I can't believe it's a month since my last post. You could be forgiven for thinking that I have made no further progress since this time last month, when I was so buoyed up with success.
Well not strictly true.
Certainly I haven't had as much time as I would have liked to press on with my little toyshop, but we have been having some major renovation works done to the full-size house, which means that everything is in complete disarray and stress levels are sky-high. So many times over the past few weeks I would have given anything to take myself off to potter with the toyshop, but other than sneaking the odd 10 minutes I have resolutely applied myself to life scale problems.
However, this past week, I have managed to progress a little......nothing major to engender whoops of delight, but small tasks have been ticked off the list so it has not been completely neglected.
A few things are being held up because I haven't quite decided what to do. For example, the inside of the two front opening panels. I think that I will use wallpaper to cover the electric tape runs etc. To that end I ordered some sheets of paper from eBay but they are much too small and now that I have them I don't think they're quite the right colour.
Then there's the areas above the display cabinets which will line each of the rooms on the two shop floors. I'd quite like to use a wallpaper border, and again bought some very lovely Victorian children borders, but they are too wide and I can't be bothered to go through the rigmarole of scanning and reducing them, then printing them myself. They never look as good as the originals anyway *sigh*
On the plus side, I have painted the last of the display cabinets and stained all the floorboards inside the shop. I think I will have to varnish them to bring out the colour better and give them a bit of a sheen.
I have also added some further electric tape runs, both inside the shop and on the insides of the door fronts, as I want to install lighting in both the bay windows. This is going to be easier said than done, as I have to run the electricity from the shop interior, to the doors. I think I may have cracked that particular conundrum though, by wiring two plugs to each end of a short length of wire, and putting sockets both inside the shop and inside the door fronts, so that when each end is plugged in, electricity will flow through to the bay windows.
Well that is the theory anyway. I haven't tested the circuits yet, but I have soldered all the joints.
There has also been some minor progress on the exterior. The herringbone brickwork is now finished on the two exterior door fronts, and I have been gradually adding Tudor-style timber beams. I've also fitted two coach lamps either side of the entrance door.
Actually, now that I come to write it all down, these little 10 minute pockets of time all add up. I'll take some photos tomorrow to demonstrate the progress so far.
The next major tasks are
- Painting the roof tiles and dormer window roof tiles
- Hinging the opening door panels
- Hinging the attic roof
