Linfield build

[mybrainhurts]

I kinda wanted a place I could document this build and figured that this would be a pretty good place to start since I don't really feel like starting my blog back up again.

A little bit of history to start.

I was given the kit by my first husband as an anniversary gift. As soon as I saw it, I knew that it needed electricity. Since we really had no spare money and the internet wasn't a household word for me, I put off building it and stuck to small houses and one room scenes.

17 years later, it's time to get this lady built. My first thought on punching out pieces was something along the lines of "wow, there are so many little parts."

I've not even punched all of the parts out yet, just the main ones needed to put together the shell. They were sanded and sealed so I could do some dry fitting and lots of dreaming. She's having a hard time finding her voice since most of my miniature furniture is no longer in my possession.

While I listen to her whispers, I work on the little bits and pieces.

Like the hardwood floor for the first floor. It's stained cherry (which I love) but I realize that I need to redo half of it because I forgot to paint the posterboard it's mounted on until I'd put in several rows already.

I'm pretty mad at myself for that. Also, I probably need to redo most of it because the floor rolled while I was trying to place it and quite a lot of it popped up off of the floor with the most sickening "crackle." I guess that it's good I used rubber cement so maybe I can salvage it rather than having to replace the entire thing.

While taking my time with glueing the base, I started making some bricks for the base since I really do not like the way the original kit base 'stones' look. That meant spending a couple of days working on paper mache and trying to get something I can use as bricks.

It ended up a LOT thicker than I thought it would be and I found my hand hurting a LOT if I tried cutting it with scissors. It ate the blade on my little cutter and I ended up buying a rotary cutter to slice through it. Thank goodness for 40% off coupons.

[mybrainhurts]

I am not linking the images the way I see them in most threads. How annoying. I think I know what I'm doing wrong but my images are all HUGE and maybe it's better this way right now.

Anyway.

I started painting the outer walls because I remember how awkward it is to paint the house once it's built and this is a much larger one than any of the others that I've assembled so far. Lesson from painting? Thumb on wet paint leaves marks. Also, I forgot how many layers of paint it takes to get full coverage and cover the white.

While waiting for walls to dry, I decided to try making a love seat using modified directions from several sites. The base is sponges and cardstock. It's assembled with bad words, glue and thread. Now that it's almost done, I am not even sure that it's the right scale (though it should be) or that I'll even use it because it's horribly plain. Also, it's more of an oversized chair than a loveseat. Go me!

[mybrainhurts]

But I want to build, dang it!!!

Ok, how about a dry fit again?

Ok, just have to finish painting the trim where I had to hold it to paint it. Then I think it's time. You might be able to see the pencil marks on the floor where I'm thinking the electricity tapewire will run. This isn't set in stone yet, of course. Heck, I may not get to that for another month at the slow pace I'm taking.

In the mean time, I'm trying to decide which way I like this wallpaper better...

I'm leaning toward the stripe on the bottom but really, I like it both ways.

[KathieB]

I like the stripe on the bottom, too. It reminds me of beadboard wainscoting.

[sparklepuppies]

Looking good! How exciting to start a new house.

I like the stripes on the bottom too.

I also like the colors you've chosen so far for the outside.

[mybrainhurts]

I believe that my third color for the exterior will be a cream color but I don't think the one I picked out is creamy enough and will have to look around a little more. Of course.

If I go with the stripes on the bottom, I might end up with some paper left over. It's a scrapbook paper that I picked up, goodness, seven years ago-ish? No way to really replace it so I'll be cutting the two sheets I have very carefully!!!

These are what I'm leaning toward for the house as it stands. I think the tan and rust will be for the third floor with rust on the low walls and the tan lining the ceiling. The dark on the bottom/light on the top will keep it from being too dark up there.

ok, time to scour the technical forum and find out exactly how everyone else is linking photos to threads.

[sparklepuppies]

. ok, time to scour the technical forum and find out exactly how everyone else is linking photos to threads.

While in your picture, click the Share button. Then choose BBCode. Copy that code and paste it into the post.

[mybrainhurts]

Ok, so I was right and I will definitely need to make my images smaller. Apparently my camera reset itself and all of those are 7meg monstrocities. No, I am not going to resize them. I have far too many other things to do that would be a better way to spend my time.

Yeah, like staring at the dry fit and trying to cut trim with the power of my mind.

[mybrainhurts]

I've learned a few things.

One. Paper mache is not easy to make all one thickness if you don't use a blender for the chunks or a pasta machine sort of roller.

Paper mache needs a strong blade to cut and a rotary cutter works much better than an exacto knife.

Paper mache doesn't like to dry flat.

