The Terrace of shops and Brews & Stews - Diagon Alley

We three doors...still very much WIP and the camera lies terribly with the tone of the pink, no matter what light I put it in, the camera lies! lol 

Just a little post to introduce the terrace of 3 shops plus rooms above! It has 9 rooms in total. It has three shops, the red door is for Scrivenshaft's Quill shop (a stationery shop etc), the green door is for The Magic Neep (the greengrocers, though mine will have some other grocery items too) and the pink door is for Twilfitt and Tattings shop (a clothes and uniform shop). The upstairs is Brews and Stews, a Bed and Breakfast and the room directly about the pink door is the clothes makers work room.

These photo's aren't real time photo's....just showing you how it started out....the inside and outside has been primed in proper shop bought primer, a must for MDF. :o(

Laying out the component parts for the Scrivenshaft's...all primed, but this time with a  homemade version as it's thinner.  

 Seeing how the first two shops look with some of the component pieces just balanced on! lol

Twilfit and Tattings shop with its windows altered...more on that another time! ;o)

 Scrivenshaft's with its red paint applied and some distressing....

The shops floorboards made and laid...before all the staining was applied and wax polish to age and finish it.

After a coat of wax polish. 

 The Magic Neeps's floor...I wanted the old fashioned lino look! 

 After it had been distressed and aged. 

 Laying Twilfitt and Tattings floorboards...they have a reddish colour.

All my flooring's will be removable above the ground floor, this is to get to any lights and their wires laid into the floor. I simply glue my floorboards onto the thick paper (pre stained) that I've cut to the size and shape of the room. I stopped gluing the floorboards at that point as I need to measure the fireplace so I can cut the flooring around it. 

 All my doors are primed too, it takes ages to prepare all the pieces!

 Ageing The Magic Neep's door.  

 The top floor's ceilings will have rafters....

 The rafters have been aged, distressed and stained, they just need to be waxed next to seal them. ;o)

So that's a short introduction to the terrace....more soon!

I hope you don’t mind my ramblings and madness! :o))

Michelle xxxx

2015, the year that was....to finish what I've started!

 

It's been a while since I did a blog post huh! I had a couple of bad months with Menieres attacks which were pretty Hellish to live with, so I had to slow down or stop with the mini work side of things. Also, one side of my cabin was used to store stuff from the real house whilst we had workman in to do the kitchen and day room. The whole house needed gutting (when we moved in September 2013) and redecorating not to mention the electrics updating, new boiler and new double glazing etc, but I see light at the end of the tunnel now and we only have 2 more rooms to do! 

So I have my cabin back for me again! However, I'm running short on storage space, I think some of my friends were a little flabbergasted to hear that, given I've only had my cabin in use for less than a year (never say never!), in fairness it's partially down to me not finishing and thus dressing the projects I have because I wanted to either redo bits or finish adding the final touches, but mainly because I have a few started on projects and I had piles of their component pieces scattered around my work tops. :o/ 

One of my biggest irks is storing and finding (again) mini furniture, I have wasted too much time going through drawers looking for furniture pieces for projects and not knowing what's in what box, they all look the same! So now I write on every side of the box stating what's in it!  

This is my new storage. In total they hold 137 litres of stuff. They are great for anyone short of space especially if you don't have a proper work/craft space (or those greedy like me who doesn't have enough already!) as they are sturdy, tidy, move easily and stand alone units, easily fitted in a corner out of the way. However the larger one does not take 12x12 scrapbooking pages/books, so I've had to squash as many as I can in my Alex IKEA units. 

I've had 3 stacks taken off to make it lower...so it's hidden! lol

Hidden behind two shops! lol

Anyhow....I have done some mini work though over the months! That is I've have been working on Mr Mulpepper's!

Inside the building there really isn't enough space for a chimney breast, so I created a chimney breast outside from a piece of polystyrene.  I've shaped off the top for the tiles and lead trim.

I sealed the polystyrene with two coats of PVA (white glue) to make it super strong and for the plaster to adhere better.  Once dried, I applied my plaster and allowed to dry fully.

 I then started on the ageing of, not sure I'm as happy as I could be with this...so I may tweak it.  

No damp added as yet...only a little will be added if I do! I will show a photo  (at a later date) with the lead and tiles added to the stack! ;o) 

 The other side...

The front, minus main shop windows  etc.

 The chimney stack, I need to tweak the brick work and age the lead. ;o))

It took a while to cut and add the lead.  

 The chimney glued on...and the roof tiling begins.... 

 I still have just under half to finish off...the other side. ;o)

The brickwork needs some tweaks and maybe a little damp. The lead needs to be added around the chimney stack base and over the top of the roof tiles to create a watertight area!   

 The outside so far...it's had a few tweaks since I last showed it and glued the shop windows in... the two doors and upper windows acetate need to added etc.

The inner window shelves aren't glued in yet...I couldn't decide whether they should slope slighty like the real shop or left flat. 

The little roof has been tiled...in real life lead would be added along the wall and tiled edge...however the real building does not...hmmm undecided what to do here!

 The opening front panel has been wallpapered....no ageing applied as yet nor the windows and their frames.

I have a major irk with hinges showing, so I matched up the wallpaper to cover the hinges.

Then cut to size, if the architrave doesn't cover too well at least the hinges are covered. 

