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Renovating a 1/2” scale East Side Townhouse


peonyfoxburr

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Hello all,

I just acquired a mostly-built RGT 1/2” scale East Side Townhouse. The seller included a bag of trim, which I haven’t looked at yet, but the house is all put together, window frames in, shingles applied, and exterior painted/finished. The main thing I want to do with the outside is to re-surface all the exterior walls with paperclay. At present there is paint on about half, and a stone paper applied to the rest. I have actually spent some time in New York brownstones (on the East Side, even!), and this isn’t what they look like. 

So, I have several questions to put out—I think I know what I want to do, but want to hear others’ opinions about methods and so on. I have found an excellent paperclay tutorial linked within posts on this forum. The natural color of brownstone varies—it is actually a type of sandstone—but would it be better to pre-color the paperclay medium before rolling it out, to a sort of baseline dark reddish-brown color, and then do color washes to achieve the variations? Or should the paperclay go on, get texturized, and dry, before any paint is applied? (And is ordinary acrylic paint the right thing to use?)

As I said above, most trim has already gone on. With a thickness of 1/8” to the paperclay, will the trim (especially window frames) look too recessed?  I have to look at some more photos to refresh my memory, but my recollection is that windows are set right into the blocks of stone in the NY brownstones. So this may be a moot point. 

I will now attempt to include a photo, but since I didn’t review the procedure before starting this post, bear with me!

 

 

6705BB5C-3BE2-4D46-B483-57D1A8F40F94.jpeg

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Can you pop the windows out? I haven't used paperclay before, but what I would do for stucco is draw a pencil line around the window trim and then remove the windows. Cover the area on the inside of your pencil line (where the trim goes) with masking tape. Do your paperclay, then remove the masking tape and the trim will cover up the bare area that didn't get covered with clay. That might be the look you want of the windows being set into the stone, but if they look too sunken in, you can add strip wood shims to the back of the trim to bump the windows out a little.

I looked at some pictures of brownstones, and often the windows don't have trim. The ones that do have stone trim that blends into the facade. Your wooden windows might look strange because of this. You could try painting the trim to be a similar color to the stone, but another option is to turn the windows inside out so the fancy side is on the interior of the house. Then you could paperclay all the way up to the edges of the window holes, and then etch lines into the clay around the window holes to create trim, rather than adding trim separately. (Hope that makes sense!)

This is stucco, not paperclay, but here's an example of how I did a window in a roombox, that shows what I'm trying to explain:

 

window.jpg

 

One other thought... if you like the idea of turning the windows around, but don't want that fan trim inside your house, you can remove the pediments and replace them with something made out of strip wood. I'm using the same windows on a Craftsman roombox and that's what I did.

bungalow12.jpg

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That makes complete sense, Emily—thanks! 

The $64,000 question is, CAN i pop the windows out? Perhaps a hair dryer would soften the glue enough to do it without damage.

By now, most brownstone owners have replaced their original windows, for energy conservation reasons. It makes me wonder what the originals looked like, in terms of how many panes and in what arrangement they were in. They were constructed over a long period of time, covering several historical eras, so thr answer may be anyone’s guess.

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Hi Elizabeth.

I have used paper clay for a few different things...mostly red bricks, and an old slate roof. I have never tried to color/tint it before applying it to the permanent surface. It can be very stiff, and it might take some good kneading to get a consistent color, but you should give it a try. You can always paint over it.

Rik Pierce has an excellent booklet on using paper clay.

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12 hours ago, peonyfoxburr said:

— would it be better to pre-color the paperclay medium before rolling it out, to a sort of baseline dark reddish-brown color, and then do color washes to achieve the variations?

I use DAS air-drying modeling clay from Michael's. It's the same thing as Paperclay as far as I can tell, having used both. I get it in terracotta for doing brickwork. You still need to paint, colorwash, etc., but no tinting of the base clay is required. I figure if a few bricks get worn down or banged up a bit, the terracotta base color showing through will be a lot less noticeable than white Paperclay.

https://www.michaels.com/das-modeling-clay/M10130210.html

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