This batch is made from glue and toilet paper and was much less gross/messy to deal with than the stuff I made with newspaper. There is still some nasty newsprint residue on the strainer that I used to drain the water out of it. Also, this stuff rolled out a LOT nicer than the paper did.

I got it damp and put a heavy box of paints on top of it and will revisit this in a day or two. SIGH.

With the tons of bricks that I'd cut from the last batch, I decided to try a sample of assembly with some that were deemed too flat or misshapen. After all, I'm not going to learn from scratch on my actual house!

Well, the spackle I'm going to use as grout is pink and dries white. This may be a bad thing as I discovered that the white is far too white to be a good grout for the bricks. It looks too clean. The problem I forsee with this is that I'll have to keep very exact measurements when I add some color to the spackle or else my grout won't match when I inevitably have to make another batch or three. That's a huge bit of area that's going to be bricked over.

Also, my bricks are too brown. I guess I'll have to find a better red to put on top.

ALSO, decopage medium was far too thick to use as a varnish on the bricks. That's what I get for just grabbing a random bottle and assuming it was a normal satin varnish. Hahaha.

Edited April 1, 2012 by mybrainhurts

[mybrainhurts]

At work today, she sent me a little whisper and tried to tell me that the attic should be a recreation of the attic from Flowers in the Attic. I told her that nobody would ever "get it" and that it was kinda a little creepy. Also told her to stop talking to me at work because I can't keep notes there.

Still pondering what to make the second floor. Entertained the thought of making this the "keeping up with the Joneses" and making the second floor shabby since it would never be seen by the neighbors but I am going to end up vetoing that because this is my first large house and darn it, I want all of it to be pretty.

[KathieB]

Good experimentation. Thanks for sharing your results! You might try putting washes of color over the grout to tint it after all of the brickwork is completed. Use a combination of browns, greys, ochres, raw and burnt sienna, sage greens, etc., to mimic the normal aging of a brick wall. Touch up with colored pencils for an even more realistic appearance.

You might try using a matte finish sealer on the bricks for a more brick-like look, unless you're aiming to mimic shinier painted bricks, in which case the grout would be painted the same color as the bricks. Real unglazed bricks don't usually have any reflective quality. Also, all bricks are not exactly the same color. They will have subtle differences in color -- some lighter, some darker, some light with dark streaks, etc. Mix 'em up a bit.

Show us the final results!

Also, on the curled papiér maché: if you put the dampened pieces between sheets of newsprint or similar paper and use a warm iron, would that flatten it out?

[mybrainhurts]

I'm really glad I remembered to make a trial run with these things.

I'd totally forgotten about using color washes and I'll test that out on the little grouted bit tonight after work for sure!

Honestly, my intention with the sealer was to seal, not to make the bricks shiny. Will reach for the matte and not the satin. Sometimes I wonder if I really should do the bulk of my busywork at 2am. There are occasionally odd choices made.

((I just realized that I changed my user pic on accident. 2am, I curse you! I wondered what that button did. Guess now I know.))

re: dampened paper mache

It started flattening out as soon as I'd gotten a little bit of water on it and then started pushing at the bowed areas once it was laying down. I was actually a little surprised just how fast it went from making solid noise when tapped on with a nail to be careful or else you might break it apart. I don't actually own an iron because I resent burning myself every time I use it so I'll stick with the heavy weight on it and hope it dries without getting gross.

[mybrainhurts]

Well, I think I've hit the right color bricks finally. Now to get better at cleaning the grout off of them so that they don't look quite so dirty.

Plenty of time, though. I'm guessing I have several days worth of brick trimming to go before I can actually get started on application.

Of course, the more I trim the bricks, the more I realize that I can't cut a straight line to save my life. I'm really debating going to Micheals tomorrow and seeing if they have anything I could use instead even though it would take more time to shape and dry and cut and so forth. It won't hurt to just look, right?

[mybrainhurts]

I apparently am not as good with math as I used to be. Color me amused as I ran out of cut and prepped bricks when I set about to glue the liner bricks in place. Got my hands on a large takeout cup holder so I decided to use it on the stairs so that everything on them would be the same thickness.

All of the pieces will be curled under, about half of them are at the time of this writing. None of the green will show so I painted it a nice obnoxious avocado and grey.

Progress. I'll work on getting the bricks finished so that I can actually glue some walls on. That's what I'm REALLY wanting to do.

[havanaholly]

I use a box cutter-type utility knife with retractable blade (the big sucker!) for most of my cutting jobs. I like your bricks.

[mybrainhurts]

Between last night and today, I think I've managed to finish the front stairs. I'm a little iffy on leaving the grey bricks (which are actually painted as well) but I won't make a final decision until after I am painting the bricks on the foundation which hasn't even started yet.

