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Craftsman bungalow vignette — roof & shingles

May 7, 2022 / / 4 Comments

Last week I posted about wallpaper and wainscot in the Craftsman bungalow. I’ve been working on the roof and shingles in parallel.

The last thing I did before putting the bungalow aside for a year was to glue on the roof. At the time, it looked like this.

And this is what I’m working toward.

The kit didn’t come with siding for the triangular porch roof, but after looking at a bunch of pictures of Craftsmans, I couldn’t come up with a good reason to leave it bare.

I checked my ziplock bag of scrap siding and found some pieces that worked.

Here’s the dry fit.

The instructions got a bit wonky here. First you’re supposed to glue the two big roof pieces together at the peak, but don’t glue them to the house yet. Easy enough.

Here’s what the directions told me to do next: “With the painted triangle peak standing upright on its long side, glue the porch ceiling to the back of the peak.”

Okay.

And then: “With the two large roof pieces still sitting (but not glued) on the house, trial fit the porch roof on. … Glue the porch roof onto the house roof at the peak. (Do not glue it to the house.) Glue the peak/porch ceiling piece in under the roof, flush with the house edge of the porch roof. … Let the roof dry, making sure it does not stick to the house.”

In other words, the roof is supposed to be assembled as one unit — including the front part that sits over the porch — that can be lifted off the house. It does get glued on eventually, but I guess this is supposed to make decorating the inside easier.

Sure, let’s give that a try.

I did my best, but as you can see the angle of that roof and the angle of the triangular piece aren’t matching up. If I adjusted the roof pieces so they were flush on the triangle, then they didn’t meet up at the peak. And because they weren’t fitting together like they should, I was concerned the porch ceiling would turn out crooked. I tried taping it and crossing my fingers, but the pieces just slipped around and the glue made a big mess.

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Craftsman bungalow vignette — wallpaper and paneling

May 1, 2022 / / 4 Comments

More than a year ago (ouch!), I put the Craftsman bungalow vignette aside because I didn’t have the right wallpaper. When I left off, I had sided and painted the exterior.

And I made a nice hardwood floor inside. I also glued on the roof, but I’ll save that for a later post.

Before gluing on the roof, I cut out the wallpaper and ceiling paper. For the walls I intended to have craftsman paneling with wallpaper above it. I chose this Itsy Bitsy Mini paper because I thought the colors went well with the exterior paint.

Unfortunately, in my attempts to line up the flowers at the corners, I cut badly and ended up about 1/8″ short on both sides of the big wall. Even with the paper from the side walls wrapping around the corner, I expected the seam to be very noticeable, especially with this busy design that might not match up exactly. I didn’t have more paper to redo it, so I put the house aside.

I recently ordered some supplies for the Mansard Victorian, and in order to get free shipping from Miniature Crush, I added several pieces of half scale Brodnax wallpaper.

Here are two of the wallpapers I ordered. They both have a craftsman vibe, but the darker one felt kind of heavy for this little vignette. The lighter one was closer to what I’d originally envisioned with the Itsy Bitsy paper.

I don’t think I’ve ever used Brodnax paper before. I’ve shied away from it because it’s only 8 1/2″ x 5 1/2″, which is sometimes too too small to fit in a room without a seam. This is one of those times.

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Cassidy Creations Federal fireplace wall kit (part 4)

April 18, 2022 / / 4 Comments

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I was mostly happy with how the Cassidy Creations Federal fireplace wall turned out, but there were three things I wanted to fix: add more doorknobs so each cabinet door has one, straighten the hinge on the bottom left small door, and add bricks to the floor of the fireplace.

Adding another set of doorknobs was easy. Fixing the hinge, not so much. When I hinged these the first time, I hadn’t glued the front facade to the back piece yet, so the door was flat on the desk. This time, the door ended up pushed slightly farther back than the piece it’s hinged to, which can cause the hinges to twist a little and the nails on both the top and bottom hinges to pop out after several openings and closings.

I tried putting a dot of glue on the tips of the nails before pushing them in, but it didn’t seem to matter. If they come loose, they can be pushed back in, but I imagine the holes are getting a little bigger each time, and eventually the nails won’t want to stay. Also, popped-out mails will be hard to fix if the fireplace wall is permanently installed in a house. I’ll just have to remember not to open and close that door too much…

Of course, the bricks would have been much easier to do before everything was glued together. To reduce the chances of getting paint on the wood, I painted a 3/8″ wide piece of egg carton material before cutting it into individual bricks.

You can’t really see it in this picture, but I scored the back side of the egg carton piece about 1/16″ from the edge and folded it over. That edge will cover the front of the wood.

Then I coated it with matte sealer.

When the sealer was dry, I cut 1/8″ bricks and glued them in. Rather than try to wedge funny-shaped little pieces of brick into the corners that you’ll barely be able to see, I cut larger triangular pieces to fit there.

Here’s how it looks with all the bricks glued in. Normally I would have snipped the corners off each brick to make them look more bricklike, but I didn’t bother this time since they’re all the way at the back.

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