Friday, March 22, 2013

Catching Up

13 days, no posts, I know.

Still working on stuff with nothing finished, but my house for Undersized Urbanite is supposed to be a blog challenge, so I really need to keep posting about it.

As I've mentioned, I'm working on some other things that are really eating up my time. Realized that I actually went a week without working on my little Steampunk house (not good), but I had computer things to do...

...Or at least I did until I tried to install an update for a certain freeware video file converter(never again). Used it for years on a couple different computers, never had a problem, but this time I got a notice about "Complimentary third party software" being auto-installed (uh-oh). Then AVG pops up saying stuff about viruses (great), and after three attempts lets me know that it couldn't remove the threat (disconnect the wi-fi and shut down the laptop-quickly). Restarted and ran a full computer scan with Malwarebytes: anti-malware, which both found/removed the Adware/bad cookies and gave me 3 1/2 hours to kill while it did that. I don't know if anyone else has ever tried this, but when I'm frustrated with work, life,or anything really, I go work on a dollhouse. Pretty sure that's what I used to do when I was little, but it still works. It gets you away from the stuff you can't control long enough for things to work themselves out and you end with a cool looking dollhouse. Win-win situation.


This time it was finishing the mortar on the two large side exterior walls, and I figured out how to do the chimneys;

Cereal box bits, graph paper, and more egg carton

A few weeks ago, I took the black corrugated paper from the Michaels sale, and started cutting it into shingle pieces.


Now that the chimneys have been worked out, I can shingle the roof.

I have run into a few problems though.

The double-sided tape I used for the basement is holding the walls in place really well, but the floor and ceiling, not so much;

Looks like it's time for some glue.

The gears and such I have are actually way too big to work as gears in a 1:12 scene, so I made some at the sizes I need;

Paper, acrylic paint medium, gold metallic paint, & Polycrylic
(they should work)

And what I think is the most interesting issue so far, the living room carpet. It was some remnant upholstery fabric that went well with the scrapbook paper walls. Knowing what it looked like, I color matched some paint to it for the furniture and other things, from memory. This week I pulled the fabric out of storage to see if the furniture still matched the color;

Oh yes, it matches. It's practically camouflage!

Luckily I planned on tile by the fridge, so it's going to be on the opposite side of the room, and the fireplace is getting a few more coats of paint-darker paint. Glad I checked.

I'm getting close to finishing the exterior. I thought that, because it's outside, the mortar needed to be darker than the ashy, gray-ish brown I used in the basement, so I ended up using the same color that I painted the stone pieces. Most of it looks good although I went back an scratched out some super dark spots and have to touch up a couple of light spots too. The space around the emblem stone detail got some gold paint, but the end results of this paint job look a little flat. Since back when I sketched it all out, I've been thnking that it needed another color, like green or something. Sounds like a weird choice, but with the metallic parts, a tarnished metal type of green might not be such a bad idea. Anyway, here's where I am with the exterior;


(it can't sit upright until I tape down the siding)

Doesn't look too bad, if I do say so myself. Needs some more work, mostly paint though. The door/windows are not staying that splotchy black color, the edges of the walls probably shouldn't be white, and then there's the green that I just mentioned (maybe).

You have now been caught up (yay!).

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And just a follow up on my birthday-The party was on Sunday, I got my pudding, and all was well (like I knew it would be). A couple people commented on my statement about not knowing what season to expect, saying that it is Spring, and that the weather was going to act like Spring. Well it did on Sunday. I was walking along the canal without a coat, it was nice, but then it got cold again and it's been snowing pretty good for the past couple days...I know my March.



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