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Dutch Gambrel Colonial Renovation


Kells

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Ah Michael, what a sad loss. I got to see INXS in concert probably around 88 or 89....

I don't really know what my natural hair color is now, and I really don't want to. My husband and I are turning the big 50 at the end of summer.

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1 hour ago, Mid-life madness said:

Ah Michael, what a sad loss. I got to see INXS in concert probably around 88 or 89....

I don't really know what my natural hair color is now, and I really don't want to. My husband and I are turning the big 50 at the end of summer.

The hubs turns 78 the end of this week; I do it between Christmas and New Year.

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I was a towhead as a child, gradually getting darker with age. When the gray began to show, the hairdresser suggested color. I told her heck no. I'd been paying for highlights for years and wasn't going to hide natural highlights. My hair is all highlight now and I still have no urge to color it. My sister colors hers to her long-ago dark brown; it doesn't take but a few days after coloring for the roots to begin to show. It's not a look I care to emulate.

What's strange is that when I look in a mirror -- any mirror, any lighting -- I see my hair as champagne blonde. Yet when I get it cut, I have to admit the the clippings on the floor are definitely gray/white.   :dunno:

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1 hour ago, KathieB said:

I was a towhead as a child, gradually getting darker with age. When the gray began to show, the hairdresser suggested color. I told her heck no. I'd been paying for highlights for years and wasn't going to hide natural highlights. My hair is all highlight now and I still have no urge to color it. My sister colors hers to her long-ago dark brown; it doesn't take but a few days after coloring for the roots to begin to show. It's not a look I care to emulate.

What's strange is that when I look in a mirror -- any mirror, any lighting -- I see my hair as champagne blonde. Yet when I get it cut, I have to admit the the clippings on the floor are definitely gray/white.   :dunno:

Me. This is me. Except for the part about having a sister, I could have written every word of that about myself. I just hope my hair goes snow white like my grandmother's and great-grandmother's did.

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4 hours ago, Mid-life madness said:

Ah Michael, what a sad loss. I got to see INXS in concert probably around 88 or 89....

I don't really know what my natural hair color is now, and I really don't want to. My husband and I are turning the big 50 at the end of summer.

I cried. He was my first crush. You're lucky to have seen them in person. I'm jealous.

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14 hours ago, Kells said:

I cried. He was my first crush. You're lucky to have seen them in person. I'm jealous.

Gawd, as I’m Australian and of a certain age, I used to see them play when they toured the local pubs and clubs quite regularly... until they got to big for those venues. And yeah, Michael oozed sex appeal even way back then..... . Don’t hate me :eekout:

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17 hours ago, KathieB said:

it doesn't take but a few days after coloring for the roots to begin to show.

That's what Clairol's Root Touch-Up is for.  :bigwink:  Like Carrie, I have no idea what color my hair is now, although, from the roots, I am guessing that I have more gray hair than my mother did at my age.  She is finally gray now, but for many, many years, she just had a few strands of gray here and there, and it was barely noticeable.  *sigh*

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5 hours ago, Samusa said:

Gawd, as I’m Australian and of a certain age, I used to see them play when they toured the local pubs and clubs quite regularly... until they got to big for those venues. And yeah, Michael oozed sex appeal even way back then..... . Don’t hate me :eekout:

I couldn't hate you but I reserve the right to be really, really envious!

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New picture in gallery. I practiced mini-stenciling for the first time today. Not the greatest and need a lot more practice, but it gives an idea what direction I'm going with this house. I enjoyed the stenciling even though I'm clearly not very good at it! I may need to just settle for wallpaper if I don't improve.

Anyone have experience stenciling with tiny brass stencils? I got the brush as dry as I could and pounced it on rather than painted, but it still doesn't look right to me.

 

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I used the little brass stencil with spackle to make a parget on my pub.  Maybe lay your stencil over a piece of painter's tape on a piece of waxed paper on your cutting mat and cut out your stencil pattern into the tape, and then run the tape where you want to stencil and paint it that way.  The thickness of the stencil is giving you fits with the paint.  Are you using one of those pouncing brushes?

