Beach House: Part 3 -- the walls

 

Building the beach house/room started with cutting the three walls down to size.  This proved to be terribly difficult:  nothing would cut this wood!  These were 12 x 12 inch sheets of basswood and I tried a utility knife, an X-acto knife and various coping and hand saws.  I even got new blades!  Wow, I managed to make the 3 cuts I needed but it was very hard and I couldn't see how I'd be able to cut out the doors and windows.

I hunted online and was lucky to come across this lovely accessory for the Dremel:  a mini circular saw!  I bought it and a Dremel even though I really don't like power tools.

But I was desperate.

So with safety glasses, clamps holding the wood and everything secure, I zipped through my walls!  Yeah!  I definitely need practice but for now I had my windows and doors cut out!

The half-moon window, however, I had to cut out by hand.  I used the X-acto and spend at least 30 minutes slowly cutting through the wood, using the window glass as a template.  It was worth it:  the glass fits perfectly.

And so I had my three walls!  

The outside was then primed and painted a nice, inviting yellow... I used leftover paint from our kitchen!  The interior was painted a sky blue, leaving the last 5cm or so with no paint so the wainscoting will glue on better.   (This paint was leftover from our bathroom.)  

I tried to leave an unpainted 3mm around all the holes for the frames to glue on better, but this proved to be a mistake and I had to make quite a few touch-ups where there wasn't enough paint.  I wouldn't bother trying to do this again.

I got a really helpful tip from this book, The ABC's of Dollhouse Finishing.  Instead of using sand paper, try a piece of crumbled brown packing paper and rub it across your surface.  It was enough in this case to smooth everything down, with no dust!   

I hadn't really thought much about the roof except that I wanted as much light as possible and thought to use plexiglass.  I love the idea of lying on the floor on a blanket, a dog (or two) curled up against my side and looking at the stars!  Or watching the rain fall... 

Mom and I brainstormed and started looking at my collection of picture frames, mostly bought at thrift stores.  We came across this perfect one, a frame with an insert for four smaller photos!  Wow!  Four skylights!  It's slightly smaller than what I need but a strip of basswood will fill the gap.  

Next:  setting in the windows and doors!