The Roof

It was a little tricky fitting the roof together and making the top floor divider wall all fit nicely together. The book instructions for measurements are clear enough, so I'll chalk it up to my cutting skills. I made a few adjustments to get them to fit. I had to add a layer of foam core to the square top that makes up the ceiling of the top floor and glue it to the wood top.

Then I decided that I didn't want to cut out a gazillion little tiles for a slate roof so I made a different roof by painting gesso on the non-printed side of a cereal box and then cut strips out about 3mm wide or a little less than 3/16ths of an inch.

Then I glued the strips vertically to the roof front and sides and let them dry overnight. I mixed the color of paint to try to match the zinc paper shown in the book only a little more blue. When I get the whole roof on, I'm going to put a silver glaze over it. To get my color for the roof, I mixed a medium gray, cape cod blue, midnight, black and silver acrylic together until I got two shades I like. I decided to use the lighter shade for the base coat.

I had so much trouble with this roof top that I cut out of foam core. It fit together perfectly. I painted gesso on the outside and the paper coating shrank when it dried making my roof top look like a pagoda! What the??? So I had to turn it over and apply a coat to the other side thinking it would shrink too and level itself back out but... no joy there.

So I put a layer of wood glue on the underside and bent the paper coating to flatten it out the best I could while it dried. Then I glued a wood strip to each area about an inch from the edge of the underside and weighted them down one at a time until each was dry. I was exhausted by the end of the day after making more work for myself than necessary on this one, but...

...finally - it did straighten out and I know not to do that again. You might just want to save yourself some trouble and don't paint on foam core. If I'd been thinking smarter, I could have just paint on card stock and glued it to the board. At least I know how to make a pagoda roof if I ever need one.

I can't put the top on permanently and finish the edges until my wiring is all done and I've got so much work to do to the outside first.