iseecerulean

I sat down at my worktable last night prepared to finish the house...was going to cut and paste the rock paper onto the chimney but I thought that it would be more realistic if I used the stone on the part that is going to be visible from the exterior, and cement block on the part that's in the attic. 

I spent two hours carving block shapes into the chimney and painting them...I really liked how it turned out...until I held the paper up to it and realized it doesn't look good at all.  It looks like painted on blocks (which it is), so I'm going to paint them brown so that they look like painted over blocks instead of painted on blocks. 

Did that make sense?

 

I finished the fix, it looks much better...on the front anyway, I couldn't get all the glue goobers off the sides, so I'll have to cover that view when I plant the garden.  It doesn't look different enough from noon yesterday to take another picture this morning, though.

After I finished that I did some touch up painting under the eaves...then, when I realized I hadn't remembered correctly which shade of white I had painted under there,  I touched up my touch ups with the right shade of white...I think.

The only thing I have left to do outside is put on the stone paper.  I looked around inside to make sure I hadn't missed anything, and the only things that I saw left to do are to put back on the piece of door trim that fell off the inside front door surround...except that I can't find it, and nobody is going to notice it's missing anyway because you can't see that spot head-on....and to put some quarter round as baseboard in the two small spots in the kitchen where you can see the wall meet the floor...except I'm not going to, because it looks okay to me as is, and nobody else is going to notice anyway.

I am sooooo close to being done!  I told my boss I'd bring it in to work on Monday so everyone could see it.  The mini-vacuum I ordered (not a USB vac after all) isn't supposed to arrive until Monday, so I'll have to dust it out the best I can by hand.

Oh shoot!  I just remembered that I wanted to fix the mantle in the living room...you know what, forget it, I'm not doing it.  Pffft.

I'd love to take a personal day so I can stay home today to finish it, but I had a temp do some work for me yesterday that I'm now going to have to spend the day today undoing, then doing right.  Sigh...  It's going to be another six day, 50 to 60 hour week again this week.

I don't have all the glue goobers off yet...need to work away at it some more...but it looks better already.

I'm going to pull the lattice off the steps...too much of a good thing. 

Some of the paint came off in spots as I was cutting it.  I thought about repainting it before I glued it on but I decided not to...I like it like this, it looks lived in.

 

Plastic canvas as miniature latticework...I bet I'm about the billionth person to think of it...

I had an idea last night, while I was building the step...

My plan is to finish the foundation of the house with stone, but leave the foundation under the porch painted gray...I thought about making latticework out of railroad lumber...then I thought, what if I use a piece of plastic canvas?

I'm going to run to JoAnne's on my lunch hour today to see what they've got.

It's hard to get a good close-up.  The trim around the bottom is gray with black rubbed into the cracks, the top is black with gray rubbed into the cracks.  You've got to enlarge the pictures to really see the detail.

 

The only things I've got left to do are to build a step up to the front porch and to put the stone patterned paper on the foundation and chimney. 

I would probably have it all done if I hadn't spent the whole day Saturday at the office.  The boss bought us another company, so we're all working hard to merge it in...their books are a mess, their procedures are weird and their people are all scared of change...it's rough.  My workload has just doubled, at least until I get their accounts straightened around...the boss is getting me a temp, so things should get more manageable soon.  I was planning to spend Sunday at the office as well but I didn't go in...I desperately needed some me time.

 

I won't use the wooden filigree gingerbread stuff again, it breaks really easy.  I've done two repairs so far, and have two other spots that are going to stay broken.  Nobody will notice unless they examine the pieces closely, while comparing them to their neighbors...now anyway, I'm worried how well it's going to hold up long term.  It does look awesome though, doesn't it? 

Speaking of breaking things...remember when I broke the base off the bottom of the door frame on one side then sucked it up into my vacuum?  I purposefully broke the base off the other side and made new ones out of some scrap moulding.  They're a little wide, but they turned out okay.

I also painted the top of the chimney.  It looks better close up, remind me to take another picture later.

Greenleaf's half scale Chantilly.

Kit-bashed, of course, to look like the cottages at Marie Antoinette's hamlet.

I've got to finish the Fairfield first, of course, and make Susan's Halloween present...maybe the excitement of a new house will give me the kick in the pants I need to get the one I've been working on forever finally done.

Sorry, I was trying to come up with some clever play on 'does this dress make my butt look fat' for a title, but it fell flat.

Remember when I sent all my leftover dollhouse pieces to England so that Sharon could build a conservatory from them?  I thought all of the pieces were leftovers, but I hadn't finished my chimney or built my front porch steps yet.  Oops.  

I made my own chimney top...is it too big? 

Hmm...maybe I should have painted it a nice slimming black or dark gray before I took the pictures...

 

This is what the kit chimney top would have looked like...

I'm looking at dollhouse stuff online....am getting really tired of the same annoyance almost everywhere...go here to look at the door and you'll see what I mean.