The other side

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2010

I thought you would enjoy a glimpse of the other side of the house. Remember the walls are only temporarily assembled, the stucco on the wall joins is missing and I am in the process of applying foundation stones. The upper area of the roof timbering is unfinished as beams that will be upstairs are going to come poking through that gable wall.

You can see some of the chunks of limestone I have been breaking down into smaller pieces for the dollhouse.

 In this photo you can see the dynamic patterning relationship of the timbers leading the eye around the structure. Repetition and variation of pattern is what it is called in the architecture design world. The shorter diagonals near the foundations were chosen as I saw in various books quite a few cottages in the Normandy and Brittany area that use that particular pattern of bracing. It is not something I have seen commonly used as a timber pattern in other countries or other areas of France.

stucco layers

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2010

Will I ever be finished with the stucco job? Not for a couple of days more of work. It is very labor intensive to create the layers of texture, the cracks, the color washes and to pick off all the bits and blogs that get on the timbers. It is at least 40 hours, probably more like 60 to create this kind of look for stucco for a small cottage. No one part of the job is difficult but it is tedious work.

I had to invent a custom stucco putty mixture for the top layer of plaster. I needed something that was water resistant so it would not melt away the crisp edges of the broken plaster look when I applied washes. Spackle will lose its hard edges. It needed to be a smooth plaster with little grit in it.  I could not have any shine to this layer and I had to be able to carve it. It needed to be basically white in color but able to absorb the acrylic color washes without melting or bringing up a shine. Hooray I managed to accomplish that which I set out to do. Now that is a good day in the workshop.

So in order not to forget what I use for the top stucco layer I had better document it here. It is Golden Brand, light acrylic modeling paste into which I stir Lightweight Hydrocal Plaster. Do not add any water to the mix. You want a thick mixture that can be trowel onto the walls. When dry your mix should look and feel like plaster and not like the more rubbery feel of the acrylic modeling paste. The acrylic paste prevents the plaster from being fragile and cracking, it also makes it so that the plaster does not melt, dissolve, when you put a watery acrylic paint wash on the dry surface. As both the plaster and the acrylic modeling paste have a surface quality that will absorb paint rather than having it just lie there on the surface you get a very realistic look of time worn, lime washed plaster rather than having unrealistic thick paint on your project.

I put the sink in this photo, when I took it's portrait the other day the camera made the color too deep a brown. It is much more of a light grey with some browns. The sink fits right in with the monochromatic color scheme of the structure. The stone of the sink relates very well to the timbers and to the stucco. The natural edge on the sink front also works with those elements.

Back to work, another day of stucco tomorrow but I will break it up with a few other tasks on the dollhouse to relieve the boredom. What many people don't realize is that a great deal of the hours of work on dollhouses is not very exciting. I find the best fun is the research, the dreaming, the planning and the inventing of new materials and methods of construction.

That driftwood look

In the two photos above I have set the side wall of the house right next to the front wall of the house. You can see the before and after effects of aging the timbers. The floors of the house are also in the photo, they were not bleached as the wood was already light in tone but they did have a vinegar and iron solution brushed over the raw wood as the first step in aging.

 I have mentioned before that the coastal cottage project is intended to have a grey cast to it invoking the feel of driftwood on a beach. The old timbers on these old houses will always weather to grey if left unfinished but they may still have some brown undertones to them. That is the look I want. This is a small cottage and the timber framing is very busy, the overall monochromatic color scheme of the dolls house has a calming effect on the viewer that lets one focus better on details.

I told you about a two step process to recreate mother natures reality aging in my workshop laboratory. Mad scientist at work! So first step is the two part wood beach, it is a peroxide based oxygen bleach. I stop the bleaching action by brushing water onto the timbers. As I am using a water proof substrate and also waterproof glue no warping or other damage is done to the dollhouse from this process.

The second step is the application of a dilution of iron minerals in vinegar. This solution is easy to make, soak rusty objects in vinegar then strain it and store it in a plastic or glass bottle. Never store it in a metal container. Or you can shred steel wool pads into vinegar, let sit for a day or two and then strain that solution. Usually though I purchase the famous Thomas "Bug Juice". I know the strength of the solution is consistent and  my purchase helps support the two people in the miniature business who have taught me more than any other individuals, Noel and Pat Thomas. They used to write a series of articles for Nut Shell News, Dollhouse Miniatures and later Miniature Collector I have all those articles saved into a big notebook. It is a fountain of wisdom, artistic attitude and examples of building fine miniatures from scratch.

Torchis

Torchis is the French word for the more commonly known wattle and daub. The daub to be more specific.

I know from the newsgroups most dollhouse builders are using lightweight spackle for their plaster. That is fine for the interior of the house and newly plastered exteriors but not for a character house where the exterior plaster is wearing away or on structures where the torchis was never rendered over the top with smooth lime plaster. I found quite a few of those houses on my journey.

For my new series of houses that I plan to build this year I wanted to develop a new product to use to create that rougher texture in scale. I have been busy playing mad scientist this morning and am getting close to being happy with a mix of various things. I want to wait a week or so to see how strong it will be and how well it will adhere after fully curing. By the time I am ready to apply stucco material I hope to have something very realistic to 1:12 scale to use.

In the meantime you can look at the photos above that I took of real life examples and also do an internet image search using the word torchis. It will open up a whole new set of photos that searching on wattle and daub won't give you. Of course the danger is you will never again be satisfied with only lightweight spackle on the exterior. A wicked witch cottage would not look right all pretty and pristine. Yes I am going to do a witches cottage, I designed it many years ago but never got around to building it for reasons I will explain in a later post.