Four poster bed in William and Mary House

Here's the bed in situ in the bedroom of the William and Mary House -- I really love how it looks, even before I make and embroider the hangings! The pinkish velvet-covered mattress came with it, and looks just fine, actually -- goes very well with the wallpaper, at least :)

The chair is a Bespaq I picked up cheaply on eBay -- so typical of the period.

And I finished the strip of stonework for along the front of the main house. David bought me a triangular file and I found that did an excellent job of delineating and deepening the bevels between the stones.  Next step -- cut the right hand front door!

Stonework waist

Needing stonework waists for my house, I decided to make a band of "stones" out of a thin pine strip.

I used a long quoin and marked off the strip into lengths. I incised a v shaped groove to separate each stone and then beveled the top and bottom edges with a craft knife. I think I need to get some decent carving tools -- this is fun!

I then coated the strip in limestone modelling dust.

This door is now ready to hang -- maybe later today?

Chimneys on and front of kitchen wing almost done

I glued the big chimneys on to the WAMH yesterday -- I still have to do the lead flashing round the base, but they add so much to the look of the building! I do love the extra height of the chimney pots.

And I pushed ahead with the brickwork and finished the bricking on the kitchen wing front. I have to make and finish the "stonework" waist of the building, which will be applied at the top of this wing and around the middle of the whole building.

I decided I wanted a little detail for the tops of the windows, so I used three of the quoin stones above the lintel of the windows to add some interest.  I think this motif, repeated across the facade of the house, will look quite nice.

I'm almost through slating the front of the roof, and then the roof will be well and truly done!

Egg carton stones

Yesterday I decided to finish off the fireplaces with the edging I'd been planning: egg carton stones.

I link to some great tutorials from This Post, if you want to see people do this really, really well, and paint them, and give you directions and stuff :)

This isn't really a tutorial, because there's not much more that I can say about this topic than:

1. Get a paper egg carton (preferably with a flat top)
2. Cut out shapes
3. Glue them in place
4. Have a gin and tonic (or refreshing beverage of choice

The process of cutting out shapes to fit around these fireplaces was a bit like being given a jigsaw with missing pieces and then cutting replacement pieces out of egg cartons.  I'm sure there's a better, more methodical way to do this than the way I did it, which was to eyeball it, cut out shapes, and keep paring them down until the pieces either fit or I totally ruined them.

Actually it was kind of fun!

Here's what the kitchen looks like with the new stone edging around the three hearths.  (Actually this photo drove me insane, because the edging around the bake ovens was concave on the left side, and I trimmed it down with an exacto knife until it looked less wonky :)  I don't actually like the job I did on the charcoal burner unit very much, so I'm not going to take any close ups of it!

 

The rest looks okay.  I even like the colour at the moment, although I may mess with it later.  This stuff is amazing -- the texture is absolutely perfect for stone.  I'm sure most of you know Cynthia, of Cynthia's Minilife, who has transformed a Beacon Hill kit into a stunning Second Empire mansion.  One of the things that makes it so gorgeous are the egg carton stones she's used on the exterior.  Check it out, if you don't already know her lovely blog!

Kitchen Floor, possible final glaze

I used a varying glaze with a base of low lustre acrylic medium and differing amounts of raw umber.  Raw umber is always the go-to colour to muddy anything up and age it.  The floor looks a lot better now, after more sanding and polishing.  I will add the soot effects of the fire later, when I'm feeling braver (it always seems to take a lot of guts to really dirty up a nice clean kitchen (although I seem to do it with ease in my 1:1 kitchen :)

 Yesterday afternoon I added the wall between the kitchen and the pantry/storage room, which really helps define the space, of course.  And I glued together my little sideboard and put it in place.  It's just resting against the wall for the moment, because I need to be able to get into the oven opening and do a lot of busy work on that in the next few days.

And just before I go to bed, one last (arty) shot of the stone :)

Faux stone blocks in Tower 1

Today I did the first roughing-in of the stone blocks on the ground floor of the First Tower.

I painted the walls of the room a medium grey.

Then I used a few glazes of darker grey, lighter grey and a warmer tone (raw umber) overtop of the medium to give me a stone texture.

Then I painted the grout lines of the blocks freehand.  I now need to go over individual blocks more and make them tidier and more varied in colour.

Here's the result so far: