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Victorianna — the last bay window

The Victorianna has four bay windows on the front, and one on the back. I finished the ones on the front of the house several years ago — you can read about that here, here, here, and here.

In late 2018 I started on the kitchen bay window as part of the kitchen project, but once the kitchen was finished I lost interest, and it’s sat in an almost finished state ever since.

I really am determined to get this house done while I’m stuck sheltering in place during the coronavirus pandemic (that’s a phrase I never would have expected to say two weeks ago!), so this week I did the last little bit on the last bay window.

The process I used to finish the bay windows is documented in the posts I linked to above, but I’ve been saving these pictures so I might as well run through it quickly again here. The first steps were to add crown molding to the bottom, frame the insides of the windows with painted strip wood, and glue on the window acetate.

Next I covered the sides with strip wood.

I added crown molding to the top and quarter round into the gaps in the corners.

Then I added the decorative panels (1:12 scale corner blocks) and more strip wood to cover the rest of the gaps.

I added wood filler to all the seams and then painted over it.

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Victorianna — attaching the sloped roof

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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Mudjar petit point carpet

I haven’t started the second version of the Kashkuli carpet yet — first I wanted to finish a rug that I put aside when I started the Kashkuli. This design is from the book Oriental Carpets in Miniature by Frank M. Cooper. It’s stitched over one on 36-count linen, for a finished size of about 4.5″ x 6.75″.

Here’s what the book says about this design:

The spelling of the name of the town from which this rug came varies depending on the book you are reading or the map you are studying: Mujur, Mudjur, Mudjar—take your choice. I adapted this design from an illustration in the book Oriental Carpets by Ulrich Schurmann, and so I really should spell it his way, which is Mujur, but so many books and maps use the spelling Mudjar that I have decided to go with the majority.

The colors in Mudjar rugs are more varied than in others of Anatolian origin. In this design, you find mauve, pink, blue, green, and shades of yellow, which you may not find combined in other rugs from this area.

The series of prayer arches depicted in this rug is very rare to find. The original rug dates from the first part of the nineteenth century, and is in a private collection. The original rug, from which this design is adapted, measures 42 1/4 x 59 3/4 inches.

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