It’s the end of the world as we know it… and I feel fine…

Ahem. Hi! Hope everyone’s doing okay with the coronavirus weirdness. I’m taking advantage of my self-imposed isolation to get some work done on the Victorianna — maybe I’ll have the house finished by the time the world gets back to normal. (Want to take bets?)

My original plan for the Victorianna’s small sloped roof was to use four hinged windows as skylights. This would have provided a bird’s eye view into the nursery and the master bedroom and given those rooms some much needed light.

Between the house not being square, the roof pieces not having much of a surface to attach to, and my eagerness to finally finish this house after 5+ years, I decided to leave out the skylights. (Actually, Geoff talked me out of it.) The piece just wouldn’t have been stable enough with those four holes in it.

Here’s the roof piece Geoff cut for me.

We left it too long at the top on purpose.

The Victorianna is made from two kits that I bashed together, it has a small hump in middle where the two kits meet. Also, the sides of the roof don’t have anything holding them up, so they droop a little. As a result, the peak where the sloped roof pieces meet up isn’t a straight line.

I drew a pencil line along the top of the front roof piece and Geoff cut it for me with the jigsaw, so it will meet the front roof piece neatly. We also cut the sloped roof in half, because when it was one big piece it couldn’t sit flat (due to the hump in the middle of the house). And we beveled the bottom edge where it meets up with the flat roof.

I didn’t bother taking pictures of these steps — I just stepped back and let Geoff do the work. Trying to figure it out was making my head hurt and he came to the rescue! Here’s the result.

Next I pulled the ceiling paper (which I’d left hanging to attach to this piece once it’s glued in) against the underside of the sloped roof and drew a pencil line at the top so I could cut the paper to fit.

Then I glued in the sloped roof pieces. I did them one at a time, holding the roof piece in place with clamps while the glue dried.

On the front there was a bit of a crack where the two pieces met. I glopped glue in there.

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Before I could glue in the Victorianna’s flat roof, I had to finish a few things in the master bedroom and bathroom that would be too hard to reach once the roof was on, starting with the bedroom closet.

As a reminder, here’s how the closet looks inside. You can read more about the creation of this closet here and here.

And here it is with the door on. Though the door opens and closes, it doesn’t close smoothly — it gets stuck halfway closed. To close it the rest of the way, I have been reaching down from above and holding on to the top of the closet with my fingers while pushing the door into a flat position with my thumb. I can’t do that once the ceiling is on, so this may well be the last we ever see of the inside of this closet.

On the other side of the wall, in the master bathroom, I added shelves to the shower. First I glued on these shampoo bottles and soap in a dish. I should have added labels first but I was impatient to get this done, and finding/resizing/printing labels seemed like a big chore at the time. (The lack of labels will probably annoy me forever…)

I glued in the top shelf first, with a spacer below it to hold it at the right height.

Then I glued in the bottom shelf the same way.

Done! In hindsight I wish I had added grout to the seams where the shower walls and floor meet each other. Oh well.

I also made a little towel holder to go near the sink. The round part is half of a toggle clasp. I stuck a head pin through the hole, with crimp beads on either side to keep the pin from slipping out. The towel is a piece of a baby washcloth from the dollar store.

I used the micro drill to make a hole in the side of the linen closet. (This would have been easier if I’d done it before I glued in the closet…)

Before gluing in the roof, I cut trim pieces to go over the door and around the linen closet. This would have been much harder to do with the ceiling in place.

I actually did all of this prep work almost a year ago, before packing up the Victorianna so Geoff could renovate my workshop. Now that the flat roof is ready, I can finally glue it on. I applied The Ultimate super glue to the tops of the walls and back roof.

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