This is the first floor landing. Sumaiya asked about the newel caps and I promised her better photos of them. The flat square was provided with the Garfield kit. I found the brass jewelry "whatever you call them" and the wooden mushroom looking caps at Hobby Lobby...a bunch in a baggie for a dollar or so. ( It's obvious I don't do photos well; there's a lot of glare showing little white flecks that aren't really there. ) I will, of course, do the same thing for the 2nd floor staircase. The bead mats I found came in real handy for this...I had to add the brass thingie to the wooden cap first and then top the square piece. The mat kept things from rolling around.
I've started sanding the second floor partitions. I don't like the door arrangements, so I'm going to do some destruction before I do the construction.
First, to enter into what appears to be the main bedroom to the left of the staircase, you get off the stairs and turn left immediately into the skinny doorway. If you go through that door, you instantly face a wall for the tower, which is absolutely necessary, if only for the 3rd floor. I'm going to whack that wall off, at least to the point where I can fit a standard Housework's door into the spot, though I'll have to trim down the door casing some. It'll mean I'll have to build a 3" wide wall section to connect it to the stairway partition, but that's no problem. It all looks easy enough and worth the shot at doing it.
Next, is the entry into the other bedroom, which is also though a skinny door. I'll do surgery on that door frame, too, to allow for a Houseworks door to be used, again needing to trim some of the door casing. There is a transom window that'll need some adjustment or maybe completely covering up, though I sure like and want to keep it. I need to get there to make that decision.
Neither of these adaptions are going to be tough, but they'll take some time and patience. The master bedroom wall that I'm trimming is attached already, so cutting it will be in a limited space, fitting the tools and my arm in there will be awkward, and I'll probably have to stand on a chair to reach it ( or put the whole house on the floor, which would certainly be safer for me, but open game for Aimee, the cat. The other 3 will leave it alone, I'm sure )
Then, again, I must decorate the hallway walls before I install them and I keep changing my mind with what to do. I'll pop up with the final answer while I'm tearing all the walls apart. The hallway has both a french door and a removable bay. Unlike the first floor entry bay, I'm going to keep this bay removable. It's not in the same order of the directions, but I'll work on those while I'm working on the hallway, so I can keep my thoughts all together. Besides, building this baby hasn't been completely by the directions to this point. Why start now?
I've realized that I've not always explained what I was doing, which was the point to the blog in the first place, so I'm going to try posting every day, even if some of what's been done is minor and not worth a hoot. I love, I love this Garfield house. I hope that you are enjoying watching it go up. I sure am.
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