It's April......did I meet my deadline?

You might remember that I set myself the deadline of trying to finish the Fairfield by the end of March or Easter (which turned out to be the same thing!).  Did I make it?

Weeeeelllll......not quite.  Here it is so far:
The third (attic) floor is being divided into rooms, which is taking a while.

The hardware store was of course closed over Easter Friday and Easter Sunday and we don't shop on a Saturday (Sabbath) so I  had to wait until Monday to buy some extra plywood that I needed to finish off the walls and adapt the roof.   Here is a view of the side without the roof on.  It has been divided into two bedrooms.

 And here it is with the roof on - though some adjusting still needs to be done.

 Here is the left bedroom, left side.  This will be the girl's bedroom.

And the right side

 This is the right side bedroom - the boy's room.  The boy's bedroom has a rear wall that fills in some of the arched opening in the original roof, and a hallway between the two bedrooms gives access to both rooms.  It has had a short wall inserted at the rear the same as the left bedroom to give more usable wall space.  I'm still adjusting this wall so it's in progress.It's considerably smaller to allow for the hallway.

 Both the bedrooms have the flooring down.  The rest of the attic has the flooring cut to fit but not glued into place as yet since the lighting for the attic hasn't been completed.  In fact it would have been better if I hadn't glued the bedroom flooring down until the lighting was done in there either because I have changed my plans on how I am going to do it.

The rear view shows that I have made the tower room accessible from the attic.  This has resulted in a  considerably larger space in the tower room, which is excellent.  I will put a small wall on either side of the opening to allow for a doorway at the entry.  Whether there will be an actual door there or not is still up in the air at this time.  Sorry about all the wood putty - there's a lot of tidying up and smoothing out still going on.

There is a small room on the right hand side, just the same size as the bathroom below.  I debated with myself what that room would be: a guest bedroom? a second bathroom? a reading nook? a sewing room? a study?  At the moment I think it will be guest room but that might change.  The flooring is ready to put down in this area just as soon as all the wires that are going along the channel under it are in position.  The blue tape is holding the bathroom light wires in place.

I'm repeating the same photo below to show that the rest of the attic space has room for the stairs that will come up from the first floor.  I just have a spare set of stairs that I was using to try out there there at the moment until I put the permanent stairs in (the stairwell is covered with blue painter's tape just now to stop the dust from sanding the woodfiller from going downstairs).  The landing won't have much headroom in reality but since there is no roof in that area we'll have to overlook that inconvenient detail.  It is pretty generous as far as floorspace goes and the little nooks and crannies provide places for small items of interest to be placed there.  Of course the walls all need tidying up and lots of neatening done.

The lighting is done in bedrooms 1 and 2 (I don't know why the floors look as though they have a bend in them - they don't in reality),

 the bathroom;

 and I did have one in the hallway.  The hallway light has been changed from the sconce on the wall to a ceiling light.  This has left a hole in the wallpaper that will be covered up with  the stairs going to the second (attic) floor.  You will notice that I have butchered the landing on this first floor too, removing the balustrade that was there.  And incidentally damaging the floor in the process.  This had to be removed because I couldn't match it for the next flight of stairs so will be replacing it with Houseworks spindles and newel posts.  It looks pretty messy and sad at the moment and is about to look worse because I'm also going to remove the door frames and put Grandt Line doors in, with wooden door trim on the reverse side since Grandt Line doesn't supply the exterior trim and they don't fit the trim that comes with the house.

Because I used the ceiling light for the hallway instead of the kitchen I don't have a light for the kitchen but the groove is ready to take the wire when it does arrive.  Since I am still waiting for the bathroom tiles to arrive as well that isn't holding me up at the moment - if the tiles arrive before the light then I'll simply put the tiles in without fixing them permanently for now.

Lighting in the attic rooms is not completed because those lights haven't arrived yet either.  And the channels for the wiring need to be prepared.  From the left bedroom, the wires will go around the edge of the floor to the corner and down the corner cover strip.  At the end of the strip they will go through a hole in the foundations and then through a hole in the base to the lighting strip underneath that holds all the plugs.

From the right bedroom the wires will go down the nearest corner strip in the same way.

In the tower the light will be attached to a side wall.  The channel for the wires will go down the interior wall and across the floor to meet up with the channel for the wires from the hall light below.

There will be another sconce light in the hallway and in the small room at the end.  Their wires will also go down the walls and join up with existing channels.

Looking at the exterior, I took the fourth wall of the tower and cut pieces from it to extend the sides out to join to the roof.  The tower is now ready for cladding on its whole height.  To fill in the gap between where the tower roof sits and the roof of the house I'll just add a small piece of roofing to the addition.  The tower roof is removable at the moment to provide easy access, and I plan to keep it that way.  So there is a fair bit of trim that will need to go around the top of the tower room to give it a neat finish.

The verandah is fully assembled with both parts glued together.  The joints are filled with woodfiller to make them less noticeable.  It needs to have the final coats of paint.  And the side post has broken off again!

The exterior walls have had the slots filled with woodfiller as well, and given the final coat of green.  The side trims have been added.  At the moment most are being held on with tape while the wires are being run down behind them.  They will be 'tacked' on with glue so they are more easily removed if necessary to access the wires.  The first photo is the rear of  the dining room

Here is the Kitchen Bay window wall 

Front of the house showing trim on verandah and side of house 

Here is the side of the house.  I'm not sure whether to put trim on the inside corner of the bay window - I rather like it the way it is.  What do you think?

I've marked the roofs with lines for the shingles.  I did this before installing them on the house.  To begin I placed  a row of shingles with just their pointed ends hanging over the edge of the roof and marked that measurement, making sure that it was square across the whole roof.  Then I measured the distance I wanted the next row to be from that first one.  It turned out (conveniently) to be 1cm, so I marked 1cm increments all the way up the roof and ruled the lines, keeping them square.  The rear roof and the side roof are just sitting in place at the moment while I finish working on the attic rooms.

While we were away for our Anniversary I spent some time in the evenings doing some flowers for the garden, so there will be a bit of colour around the base of the house.

I'm disappointed that I didn't meet my deadline.  In fact, I'm wondering whether I'll get it completed by the end of April ready for the fair but I'm pleased that the house is getting closer to completion.   The problem has been that I find it hard to stick to one project and there have been quite a few days when I've just been rather bored with it and not done anything.  Or I've fiddled around too long with one particular part like the foyer - which I'm going to destroy anyway and change over to Houseworks spindles and bannisters!  I've also helped Nathan heaps with his Toy Shop but that hasn't made a major difference - it's mainly been because I kept getting bored.   I'll make a big effort this coming week and we'll see how far I can get it.  I've ordered heaps of furniture to go inside and it should be here in around a week or so and it would be lovely to have the house  ready to put it in when it does arrive, or nearly so at least.  The trouble is that I'm running out of time to order things.  Everything takes around 2 weeks to arrive from the UK or USA so anything I need now I'll have to order very soon.

Wish me luck!