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I did use a mini pouncing brush, but only after I had to paint over my first effort using a regular brush! I see what you're saying about the tape. That would make things easier because I wouldn't have to line up each pattern. Just create the whole thing and pounce it. I don't think anyone could cut out the detail on these though. The patterns are super small.

Brass Stencils.jpg

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:hmm: What if you put rubber cement on the back of the stencil to affix it to the surface to be painted? That would act in a manner similar to the tape Holly is suggesting so you may be able to use a bit more paint initially and not have to do any touch ups. When the paint is dry, any rubber cement residue can be easily rubbed off of the painted surface and the stencil.

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On 8/3/2019, 1:33:16, KathieB said:

:hmm: What if you put rubber cement on the back of the stencil to affix it to the surface to be painted? That would act in a manner similar to the tape Holly is suggesting so you may be able to use a bit more paint initially and not have to do any touch ups. When the paint is dry, any rubber cement residue can be easily rubbed off of the painted surface and the stencil.

I can envision exactly what you're saying and I think it would be a big help. I was just eyeballing it to line them up, and the designs are so close that it is easy to get paint into the next design. You can see in that photo where I tried painting over the mishaps. On a test piece, okay, but on the real deal? I'd make a mess of it for sure if I did it the same way.

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Help! I need some opinions on these drastic (possible) changes. Both the roof line and the floor plan are giving me grief. I've played around with various additions but realized I need to stick with my planned 2-story addition. The house is just too short and "squatty", for lack of a better word. The 2-story balances out the proportions very well. My problem is that bump-out kitchen on the back. See my intended floor plan here:

This is going to be front-opening. Adding a bump-out in the rear, having that be side-opening, AND having a back yard (which is hidden behind the house anyway) is, I realize, going to make this unwieldy. More on that in a sec.

So first question to anyone who cares to offer an opinion: I'm thinking I could just make that side addition - currently labeled as Dining Room - into a colonial kitchen with an eating area. I'd lose the back addition and have no formal dining room but oh well. I'm already deviating from my great-grandmother's home so much that it hardly matters at this point. What do you think of scaling that floor plan back and just having an eat-in kitchen?

Second question: the roof line is giving me grief. The third floor attic area is currently an unusable height (6 1/4"). I can't raise it like I'd thought. I can, however, cut new end gables. See my sketches below.

The top sketch is more a full-on house, albeit one room deep. The bottom sketch is if I closed off the rear and basically made this half a house. That is pretty common with front-opening dollhouses (see most English dollhouses).

It gives me a much more usable third floor. I can have nice tall narrow dormer windows instead of squatty squared off ones. And if I lose the back addition and back yard, I could shove this flat up against a wall. The base would be about 19" deep instead of 32". That's a big difference when you're trying to find a place to display a dollhouse!

I don't know, I guess I need a second opinion or two because everything I've planned and envisioned up to this point has been in line with the first sketch. I'm having trouble seeing it as the second one. I need a fresh set of eyes to look at this objectively.

Roof Line.jpg

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Oh, and depending on how well I can handle angling into the various roof pitches, I may do the dormers (on either sketch) more like this. We'll see, but the other changes I mentioned are what I'm really iffy on.

Roof Line 2.jpg

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  • 2 years later...

So finally this project has landed back onto my work table. I'm excited about it but is it ever giving me grief. I hate hate hate those squatty little roofs on both the house and the addition! Thinking of turning it into a one and half-story gambrel. I've done it before, it's pretty easy with a circular saw. Maybe it's just me. Do the proportions look off to you?

I won't be losing any rooms because both attics are completely unusable. Max ceiling height in the main house attic is 6.5". The attic is even less at a bit over 5". Cutting at the base of the second floor windows gives me a nice 2.5" knee wall in both house and addition.

I welcome any and all opinions, please!

The taped up mock-up showing how it sits right now. There's the cut line I'm talking about.

Here's the Photoshop mock-up showing what it would look like finished, as it currently stands:

Here it is chopped down into a 1.5-story house:

And just for giggles, I did it shingled. I like it but I'm not going to do this.

 

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  • 2 months later...

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