On The Work Bench – Building Project No: 7 – Part 2

Progress this week has been slower than I would have liked owing to a major dose of Man Flu.  Apparently there is a strain which is doing the rounds which has been labeled Aussie Flu and is by all accounts rather nasty.  All of this has of course been wasted on “her who must be obeyed” who’s level of sympathy extended only to the words “Man Up”.  As every man knows, Man Flu is generally considered by 50% of the world’s population (mostly men it must be said) to be worse than child-birth.  There is of course a counter argument to this by approximately 50% of the world’s population (mainly women unsurprisingly) that this is of course nonsense.

Despite pointing out these statistics the level of sympathy from “her who must be obeyed” surprisingly went down!  Further more it was pointed out to me that when she had the same as me a few days earlier she still got on with the house work, cooking the meals and doing the shopping.  Proof, if indeed proof were needed I pointed out, that her viral strain was clearly not as bad as mine and hence why I had to stay in bed.  I can’t recall what she threw at me.  Women, can’t live without them but can’t shoot them either!

So, as I say, model progress not as much as I had hoped but a fair bit done none the less.

Having stuck the four sides of the building together it proved necessary to do a minimal amount of cleaning up and do some patch work on each of the corners.  This was done using Milliput and a cocktail stick to etch in the brick work where appropriate.  My next step was to start work on the roof.

As I mentioned previously I had already decided that the roof on this building would be fixed and because of this I chose cardboard for the base layer.  Had I decided to have a removable roof then I would have chosen MDF, the same base layer used for constructing the walls.  The other reason for using cardboard (in this case cardboard from a corn flakes box) was because in this instance I wanted to get the bowing effect that comes when the PVA dries out which doesn’t tend to happen when using MDF, hence using it for the walls.  Old buildings often have warped roofs and I was hoping to get this by using cardboard instead.

Having cut the cardboard to a length slighty longer than the building and with a little bit of an over hang front and back I then drew horizontal lines 5mm apart to indicate where each row of tiles would be placed.  The next job was to cut out each tile and glue them down.  To produce the tiles I used a tile cutter which was a Christmas present to myself from “Green Stuff World”.  Essentially it’s a hole punch and they do others in various leaf shapes.  Santa bought me one of those too.  Thereafter it was all about glueing each tile in place and as the finished roof took over 1100 tiles it took a while.  That said it was an ideal job given I wasn’t at my best and I had YouTube to keep me company throughout.  A little tip if you find yourself doing this.  Dip the tip of a cocktail stick into PVA every so often and use it to pick up the tiles instead of trying with your fingers.  Makes the job much easier and surprisingly speeds the process up a lot.

When doing the roof tiles I find it’s best to do so much and then let it dry before doing some more otherwise it can all become a bit messy.  It also helps with your sanity too.  So, while things were drying I set about making other bits and pieces such as the fence, log pile, five bar gate, water trough, window shutters and doors.  These were mostly made either from match sticks, wooden coffee stirrer’s or both.  For the doors I also used some metal foil to make the hinges and twisted wire for the fence.

That’s as far as I’ve got since last week.  This coming week I’m hoping to start the out building shed and begin painting some of the figures.  I’ll also give some thought to the inside of the building before permanently fixing the roof in place and attaching the chimney and ridge tiles.  I also need to finish the windows and then start on … (to be continued).

Progress pictures below.

TIM