After reading everyone elses blog & studying the instructions, I thought I should add the windows NOW because once some of the walls go up, I will not have access to some areas in the rooms. I started by painting the surrounds of the windows because I know a portion of them will show I then added the Sashes. On the outside of the house, they go on top. on the inside of the house, they go at the bottom:
This is the picture of the Windows Casings:
I Love the way these wind
This is the pictures of the 2nd floor staircase with the bookcase included. I LOVE it!!
I am sorry my pictures are showing us sideways. It is not showing this way on my computer but when I upload them, they are crazy :o :lol: .
I used Quick Grip Glue to assemble this because stairs ned to go togther fast. Who has time to wait for wood glue to dry while assembling the stairs ?
Then You add the back & sides of the bookcase together:
After interlocking the the bookcase
I LOVE the Staircase in this house. The rooms are large enough that you can actually USE the staircase & have lots of room to decorate the room still. I also like the stairs facing away from you once they are in the room. The built in bookcase on the second floor staircase is a PERFECT use of space also.
This is the 1st side & back piece:
2nd staircase side and top back added:
Now to lay the stairs on the table to add the risers will looks like this:
This is
I really wanted a Pretty Victorian house but once I showed the kit picture of the lily to a customer of mine....Well, her wonderful ideas changed my first impression of this house.
I started construstion on this house and I must take my hats off to all of you who have built this house WITHOUT the use of pictures. I am a very visual person but I must say, because I have built so many houses of Greenleafs (Plus I read the instructions several times and I had friends pictures that I have seen ov
after getting over my paint crisis my mother put me in another.
lol
I have decided to stain the outside trim and the sashes will be white.
I was Happy...but nooooo she's like it will be to much.....so I painted one double window trim grey.....NOOOO instantly. I painted all the out side window sashes will install the windows tomorrow.
while waiting for that to dy I put the roof on the porch. my side roof corner peice was shy of meeting the edge of the roof support....hopp
Everything was gfoing together so well and than I hit the wall...yes the decorating wall.
The following photos show the base going on.
and than we come to the part I have had troubles with.
I really did not like what the Black did to the house.
so I tried brown
not a big change just enough of a subtle change...it doesnt look half bad. but than I tried grey
I thought to myself the bay area looks unfinished. so I went looking at photos and found that I had missed a peice...this one
and here it is installed
staircase number 1 is in
bathroom wall in and this is what the back looks like now.
next I used the tissue/paint method on the outside to give it a plaster look and now I am ready for the porch!
I like
well due to surgery I had a long(2months) break from building.
last night I cleaned up after the Coventry and put the lily on the workbench again.
after many color changes I have settled on the foyer look. remember with this kit it is a good idea to decorate the foyer before installing the staircase wall as it will be next to impossible to do it later as it is an inclosed area.
I painted it dolphin grey and used cherry stain for the trim.
I am using
There were actually some more pictures showing progress of wallpapering, but Zack decided to use my camera to take pictures of his truck [while I wasn't home]. When he loaded the pix of his truck onto his computer, he decided that I was done with the pictures that were on the camera of this house, so he erased them for me. GGRRRRRR.
Anyway, I'm done with wallpapering the first two floors. I'll start in the foyer, move through the kitchen, into the dining room, and back around to th
Need to get some of my windows cut out [cut the wallpaper away from the windows] so I can see what I'm doing. Since these windows have some of the "bars" going across the windows which will separate the window panes, I have to cut all around the window frame itself. Believe it or not, I actually like to start on the outside of the window, take my razor blade and using the tip of the razor blade, I cut around the windows where the bars are.
Then I take my flashlight a
Time to Wallpaper! I start out by putting the textured paper in for the ceilings. I use wallpaper paste for borders to install the wallpaper, and I put it both on the walls and the paper.
When wallpapering, I usually choose the first wall to begin at that's at the back of the room, and I usually wallpaper that wall first. However, the first room that I started in with this house was the area that I am considering the bathroom. This the second floor bay window area r
Jimmy has gotten the shell together for me, except for the third floor, so I've put it into position to begin priming it for wallpaper. You knew I was going to turn it upside down, didn't you? How else am I gonna paint?