The interior wallpaper needs to be done, then the wooden skirting boards, cornice and window frames etc. 

I haven't managed to crack open a new kit because of the house stuff being stored in my cabin, but I have started on my terrace of 3 shops with the Brews and Stews B and B upstairs with the Twilfitt and Tatting's owners' sewing room above her shop. My main plan is to also resume work on my started projects (if you go back on my blog posts you'll see which ones and some photographed here too!) so I can dress them and thus regain storage space! Lol Well there's always hope! Where there's hope there's light at the end of that dark and gloomy tunnel! ;o)

My Sister bought me some more pretties for my cabin...the hanging paper lantern and the little fabric daisy above the hanging narrow cabinet by the window.  

 The sky over Norfolk late 2014...

I couldn't resist a photo of it!

Happy New Year 2015!

I hope you don’t mind my ramblings and madness! :o))

Michelle xxxx

Mr Mulpepper's Apothecary - Update

Well I'm here with an update on Mr Mupepper's, the other apothecary in Diagon Alley.  I won't be doing it the same as Slug and Jiggers, that was from my own imagination and nothing like the real one, however, Mr Mulpepper's will be as much like the real one as I can do it and with what I have to work with! ;o) 

So, this is the old Honeychurch shop that I had and stripped back. Firstly, sticking with what you first thought was right...is nearly always the right choice! lol The fascia blue is the wrong blue for the shop and the one I bought purposely, was...worse still I had actually started to paint the top window frames too! The nightmare began with the window frames and the sanding down (again lol) and erm trying to glue them back together! 

Enough of that for now! I glued on the shops' sign etc which I also wanted to change, so it had a little roof over the top of it...the challenge began! I also started to put together the two bottom bay windows and made adaptions to them too. 

I wanted something more fancy for the window frames, but the narrow trim I had (and could only use) was quite thin and I needed more depth so they stood out from the plaster work.  So I used the basic trim that came with the shop and fitted my fancy trim over the top.  

 The basic trim glued on!

 Now the fancy trim over the top with an enhanced window sill too! ;o)

Now it came to that tricky little roof addition...not forgetting the nightmare top window fitment! They took ages, AGES to refit back into the window holes, a couple aren't great...looking at them makes one feel you are on a wonky fair ground attraction! lol 

Arh! Yes, its upside down! lol I did have 2 spare window brackets but they were too small and really needed two per window. So I opted for one large one per window, and as it happened when I rechecked with the real shop, they too had one large bracket! YAY! ;o) 

 Now for adding the tiny roof above the sign......I couldn't have much of a slope!

The roof part added and some trim to embellish it. painted and distressed too. :o) I also drew on grid lines for my brick lines...so that they aligned and were fairly straight.

I decided to glue the door architrave on  before I started on the plaster work...with fine and tight areas it's far easier to have it in situ as you plaster etc.

I had to cut a little niche out of the main door architrave so I could accommodate the window ledge.

I only wanted patches of exposed brickwork, this can be tricky because if you want realistic and straight lines, you do want them straight and the grid lines help...especially when you have two separate segments. 

 With all the brickwork added, I then painted them! Still a way to go yet! 

Here I am starting to apply the plaster. I chose to draw around the bay windows for the basic shape because I didn't want these glued in yet, as you find out later(!) and the fact plaster is also messy work and I much harder to clean off ones painted pieces! 

 Some of the ageing and distress applied to the plaster and brickwork...

The round gap in the plaster (top half) is where my outside light will go. More on that in my next post!

I have added some damp patches, but not much. I may add more when the bay windows are glued in. 

I may need to add a few touch-ins with the plaster and there are a couple of areas higher up that I want to tweak too! 

Testing everything in situ! The bay windows have 2 shelves each (I made these originally and now I've tweaked them so they will refit the windows again).  I am still deciding whether to have these sloping towards the front (like the real shop) or flat! 

I've stripped all the old roof tiles off. I have added bricks to both sides of the roof and the chimney stack. I have also aged the chimney pots...I forgot to take a photo of them! Grrrr! lol I will be adding trim to the sides to finish off the edge. The tiles and lead flashing are on order for both roof's. 

 I needed to tidy and finish off the side of my little sloping roof! 

I have also cut and primed all the interior trims/architrave. These will be painted the aged with that I normally use...I'm doubtful I will have either the blue or plum inside! ;o/ 

I will be using the same trim as the exterior for the interior around the doors and their windows at least. Again, these will be an aged white that I use.

The door window frame that I made, which the acetate will be sandwiched in between the door and frame. It still needs to be distressed and I will make frames for the upper windows too, but without the thin outside frame as the wider and proper architrave will be used for that part.   

Supplies are on order to finish the exterior. I have also bought all the wallpapers and many for other projects too. I've been collecting furniture etc too! Once the exterior is completed, I will make a start on the terrace of shops. I will show an update on this before I start on the latter. ;o)) I will then start the process of popping back to started projects when I am waiting on major or big things to dry. ;o)   

We are having our current kitchen completely gutted and redone in a few weeks...yes,  the real home is still being done too! Can you believe it, that I moved to Norfolk a year ago today! My oh my, what a year! lol ;o))  

I hope you don’t mind my ramblings and madness! :o))

Michelle xxxx