Rosedale assembly, third floor

Since I’m adding a third story that wasn’t in the original design, the slanted roof pieces needed to be cut to meet the third floor walls at a right angle.

I also needed to create side walls. Since the right wall hadn’t been used yet from either kit, I modified these by cutting off the bottoms, then cutting openings to create access between the small roofed-in areas and the large room. The pencil marks below show which portions were cut.

The larger opening will lead to an extension of the room, maybe to be used as a closet area.

The smaller opening is a doorway into the bathroom. There needs to be more wall on this side since it’s where the stairs come up. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to extend the opening all the way to the back, but in retrospect I should have left a small piece to create a proper doorway. Once this portion is glued together, I’ll fix it with a piece of strip wood.

I decided to assemble the third floor room as its own unit, rather than to continue building from the ground up. First I prepped the third floor ceiling, which is a mishmash of parts from the two kits:

Earlier, this piece was cut into two parts, with the smaller part forming the third floor for the new wing. The remaining piece forms the third story ceiling, but the trim doesn’t go all the way around.

A piece of trim was left over when I prepped the third story floor from Kit A.
I glued a portion of this into the empty space.

This was tough to glue since the edges where I’d cut the pieces weren’t exactly straight.
I smeared wood glue over the seams so it could soak in.

While that was drying, I noticed one of the bays was loose. Nothing a mess of glue and a C-clamp won’t fix!

(Meanwhile, Rosy was enjoying a lazy afternoon of sunbathing…)

Once the glued-on trim was dry, I glued the room together. The tops of the pieces retained some of their tabs and slots so the assembly is fairly sturdy.

Here’s how it looks on the house. I haven’t glued it on yet, since there’s still some fiddly work to be done with the stairs and I need to be able to get my hands in.

Finally, I modified the top roof pieces from both kits to create the new roof. The picture below shows where to cut; since there’s some extra, I just did a sloppy cut in the Xed area and sanded both pieces down to the right size using the disc sander.

Getting close! The roof pieces are not glued yet, but here’s a first view of the house with all of the structural pieces in place.

And here’s a peek at the third floor suite and attic from the inside (with a piece of strip wood propped up in the bathroom doorway as described above). Even though it doesn’t have windows, the attic is large enough that I think I’ll use it as a kid’s bedroom.