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Seaside Villa – front steps

May 11, 2020 / Emily / 6 Comments

My Seaside Villa shell didn’t come with front steps. Time to build my own!

The space under the porch floor is 1″ tall. The side pieces are 3/8″ x 1/4″ strip wood cut into 3/8″, 3/4″, and 1 1/8″ lengths. The back piece is 1/8″ thick — just enough to fit under the overhang of the edge of the porch.

Additional 3/8″ x 1/4″ lengths in front of each of the side pieces create the steps.

To assemble the stairs, I started with two pieces of the 3/8″ x 1/4″ on the inside of the longest side pieces.

I added the other side pieces, each with a support at the back.

Then I added the steps. These sit in front and on top of the side pieces.

Next I added the back piece. Without this, the steps would have been tucked under the porch overhang and the tread of the top step would have been too shallow compared to the others.

I glued the pieces together and clamped them to dry.

Victorianna shingles complete

April 23, 2020 / Emily / 12 Comments

Here’s another post that’s been a long time coming! I started shingling the Victorianna back in October 2018. I’m using Greenleaf’s octagon speed shingle strips, with a couple of rows of diamond shingles mixed in.

(Speaking of Greenleaf, after a much longer than anticipated delay for maintenance, their forum is back up!)

Here’s where I left off with the shingles:

The diamond shingles were leftover from the Rosedale and the first ones I applied had a yellowish tint. At first I thought they were all like this, but some strips stained darker.

I applied another coat of stain, which made them all a more uniform color. This is water-based stain, so the glue spots don’t stand out like they would with oil-based stain.

Once I worked my way up to the point where the shingles could run behind the towers, I moved on to the sides.

By this point I was using hot glue, but for the first several rows of shingles I’d used The Ultimate white glue, and some of them just didn’t want to stick. I tried adding more glue and clamping them down.

It helped some, but a few stubborn shingles just won’t lie flat. Oh well. Let’s pretend it’s an old roof on an old house.

Here you can really see the difference between the shingles that only got one coat of stain, versus the ones in the center that got a second coat of stain. I stopped here to attach the roof.

I got this far up the back before putting the shingles aside for 18 months…

Victorianna egg carton brick foundation

April 17, 2020 / Emily / 6 Comments

I started the Victorianna’s brick foundation way back in the summer of 2015, and this week I finally finished it! Like the chimney, the foundation is covered with pieces of egg carton cut into 1/8″ x 3/8″ bricks.