At this point, I start looking at all the rooms in this house, and I start doing some serious drooling! This is gonna take a lot of wallpaper! Cool! Ordinarily, I use two coats of semi-gloss paint on walls that I am going to wallpaper, but this time
well I have been feeling guilty! to wrapped up in anticipation for our trip I cant decide on anything.
but tonight I was like well I can texture the ceilings and while I was doing that I remembered that wall treatments are big as a tuscan feel so I als textured the foyer. Im hoping to sponge paint itand maybe than I will be happy.
because I cannot decide how the foyer should be decorated I cannot put the stairs in or add the wall.
so I am STUCK!
but like I said I think Im
After a total of nine months, I finally declared the house finished. Overtime, I'm sure some of the interior settings may change (already planning on replacing my pool table with a grand piano). As a first house with the features the Lily has, i.e. wrap-around porch, mansard roof, and bay wall, I had made up my mind that it would probably take me a year. Therefore, I was very please that I finished ahead of my pre-set schedule. This was not nine months of constantly building, during this time a
Time to put the bays on. Jimmy says he always lays the bay parts on and checks for alignment and to see if he needs to trim anything before he glues them in.
He then glues all the bay pieces in, usually starting with the one in the center.
He then uses caulk and fills in any small gaps around the bays, and he also uses caulk inside the house to fill in any small gaps. This also gives me a clean line to wallpaper on.
Jimmy started putting in the interior walls and the second and third floors. Again, you have to slide some of the walls and floors together.
Some of the tabs wanted to be a bit disobedient, so Jimmy had to give them a little "persuasion".
Jimmy then began putting in the second floor interior walls.
He thought about leaving the bay walls off (for wallpapering purposes), but it looks like he'll have to add t
I pulled out all the shell pieces, and sanded them a bit, including the window openings.
Jimmy then began putting the shell together (and got mad at me because all the clamps were at the other house too--oops). You have to slide the walls over the floors, and he discovered that sometimes it was easiest to hold the house upright to do that, and sometimes it was easiest to lay the wall almost flat against the floor to get them to slide together.
Lily arrived some time ago, and I've been working on it. Finally have a minute to sit down and blog it.
Started out first with pulling out my floor boards and sanding down the edges.
I like to use a foam brush to apply stain, and I first chose Minwax Aged Oak Gel Stain, and stained the top floor. I quickly decided that I didn't like gel stain at all. It's just too thick for my tastes, and I didn't like the way that it penetrated the flo
The Mansard Roof--Oh Boy!!!!
Although, I really did enjoy building this house, and I had to do several things over--usually due to not understanding the actual building process, or forgetting I was going to wire and had to take off all my wallpaper, to put it in, or just plain stupidity. I have to say this roof drove me and my husband Nuts before we got it right. In fact, there was a time that I had to walk away for 2-3 weeks and not touch this house except to play with aforementioned gran
For the same reason that I put the siding on out of order from the instructions, I added the exterior doors. I wanted my doors to open, so we bought hinges and place one end of the hinge between the trim and the siding but since the doors had already been completely assembled, we place glue and tiny nails in the hinge side that went on the actual door.
Remember me saying the GK would help point out what needed reinforcement--Well, this is one of them, after the kids played with them a coup
Adding the bay wall wasn't a problem, it went together quickly. There was some tiny gaps, but I easily filled them with wood putty and sanded.
My next step was to add on the siding. The instructions actually call for you to do this last, but after looking at the tiny space to work in once the porch and roof was added I knew with my big clumsy hands I would destroy some hard work. Having never done siding before, I was dreading the job. You may have noticed my p
My favorite part of the instructions are always the ones that say it's time to sit back and enjoy your creation. I always follow those instructions to the letter. It's very satisfying to spend some quiet time at the end of the build just admiring the results.
Here are the end results of the completed French Quarter Lily. (the garden on the side is the one I made in Tracy's wonderful online flower border class) There are more detailed pictures of the finished house (both exterior and int
Structurally, the house was complete and ready for the finishing touches. I also gave the house a close inspection to see where spackling was needed to smooth up the corner joins on the trim pieces and anywhere else it might be needed and touched up all the paint.
Shingles:
A little basswood moulding around the exposed edges of the floors on the sides and back:
The Lily will be doing some traveling as she moves to her permanent home in Kansas, so I left the steps as rem
The dormer roof pieces are curved just as the mansard pieces are and I followed the same process for curving them, then painted them inside and out. The roof verge pieces went on at the same time as the dormer roofs. I dry fit the verge pieces and then fit the dormer roofs pieces on. When I was sure that the fit was correct, I glued the verge pieces on first and then glued on the dormer roofs. They had curved just a big too much, but it was easy to flatten them down and tape them firmly in pl
The mansard roof was the next process and I'll admit that the horror stories of getting a mansard roof to curve were intimidating to me. I was delighted and relieved that I didn't have any problem at all with getting the roof on and it only took a couple of hours to do once I got the warping completed.
To warp the curved pieces, I first used an xacto blade to score the lines just a little bit deeper than they were. Then I took all the pieces into the bathroom and soaked them in hot water and
