House restoration: facade, part 2

Join me in my triumph: my plan worked! After 24 hours in clamps, the wall was - well, I won't say like new, but it was pressed together. You could still see the rip, but now it was easier to deal with. The inside almost seemed straightforward.

I sanded the rip as smooth as possible, but the problem was that I didn't have the right paint. This paint was something I mixed back then, and there was no way I could mix the same again. I had two options. I could hang wallpaper that would cover the rip neatly. The issue with wallpaper on a surface with windows is that it is quite difficult to cut the paper neatly around them. Back then I did it on flat surfaces, and it was hard enough. So I decided against it. I can always do it later if I change my mind. The second option was to repaint the whole surface, and that's what I did. I have a vague memory of being dissatisfied with the colour anyway (or maybe I am making it up, to justify my decision). In any case, I genuinely believe that the new colour is much nicer as well as more authentic. It is called Duck Egg Blue and would probably be used in a Victorian house, rather than the earlier bright baby blue.

You cannot see the rip unless you look very closely, and who will ever do that?

On the front, I had a similar problem.

It was easy to sand the rip, then cover it up over with filler. But how can I find the right paint? I bought it at a hardware store in Cambridge seven years ago, and I have no idea what it was called.

Just to test, I painted over with the closest paint I had at home.

It probably looks tolerable in the picture, but I knew I would get irritated every time I looked at it. Therefore I went to my local paint store. It is a small store, very friendly, and they got quite interested when I explained what I was doing. I took the pediment with me to show them what I needed. It was the only loose bit.

They used some clever device that was supposed to recognise the colour and provide a code. However, the lovely salesperson said it wasn't 100% percent reliable, and indeed when we looked at a strip it was totally wrong. We looked through everything close, and another person was summoned, and finally we decided on the best match. Now, I was expecting a 50 ml tester, like I used to buy in the UK, but it turned out that their smallest testers were half a liter. By then they had mixed my paint so I couldn't say I didn't want it. Moreover, they had run out of half-liter white jars, so they gave me 0,75 l for the same price.

I now have this paint, with the pretty name "Nostalgia", that will last whatever remains of my life, while all I needed was a few drops. Ah well, all my future projects will be nostalgic.

I was actually prepared to paint over the whole front, since I had all this paint, but believe it or not, the match was perfect. Human eye is still better than electronic devices. And half of the rip would be hidden by a pillar.

Now that the wall was repaired, I could deal with the pillars. Several pillar caps were broken.

If I had a laser cutter I would cut them, and if I had a 3D printer I'd print them, but having neither (yet), I had to use my imagination.

Cardboard, filler, paint - and you wouldn't see a difference, unless you were looking very, very closely and also knew what you were looking for. I am quite proud of myself. 

I did the same with all pillar caps that were badly damaged, otherwise I used filler. And really, there are faults on real houses as well, particularly on old houses. 

The final steps were the pediment and the railing. A bit of the railing is missing, and I don't think I will find it among my stuff as I have already sorted all supplies. 

Not much I can do right now, but I see a couple of solutions I could try.

And I was right: I feel SO MUCH BETTER now that the facade is restored.

Next: front doors.

Exterior progress

My impulsive work on the fronts had unexpected consequences. I liked the colour scheme on the left-hand front so without any further considerations I painted and papered the inside.

 

I am very happy with this, although I still need to add fake mouldings. I will need to visit the DIY store and pinch some 1:1 embossed wallpaper.

But you may have noticed something. The windows are in. And the doors!

Yes, that's right. But it sounds far too simple, and it wasn't. I had completely forgotten what an ordeal it was to put in windows. Just to put me off guard, the first window went in nicely, but the remaining seven were a pain. I realised that I must measure and cut the opening in the paper before I put in the window, but paper after I have put in the window. With one window I forgot, and it was a lot of extra work. Sand, scratch, sand, sand, sand... But when I finally turned the front over to glue on the surrounds I felt that the time had come! Honestly, I hadn't planned to do this until much, much later. But I just couldn't help it.

Everything had been prepared: primed, sanded, painted and sanded again. But as with all steps in this project, the actual work implies much more than the instruction "Glue in place...". The pillars wouldn't go into the pillar caps, and in fact the pillars were 3mm too long and I had to saw it off. The supports didn't fit the openings. The quoins were either 5mm too long or too short, depending on how you view it. I didn't take step-by-step pictures because there wasn't really much to show, but I swore all the way. There were new edges to paint (I had thought I had painted them all), mouldings to cut ("Cut mouldings to size", says the instruction, child's play), yards of masking tape to hold things together.

But my biggest problem, that I had been supressing all the time, was the front door. My beautiful front door that I stained and painted more than six months ago! I said then that it would be months before I got that far, and I was right. Six and a half months later I must eventually face the problem I knew was there all along. The door is bigger than the opening. This is because I bought this door separately - the door provided with the kit wasn't nearly as beautiful.

Now, the kit has been cut with precision laser, and I had to make the opening 1 cm larger. I don't have a laser, and I don't have a proper tool to perform this operation. I won't tell you how I did it because you would view me as a barbarian, but it doesn't matter: after many hours of toil it's done, and whatever didn't look proper is now forever hidden behind the surround.

The French door wasn't much of a trouble except the very last detail that freaked me out: peeling off the protective plastic from the glass. I was clever and put in the door before I glued on the balcony rail, but I didn't want to take off the plastic in case I spilled glue or paint.

I am aware you are getting impatient and don't want any more words, you want a picture! And here it is:




I wish I could say: It's finished, but of course it isn't. The right-hand front isn't even started - you can see one window is crooked because it is just white-tacked. So six more windows, mouldings, quoins, and many, many tiny details that need attention. And of course there is the whole front staircase to build. Now the exterior feels odd without it.

And yet I am glad I have taken this important step. The house is not finished and won't be for a long time. But it looks more finished than a week ago, and an untrained eye won't even notice all the missing details. However, I do. Still a long, long way to go.