Roman turret, part 5, in which roof beams are raised

Read the previous posts about this project: part 1, part 2,  part 3 and part 4.

I ended with a cliffhanger yesterday, and I genuinely didn't know how I would solve the roof problem.

With some anxiety, I cut off the top of the shoe box.

However, by now the walls have been enforced by several layers and were absolutely steady. I then realised that I should have cut the back panel to include the triangular back gable. Too late! But if you want to replicate my project, make sure that you cut the back piece with the gable. I simply had to glue on an additional piece.

I then added a fake beam made of card to which I glued a piece of wooden strip. I borrowed it from another project because it was just the right thing.

Another large beam went on the back wall, and smaller beams along the side walls.

I then had to add some beams inside the roof that probably won't even be visible, but it's a matter of pride.

The inside of the roof is cardboard (but you can also what kinds of materials I am recycling. Modern archaeologists would be mighty surprised to find Felix kitten food in the remains of a Roman turret).

I painted it over, although it won't be visible from the outside. I then added some crossbeams, made from coffee stirrers, that I stained dark.

The roof is still not attached, and I am still not quite sure how exactly I am going to do it. I don't want to glue it until I am confident that it is the way I want it to be. So this is another work-in-progress picture. You may think I haven't made that much progress, but I have. Come back soon. 

Roman turret, part 4, in which a window is made

Read the previous posts about this project: part 1, part 2 and part 3.

I started today by cutting a window in the back wall.  With a good scalpel, it's straightforward.

I could leave it like this, but a window in a stone wall would be as deep as the wall is thick, so I need to add at least one layer of cardboard to achieve this depth.

 

A large back piece, held together with masking tape while the glue dries. As I have no egg cartons at the moment, it will be a while until I can do the stone masonry on the back. But as you cannot see it from the front, it's fine so far.

Then I cut through the back for the window.  The depth also enabled me to add a frame that looks more realistic.

 

Close-up:

As you see, I made the frame from coffee stirrers, putting it in the middle of the opening, which emphasises depth. I added filler to the edges. I may paint it over for a smoother surface.

I think it looks very nice.

As a next step, I realised, I need to fix the roof. It feels I will never get back to the partition and ladder, but with them in place, attaching the roof will be a problem.

I could cheat and just put the roof with gables on top, but in my model picture, there is no ceiling on the upper floor, just massive beams that hold the roof. So now I need to figure out how to construct this beam system and how to fix them onto the roof and onto the main structure.

I am sure you are curious about how I will manage it. Come back soon.

Roman turret, part 3, in which flagstones are cut

I finished my Roman turret project yesterday with rough estimates of how to insert the horizontal partition, add ladder and other woodwork.

But first of all I had to "whitewash" the interior walls again, and I also decided that at one place, whitewash has come off and some of the stone masonry is visible behind. Details like this add the sense of authenticity.

Remember that I had run out of egg cartons, and once again, I don't go shopping exclusively for something that will be recycled. But I still wanted to move on with the project, and the next step had to be the flagstone floor. In the absence of egg cartons I had to do with what I had, and yet another way to imitate flagstones (apart from clay and egg cartons) is a specially treated card. I think it used to be the back of an old college notebook.

 So first, obviously, cut strips of card and distress edges, as I did with the outside "stones".  Then moisten them between two layers of kitchen towel. Wrinkle up, then flatten and let dry. They will dry almost flat, but the surface will be slightly uneven.

I very deliberately left gaps between flagstones that I then filled with filler.

The dirt in front is real dirt from my garden. Just experimenting.

While things were drying, I started on some woodwork.

I showed the ladder yesterday, but I now I aged it by staining. I used Rustine's antique pine wood dye. The door is, like the ladder, made of coffee stirrers and stained. The floor was a bit more complicated with the opening in the middle, but it is so much smaller than the floors in my large house so it was quick to make. The simple rule is: sand until you drop dead.

I haven't even considered what scale it is because the shoe box was my point of departure. It is definitely smaller than 1:12, but larger than half-scale, so something in between, like Lundby or Playmobile. I will adjust all details as I add them.

The door must of course have hinges and a knob.

It will be a fake door, at least for the moment. Technically it leads out to the wall. If I add a bit of wall I may make a real, opening door. There should be two doors leading in both directions, but I will start with one and see how crammed the upstairs will look.

Before I move on I need to cut out a window in the back wall because it will be very awkward to do after I have added the partition. That's what keeps happening: I discover that I cannot move on until I have done something else. This is why instructions are helpful, taking you through the project step by step. And this is why I describe my project in so much detail.

