For months, I’ve been looking into options for the Victorianna’s tower roofs. I didn’t really like the look of the roof that comes with the kit, plus I suspected it would be hard to assemble. You can see what it’s supposed to look like in the box photo.

The Victorianna is a half scale version of the McKinley (pictured at the bottom of the box), but the proportions aren’t quite the same. The McKinley’s tower roof lines up with the roofline of the house, while on the Victorianna the tower sticks up over the roofline. The Victorianna’s tower roof also seems more squat, but that may be an optical illusion.

I spent a lot of time looking at photos of real houses with towers, particularly octagonal towers. I’m not a big fan of towers that come to a point at the top, but I really like the ones with bell-shaped turrets. I started looking for bell-shaped items that could sit on top of my towers — lampshades, candle holders turned upside down, and even (duh) bells.

After hours upon hours of searching for just the right solution, I finally placed an order with an Etsy seller in Russia who makes large wooden bells. They’re available in three sizes, with the largest, about 3.75″ in diameter, slightly smaller than the octagon trim at the top of the tower. Not knowing yet exactly what I wanted to do with it, I asked her not to drill a hole in the top and insert the clapper.

(I thought about adding a dormer between the two towers and went as far as making one out of foam core, then decided it’s too busy. Disregard!)

The bell isn’t perfect — a bit too tall, I think — but I do like the curved shape. Some of the turrets I found online have seams on the dome to correspond with the eight corners of the tower. I thought that adding my own seams might make the bell look more like it belongs.

I cut eight lengths of braided leather cord and taped them together at the top.

Next I drilled a hole at the top of the bell, large enough to push the ends through.

I put the bell on top of the tower and marked the corners of the octagon with a pencil. Then I glued the pieces of cord to the bell to line up with these marks.

Looking less like a wooden bell and more like a turret roof? Maybe?

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The Victorianna’s nursery is coming together. I’ve been working on trim, starting with the built-in corner cabinet. I can’t add crown molding until the ceiling is glued in, but I cut the pieces before gluing the cabinet into the room. I then glued them together, using the cabinet as a guide but not actually gluing the crown to the cabinet yet. This is a deep room, so having the crown glued together ahead of time should make it easier to install when the time comes.

I recently bought a new miter box to cut 67.5 degree angles. (My other one only does 90, 45, and 60.) This will come in handy for the baseboards and crown molding around the towers, the corner shower in the master bath, and any other trim pieces that make up an octagon or a portion of an octagon. My old method was to cut 90 degree angles on one piece and 45 degrees on the piece that butted up against it, but then the back corners don’t meet up nicely. It’s an okay fudge if the corners will be covered up, but I want the trim pieces in the towers — and on this cabinet for that matter — to be nice and neat.

Next I cut the baseboard pieces, again at 67.5 degree angles, and glued them on to the cabinet. The edges that meet the wall are cut at a 45 degree angle to meet up with the baseboard there.

One last coat of paint, and now the cabinet is ready to be glued in.

Here it is installed, along with the baseboard along this wall. That pesky zebra butt is gone forever!

I mentioned in a previous post that the baby I ordered was taking her sweet time getting here from the UK. She finally made it! I bought this clay doll from Sheryl Coupland on Etsy. Her dolls are adorably detailed and the prices are reasonable. She doesn’t have much half scale in her shop right now, but I have seen a lot of 1:24 dolls there in the past few months as I kept checking for the perfect addition to my scene.

Like in the little girl’s room downstairs, I added 5/64″ double bead trim above and below the border strip. The flocked giraffe toy is a generous gift from Debora Loughner (dalesq at the Greenleaf forum) — she added nail flocking powder to a plastic toy. The detail is amazing.

Here’s my other exciting Etsy purchase — a custom-made bouncy chair, high chair, and swing from Jane Timms at Thimblemins. I had been looking for a high chair that didn’t look fake and I was blown away when I stumbled across this store but, as usual, everything was 1:12 scale. I reached out about doing a custom order in 1:24 scale. Lucky me, Jane said yes!

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Last July, I got started on the Victorianna’s exterior bay windows. I finished them in September and moved on to the second floor bays in March. Those have sat unfinished until now. They’re not particularly difficult, they’re just boring — lots of cutting and fitting and painting small pieces, which are not my favorite things to do. But this weekend I was hit by a new wave of motivation and I’ve finally finished the upstairs bay windows. Go me!

I totally deviated from the kit for the bay windows and made my own trim out of basswood. The last time I stopped working on them, I had added all of the basswood to both sides and had added casing to the windows on the left side.

All that remained to do was cut/paint/glue the casing for the right side, add wood filler to the cracks at the corners of the casing and repaint, and add muntins. What took me so long?!

The Victorianna’s front door has a pretty laser cut insert that I bought off eBay. It’s made by Laser Creations. I’ve never seen these anywhere else besides this particular eBay store.

(The eBay listing calls this a “mullion”, but Wikipedia says that muntins separate the panes of glass, while mullions are the strips of wood that separate windows sharing the same hole. I’ve often heard muntins referred to as mullions… trying to be accurate, here, but muntin still sounds wrong to me!)

Anyway — whether it’s a mullion or a muntin — I was excited when the same seller recently started carrying a 1:24 window version of the same design. I bought two of them for the front of the Victorianna, along with two more door inserts to use in the doors leading to the third story tower rooms.

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