Also skipped the grout for now. May come back and do it, may not. There are some pretty deep spaces where the paint went in less fully (leaving grey bits) but for the most part, very little grout would actually have anywhere to go and that's a whole lot of mess for so little. I'll think about that too.

[havanaholly]

Normally I would skip the grout, but I'm wondering with yours... I love the combination of colors! It would be a pity to grunge them for realism.

[mybrainhurts]

I picked the colors due to the last house I lived in used those colors for the front step. I'm wondering if I should have done it the other way around but eh, whatever. I'll be sure to add a brick path to that base to tie it all in.

I give it a good once-over every time I pass by the table where the house and stairs are sitting. I think that the lack of grout is going to bug me because I can see the deep spaces between some of the bricks on the top and front. Also, the spotty coverage on the bottom row is bugging me as well.

The brick is a lot more brown in real life, the flash washed it out a little, it seems. Due to that, I am wondering if the grout would really grunge it up too terribly much. I guess that would depend on how well I manage to get it cleaned off, hm? Hmmmm.

[havanaholly]

I picked the colors due to the last house I lived in used those colors for the front step....I think that the lack of grout is going to bug me because I can see the deep spaces between some of the bricks on the top and front. Also, the spotty coverage on the bottom row is bugging me as well.

The brick is a lot more brown in real life, the flash washed it out a little, it seems. Due to that, I am wondering if the grout would really grunge it up too terribly much. I guess that would depend on how well I manage to get it cleaned off, hm? Hmmmm.

I think what attracted me about your brick colors is that I've also seen that done in RL. The depth of your bricks is what made me think of grouting them. Maybe frist hit them with some grated chalk pastels to give a bit more color variance, then with some matte sealer, and then with some grout material thinned and applied with a syringe of some kind, and keep the bead of grout to a minimum as much as possible so there's not as much to wipe off.

[mybrainhurts]

What colors would you suggest for the bricks? I am wondering if the stone colored ones are just a little too bright though they do have a light speckling of color. I didn't do much with them. I don't really want the red stones to get much darker as they are almost too dark for my taste as it is. That's part of the reason that I was debating grout since it would probably lighten them up a little as it muddied the bricks up, if that makes sense?

Now I am going to think out loud and maybe get an idea or two.

So, there is not a lot to do while you cut bricks but try to plan ahead and try to figure out what is going to go where. I've come to realize that I really don't have any furniture that I like and I'm going to have to build it all. Fun.

Anyway, last night I mentioned to a friend of mine that I was undecided on how the room layout was going to be. Here is a propped up ceiling/second floor and a propped up wall for the first floor room divider to show what I mean.

This is my problem. There is the door and the front circular area on the front left and a bay window on the far left wall. This leaves very little room to pick and choose what room is going to be what. I want to have a kitchen and a living room, I know that. I do not want for the front door to open into the kitchen but as you can see from my little mockup, a kitchen would be kind of awkward with the bay window to have to work around. The stove sitting in the middle would be turned into an island with counters on each side of the cooking surface. That eats up almost all of the floor space. It would also leave the question of what to do with the bay window. The circular area would be easy, smaller table with two chairs. Doing that would leave a cramped living room that had just enough room for a couch, a small table and maybe one other thing. The fireplace would be nice in there but I'd have to thicken that wall by a few inches in order to have the depth needed for the actual inside of the fireplace. Thus, the room would lose even more room and be even more cramped.

Now, the ceiling is really tilting because it's just propped into place to give a vague idea of where the ceiling is. Everything is sort of propped up here but imagination helps.

Now, I could ignore where the kit says to put the wall and put it in on the other side of the front door. I would have to decide if I wanted the doorway to be on the front wall side or put in the back where it is in this photo. Either way, I'll have to work up a piece of wall so that it can be a real doorway. --Another option would be to leave the opening in the back like it is and put a small table and chairs right on the edge of the house, implying a breakfast nook of sorts.

Doing this, I could put the kitchen on the right side of the house. It would be narrow but there is an entire stretch of wall that I could use for all of the appliances as well as putting in some upper cabinets for storage since everyone hates a kitchen that doesn't have enough shelf space.

The living room would open up a lot, leaving room for a full seating area. I would lose out on having a fireplace, though, as the only wall available will be directly under a bathroom that I'm going to add in on the second floor. I'm not completely attached to having a fireplace, though, so I can live with this.

I'm very glad that I decided to leave the stairs out and just imagine them in the part of the house that you can't see. I'd really be complaining about having no room then!

Just realized...

making the left side room bigger and using it as the living room would allow me to use the rug that I've been working on off and on for the last 5-6 years (more off than on to be honest) which is a total plus.

The minus would be... I then would have to pick a different wallpaper color as I was going to use pinks for that room but they totally would not go with the green and black!! HAHAHA. DARN IT!!

