posted January 28, 2016 Author Share Posted January 28, 2016 Is this your house? I love it! The brick work looks fantastic. And where did you the little mailbox? I looked all over for one, and finally settled for a mail slot on my door. To answer your question on the shingles, I put them, a bunch at a time, in an aluminum pan with holes punched in the bottom, that was then set inside another aluminum pan. I poured my solution over, let them sit a bit, then lifted out the inside pan, which drained nicely into the pan below. I could then re-use the solution on the next batch. Hope this makes sense. I then spread my shingles out on wax paper to dry. There are a lot of shingles, so I couldn't spread them out all at once. If you leave shingles touching, it can affect the color (which you may or may not care about). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glowworm Posted January 28, 2016 Share Posted January 28, 2016 Thank you. I made the mailbox from left over trim. I glued several layers together. My handwriting didn't turn out too well but that's ok. It doesn't open. I still need to add a door knob to the door and finish painting the trim. Thank you on the shingle advice. That makes it perfectly clear. I will do mine the same way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Debsrand56 Posted January 28, 2016 Author Share Posted January 28, 2016 Forgot to add--be sure to wear gloves when handling the shingles and vinegar solution. You might not think of it as a dye, but it will discolor your skin, You should also wash off any that gets on you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glowworm Posted January 28, 2016 Share Posted January 28, 2016 Thank you. I don't think I would have thought about that. I'll be sure to wear some. I will soon be ready to start roofing. Did you use Aleen's Tacky Glue or hot glue to attach the shingles? I've seen videos both ways. So far I've used Aleen's on the whole house. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havanaholly Posted January 28, 2016 Share Posted January 28, 2016 I use wood glue on the shingles, unless I'm using paper-based shingle; then I use my Elmer's all-purpose white glue. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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