Building the Beachside Bungalow part 12

 

Watch the video here.

This week we start by installing the rafter on the dormer. I did the rafters on the main roof the same way. This area is kind of hard to get decent video of.

The next thing I did was to install some screw eyes onto the porch area so that I will be able to hang things like plants, bird feeders and/or windsocks. I love this little touch because it makes hanging and changing these items so easy. When time to decorate the porch I will show you how easy they make this. My dad did something very much like this on our real house when I was growing so in a way this is my way of adding a bit of him to my dollhouses. The screw eyes I got came from the Ace hardware store and they are 7/16” in size and they were with the regular screw eyes in the store. I can't remember the exact price but it was less than $2.50. I did these now because it is so much easier to do this while the house is upside down.

Next I had to make a decision about what to do next we could either stay on the outside and deal with the shingles or we could move inside and start wiring. While some things have to be done in a certain order some things can be switched around in order. So you may be wondering why I chose the direction I did. It was simply a matter of as much as I dreaded staining all those shingles I just really didn't want to deal with the tape-wire yet. So this was a case of the lesser of 2 evils in a way. We have to do both of them eventually and I know I can do them both easily because I have done both in all my previous builds.

So in order to put on the shingles the chimney has to be placed first. This is fairly easy to do just measure and glue. I did end up having to use some masking tape because gravity was making it slide slowly down the roof.

Then went on to the shingles. Since I wanted my roof to be more in line with the color of the house. With the grey tones of the house I was picturing a black or charcoal grey roof. The closest I could get was the Minwax Penetrating stain in Ebony. It was the only stain that was anywhere close to the color I wanted to use that I could find around here. It came out pretty good, I had some pictures that a friend sent me of houses on the Oregon coast and the color that the shingles came out is close to the weathered color on several of those houses. I do have something special planned for a small part of roof which you will see when I get to that point.

I did send right around 5 hours staining all those shingles, this is probably my least favorite part of the entire process of building any dollhouse. This is why I don't normally use wood shingles on a lot of my builds recently. Since it had been a couple of years since I had done them I decided to go ahead with the ones in the kit.

I did discover that the cheap tablecloth from the Dollar Tree really is working to protect my table. I tipped over the small cup of stain on my table. I was sure that I was going to be re-finishing my table after that. I did blot the stain as well as I could and a lot of it was soaked up by the layer of Kraft paper. When I took the tablecloth off to change it out and check the damage there was no indication that I had spilt at all. So yes the extra trouble of layering the plastic tablecloth and Kraft paper is worth it.

Before I added the shingles I added some “flashing” to some of the places it would be on a real house. It is a small thing, most people don't bother with it but I like the look so I almost always do add it. This time I just used some black card-stock. In the past I have used card-stock, foil and many other things. I tried several things I had on hand and decided with the colors of this house I liked the plain black the best. On the vertical areas where one free edge of the “flashing” will show I make that side ⅛” and the areas that will be under the shingles I cut at ¼” since this won't show.

After the “flashing” was in place it is time to start gluing that mountain of shingles onto the roof. This is where we will be using those lines we drew on the roof panels several weeks ago.

Now here is where I am going against the instructions in the book that came with the kit. The books tells me not to use Tacky glue. I have always used tacky glue and never had any problems. Granted if you coat the entire back of the shingle it will no doubt warp. You don't need any where near that much glue. With the exception of the first row of shingles I only run a bead of glue where the top edge of the shingle will be lining up. For the first row you will need to zig-zag that bead of glue to give a better hold to the first row.

The book does however, tell us to use hot glue. Never, I repeat never use hot glue to put on shingles. I have a story to illustrate at least one reason not to do this. Many years ago and friend and I were building our very first dollhouses at the same time. We were keeping in touch via e-mail, phone calls and sharing pictures on the old site Webshots (I told you this was a long time ago)

Anyway, she was a couple of steps ahead of me. She got to the step of putting the shingles on her house. We had talked about how to do this and since the directions told us to use a glue gun we both thought okay, we could try it. Now as a side note if you have been following me for any length of time you know I hate hot glue and only use it when nothing else will do. So my friend spent a day or two of carefully placing all those shingles and fighting with her hot glue gun, dealing with all those wispy bits you get with hot glue, burning several fingers and having to make at least one run to the store for more glue sticks. She proudly emailed me late in the day and told me to check out the pictures she had just posted in her online album, the roof was done! Now this was a Friday and she had spent all week working on her dollhouse so she didn't check on it all weekend. It was summer and a hot summer at that and her house was being built on a work table she had set up in her screened porch.

Monday morning she went out to the screened porch to admire her work and plan what she would tackle that day. Imagine her surprise when the thing she saw first was an almost bare roof area on her house. All those shingles had slipped down off the roof, some were on the floor, some on the table and a lot of them were now stuck at odd angles all over the sides of her house.

One of the things about hot glue is it melts, it melts easily and the sun coming in on the house melted it. I saw the pictures she posted that day and it was sad to say the least. She was able to salvage it, she had to use a hairdryer to remove some the shingles from the walls of her house and from the table. She had order all new shingles and you can rest assured she used Tacky glue to put the new batch on with.

I wish I had copies of this pictures to show you but they are long gone as is my friend but I think about her and that roof every time I roof a dollhouse.

Now if you do have any problems with the shingles warping with Tacky glue just lay a brick on them until the glue dries that will keep them flat. Just don't use hot glue.

This part of the video that I filmed got messed up and I wasn't able to use it. Unfortunately I didn't realize this until I was editing the video late on Saturday evening. At this point not only was my area way to dark to re-film the part I had also already started filming next week's video. I decided to wait until Sunday morning to figure out what to do. The best option I could come up with was to show the steps on the side of the dormer. So I quickly filmed this part Sunday morning. I do have to emphasize let the glue on the first row dry before you try adding the second row. As you can see in the footage the first row slips around a lot and makes it very hard to get the second row straight.

When you start your first row of shingles start with a whole shingle at starting edge. Let this row dry completely before you go to the next row, you want this row to not be able to slide around on you as you add more rows. After this dries start the 2^nd row with a half shingle, and continue to alternate the starting of every row like this so that the seams between the shingles will alternate up the roof.

After the first row you can start doing 3 or so rows at a time before you need to let them dry.

I decided to stop this week's video before doing the fitting of the shingles around the dormer. I just need to get this video edited and uploaded so you can watch it on time.

Next week we will start off with shingling around the dormer and then the remainder of the shingles on the house. 

 

 

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