[havanaholly]

You could always do a wash of ochre (VERY dilute, & immediately blot it with a paper towel) on the red bricks; for the gray bricks I'd grate a little pile of black and a littler pile of dark blue chalk pastels and use a smallish soft brush to do parts of the bricks. When they all look about right (I would have some sample bricks to practice on) I would seal them with a matte finish sealer and then grout them.
In the Westville I made a windowseat in the bay in the livingroom side (with the front door)

and a dining nook in the bay in the kitchen side

I betcha a light coral or tangerine would work with the black & green.

[mybrainhurts]

Just whining. Had debated leaving out the interior first floor wall and just going with an island to separate the two rooms but I can't really get away with that due to realizing that the wall between the two rooms is actually a structural necessity so if I take it out, I'll have to put -something- in to support the 2nd floor or else the plywood will likely warp in place and that would blow chunks.

whine whine. Looking at pictures of the Linfield online, it looks like some of them had the bay window on the opposite side of the house from the curved front (don't know the structural name for that area) which I'd love because everything would fall into place so much better than the way mine is. I don't want to have to cut out a new bay window on the other side and fill in the huge hole on this side. I know that I'd fudge it a bit and have the filled in hole be at least somewhat obvious. Le sigh.

back to debating this little building quirk. Columns are an idea but I fear they would look funny and possibly out of place. Guess I'll stick with small kitchen on the right side

Looks like no fireplace for this one. Oh well.

Was talking this over with a non-mini friend last night and she was amazed at just how much thought processing goes on with a build. I started laughing and told her that I'm really pretty much normal if the other people on this forum are anything to go by. I also think that she'll get the bug and build one herself. I'm very amused by that.

[havanaholly]

What about switching the bay wall inside out to the opposite side?

[mybrainhurts]

I can't switch the wall inside out because the opposite wall is several inches wider than the one that has the hole for the bay window. That was the first thing I tried. (Actually, I try it every time I do a dry fit because I always pick the wrong wall up first.) I don't think I have enough decent sized pieces of scrap plywood to build the short wall to the big size or I'd consider making the small one big and cutting down the big one. I know I could use the pieces cut off of there but I'm going to assume I cut it sloppy because that's what I do if I have to do the same repetitive thing for too long.

Mostly not cutting a new bay window out because I'm not at all confident that I could fill in the hole that's currently there for the window without it looking like a patched wall. I understand HOW I'd do it but I fear that I'll cut some corner and always know that hole was there and will be able to pick out any small imperfection or bump I leave. aka I'm chicken.

I spent tonight's work shift thinking this over. Have decided to keep the inner wall because there are no good full sized walls for the left side room and I'd like for whatever paper I use to actually get to show up somewhere other than in little strips. I'll just give it a stern talking to and tell it to do what I want.... OR ELSE. maybe hold some sandpaper while I'm talking to it.

[mybrainhurts]

I knew this build would be slow but I guess I didn't realize just how many days can pass when you're waiting for mail delivery and then paper mache to dry when it's rainy and humid.

My third attempt at paper mache bricks went far better than the first two. The first batch was newspaper. It was horribly messy and left greasy black newsprint on my hands and every piece of equipment it touched. It was lumpy and most pieces were twice as thick as I needed for them to be. The second batch was toilet paper. It, too, was lumpy and didn't spread out very easily. That came out way too thick and since I'd used wood glue rather than elmers on accident, it was very difficult to try to cut the thickness in half. Both of those batches are put away for some other use in the future as it would be silly to waste them since I spent so much time cutting and trimming them. My poor hands.

For the most recent batch, I ordered some Claycrete paper mache from the Joanne's website. It feels like cheating after the first batches but the stuff was a dream to work with after trying to make it from scratch. It formed without lumps and rolled out much thinner than the other stuff did, much more easily.

I trimmed it into strips while it was still a little damp, afraid that the sheets would buckle like the other stuff did. This resulted in nice smooth strips that only had a little bit of an arch to them. This is easy to get around and cutting the bricks went quick. The trimming of the corners has taken three times as long as cutting them out did!!

Been shaping the corners for a few days and decided that I have enough of them done to actually get forward progress on the foundation. (At this point, I'm really wondering why I didn't just do the flagstones that the house kit called for since it would have been soooooo much less trouble but I wanted brick, darn it!)

Laying bricks is easy. Get a show going on Netflix and just roll along with a pile of bricks that are easy to reach.

Before you know it, you can have something tangible there to say that you've actually been doing something. I think my boyfriend is amazed that I'm actually intending on working on the house rather than just staring at it. hahaha

The front steps are not attached. I'll do that once all of the brick work is painted, grouted, and sealed. Add the maintnence guy coming over today to fix a handful of little annoyances around the place and it's been a very good day.