But for now, with all the faults and incompleteness, here it is.

 

To be continued.

Roman turret, part 2, in which stone masonry is improved

It is remarkable how looking at pictures of your project you see flaws better than looking at the project itself. I have realised that the walls of my turret are too thin. Of course they would be the thickness of at least one stone, possibly more than one. I should have thought about it and added more cardboard on the outside. Now I could either tear down the whole wall or sacrifice some space and add a layer on the inside. I opted for the latter, which also gave me an opportunity to do a more natural finish of the edges, with proper cornerstones. 

As you have probably guessed, I have come into possession of another egg carton (not enough; I should have asked husband to order five dozen eggs), but I didn't finish the second wall, instead making a gable. It is not fixed yet, just testing. Not even sure how to fix it. This is a very challenging project because I have no instructions. There are images on the web, but I couldn't find any tutorials.  And images are for a different kind of turret, although there are helpful details. For instance, not all turrets are whitewashed on the inside. But I believe the interior details will be better displayed against white background. It's a long time before I come to interior details. It's now time to consider how to make the partition without cheating too much.

This needs some clever engineering - Romans were very good at it. Of course they would build with scaffolding, while I just have to decide in which order to make the ladder, the beams, and so on. I am testing everything with thin card before I make final constructions.

This is probably the most rickety ladder you have seen.

I wouldn't want to climb it. And a Roman carpenter wouldn't take me on as apprentice. There is also a problem because my turret is not deep enough so there is no space behind the ladder on the upper floor. But maybe it can on the other wall. And rickety it will be, with some railing.

Now I need to cut an opening in the partition, not too large, not too small, just Goldilock.

And I think this is as far as I can get today, because I also need to "whitewash" the interior walls again, make the flagstone floor downstairs and wooden floor upstairs, add beams and other woodwork. But I am pleased with the progress. Come back soon.

Roman turret

My summer holiday this year was a walk on Hadrian's Wall. I won't tell the whole story (can just say that it was wonderful), but at one point we were reading a sign explaining how Roman turrets were built and used, and on the sign was this picture:

Oh my, I thought. this looks like a miniature. (It probably was, unless it was a computer simulation). I can make one like this, I thought.

So here we go.

As usual, I went about for a while deciding what to use, and a shoe box felt the most natural choice. Just think portrait rather than landscape.

But of course the walls of a turret would be much more massive so I glued thick cardboard on the outside. And I glued a piece of cardboard to the bottom because I may add a bit of wall on both sides and a bit of road in front.

I have never done it myself, but of course the best miniature stone masonry is done with egg cartons. My husband knows that for the next couple of weeks he must save egg cartons for me. Fortunately, he is used to my crazy requests.

Stones must be cut one at a time, and the edges must be distressed for natural look. They also must be painted one at a time, because no two stones are exactly the same colour. I miscalculated the brown ones - they turned out far too conspicuous and had to be repainted. 

 

Now the building can begin.

 

Not really, I will need about ten times as much stones, but we had only one egg carton at home, and running to a supermarket on Sunday to get eggs entirely for the sake of the carton felt overdoing it. But I wanted to test what it would look like.

People always ask what kind of glue and paint and so on, so I used simple watercolors and all-purpose PVA.

Gluing one by one, at random. but on the whole I think it looks too light, I should probably paint it over again, a bit darker. When the glue had set, I added "mortar" (filler) for proper look.

It looks more natural this way, but I believe I will paint the mortar greyish as well. And of course I will sand it when it is dry.

I had almost run out of egg carton, so I didn't do the other wall, but instead glued some stones on the front edges - again, just to test.  I had about enough material to test flagstone floors. I once made flagstone floors from air-drying clay, and it looked great, but this time I will make it simpler. I also lined the interior walls with lining paper.

The next stage is inserting the horizontal divider, with proper beams etc and with an opening for the stairs. This is quite a demanding bit of engineering so I need to think more about it and decide whether I need extra supplies.

However, I really wanted to move on with the project, so I made a roof. I have used this technology before:

 

You can glue tile by tile, but in this case it doesn't matter, and this method is quicker. Typically I don't necessarily use quicker methods, because I enjoy making things slowly, but anyway, this is what I did.

I may paint it or leave it as it is, because it has a suitable, worn-out look.

So here is my Roman turret-to-be, not in the order it would have been built in real world, and I am not using slaves. But as with all miniature projects, you cannot help thinking about how they made it, how much time and labour it took, and how much knowledge and imagination.

To be continued.

