Building a Mini Building- the Foundation

Watch the video here.

This week I decided to cover the foundation on the back of the small add on room. I made this decision only because I was tired of seeing where I had written the name of the wood piece on that spot.

I thought about many ways of covering this little space (it only measures 9” wide by 1 ¾” high) and settled on using good old egg carton. I know we have done this before but I really like how it turns out and it is just so versatile. This time I am attempting to make it look like big concrete slabs instead of stone.

I decided to take a few moments of your time and show you some of the projects I have that I have used the egg cartons on so you can see just a few of the many possibilities. These egg cartons really are versatile.

I was really excited when my local grocery store changed the style of the carton on the dozen egg carton. Now the top is completely solid instead of having the openings to see the eggs. Not as good for the eggs but much better to craft with. The only drawback is that the nutritional information is printed inside the lid. I tried to see if I could get the printing to come off but had no luck so I painted the area. I didn't have my camera in the room at the time and couldn't get to it so I didn't get it filmed or photographed. The process I used was pretty simple I took some containers of craft paint ( all of these are Ceramcoat) in Black, Rain Grey, Storm Grey, Bridgeport Grey, Brown Velvet, and Eucalyptus. I then just squeezed out random squirts of the paints on the inside of the egg carton lid. I used a couple of wet wipes to spread the paint around mixing it some but leaving all the colors showing in places too. I allowed this to dry completely and then cut a strip of the painted portion to fit the space. I then cut the strip into pieces that were 1 ½” wide by the height of the area (1 ¾”)

I used just some regular tacky glue to adhere the pieces where they need to go. I tried to mix up the pieces so it didn't look like they had been cut from the same strip. I did end up having to add a bit more glue in a couple of places. Not a big deal, just pull the egg carton edge back a bit and add some glue then press it in place. You should wait for this to dry before you move on.

The next step was to seal the egg carton material. For this I used some matte finish Mod Podge. Any matte sealer would work for this step. We need to seal the surface to protect from our next step.

I needed to add grout since a couple of my stones weren't completely lined up against each other. I don't even remember what I used last time and have no desire to go look. You can really use just about anything depending on the final look you are after. Since I had such a small area, those little cracks are really tiny and there are just a few. I decided to use Latex Caulking as my grout this time. This is a product I always have on hand since I use a lot of it in my mini foods. It is also a really versatile product. (just a hint even though it comes in colors there is no need to buy anything other than white, it takes paint marvelously) In this case I wanted my grout to blend in with the stones so I mixed in a bit of grey craft paint (one of the ones I had used earlier) just mix it in really well. This might make the caulking take longer to dry and it thins it a bit depending on how much paint you use. For this application it didn't matter. When I need to keep the texture I usually use tube acrylic paint to color the caulking. Really you could probably use just about anything that is water based to color it as long as you don't add too much.

The only secret to adding grout (no matter what you use for your grout) is to be sure to wipe any excess off the surface of the stones.

I really like how this step of our building turned out. What do you think we should do next?? Be sure suggest what steps you would like to see.

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