Repairing and rethinking

We have two new, young cats who have no respect for dollhouses. None of our old cats showed any interest so I could never share any of those hilarious "cat invades dollhouse" pictures. This time I put away anything that young, curious cats could tear down, and I glazed all my room boxes. It was a right thing to do, because one of the cats immediately chose the room-box shelf as his favourite place.

 

The space happened to be empty because I was working on that room box, but now I cannot deprive the cat of his preferred sleeping spot. He hasn't so far done any damage.

But you cannot think of everything. I was amused when I finally took a cat-and-dollhouse picture:

He had also been inside, although I didn't manage to capture it, and he was very careful, as cats actually are. Still the inevitable happened.

 

There is a fault in this kit design, as I pointed out to the manufacturer when I bought it. The front stairs are not attached to anything, and you cannot open the main or basement fronts without removing the stairs. In other models, front stairs are usually attached to one of the fronts. Well, not much I can do about it. And it's too late to think of what I may have done, as some people in my Facebook groups have suggested: don't allow the cats into your hobby room, and so on. I don't have a dedicated hobby room; I have all my dollhouses in my home office, and that's where I work on my miniatures. I also work on everything else there, and I like cats being by my side. So I will just need to accept inevitable damage every now and then.

Right now it's a matter of repairing. I have postponed it for a while, but sooner or later it has to be done, so let's make it sooner.

I had issues when I built those front stairs two years ago. Returning to it now, I cannot see what the problem was. Fortunately, I have kept the back panel, "just in case", and here is the case. It fit nicely, just as it should have in the first place. Was it jinxed then? Was I stupid? Was I impatient?

All right, I won't deny that it took several attempts, and patience was the key. Every glued piece must dry properly before the next step. If the cats decided to cuddle on the table right then I would have... well, I would have had to do it all over again. 

So I wish I could say that it was now absolutely fine and painless, but that's not true. I mention it because it is a very complicated project, and I don't want to create an impression that it was an easy task. But in the end it was much neater and more stable.

Then of course I had to re-attach banisters and mouldings. No way everything would fit neatly so it was once again cheating a bit with filler and air-drying clay.

While I was at it, I added a detail that I had been considering for a while. Chess can be used for so many things!

Flower basket #2

In my previous post I said I would not show how I made flowers for the hanging baskets, but I have come up with a couple of new ideas that I want to share. Maybe they are not new at all, in which case you will just get a confirmation that the methods work.

As I have said repeatedly, I am not interested in making more of the same. I could have simply covered the other two baskets with my paper daisies, but that wouldn't have been much of a challenge. I tried punching red tissue paper, but it was too thin and just got crumpled. Then I thought that I could make roses from red tissue paper. I have made roses from oven-baked clay, but they would be too heavy for a basket. The tissue paper is, as you see, a paper crown I have been saving from Christmas. I save everything, and I have made fires with red and orange tissue paper. But now, roses.

This is what I did. Again, maybe it is a well-known method, but I haven't seen it. I wrapped a piece of paper round a length of dowel that I just happened to have in front of me - anything suitable will do. Then I cut off the excess of paper leaving 1mm that I then twisted and flattened. Then I pushed about 3mm of the paper from the dowel and cut off. Here are your little roses, ready to be glued onto your basket. (Or I guess you can add stems). 

It was easy to shape the flowers with tweezers before gluing.

I showed in the previous post what I used for basket.

So far so good. Again, I could have added some white and pink daisies, but I had been looking at various images and suddenly felt an urge to make some fuchsias. There are several tutorials on Pinterest about making paper fuchsias, in easy languages such as Spanish and Dutch, and all of them use punches. If I continue to make flowers and flower shops, I may invest in more punches, but at the moment I didn't have one required to make fuchsias. But I decided to make some anyway.

I punched out some five-petal flowers and some circles from appropriately coloured paper. Making holes in the middle curled them already, but I had to curl the inside bits slightly more. For stems, I used teeny tiny stamens from a full-size paper rose the origin of which I cannot remember. It was hard work because the flowers are so small. I put a ruler in the picture to give the sense of scale. 

Frankly, I didn't have the patience to make more than these even though I have more petals. I had to curl the outside petals back a bit more. I have a magnifying glass, but it doesn't combine well with my eyeglasses.

I like the result. The fuchsias are actually hanging over the side.

Then I simply added some generic pink flowers here and there.

Here the second basket joins the first one. In this picture, I have also made some improvements, adding mouldings and arranging the display in a more interesting way.

I will make at least one more basket, and maybe I will add a shelf, some posters, rolls of wrapping paper? The back wall looks too bare. I am enjoying myself.