I took two steps forward and one step back on the Mansion. When I started the exterior work it occurred to me that I really wasn't happy with the Lady's bedroom's flooring. So, while papering and painting the exterior and while cutting the stone siding to fit in place, I also ripped out the Lady's bedroom wooden sheet floor and replaced it with a Brodnax wooden floor.
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| Gluing down the Brodnax wood squares to create a design |
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| Old flooring on top, more interesting newer floor on bottom |
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| I'm loving it in the room! |
And as long as I was in a flooring mood, I also tackled the music room flooring. I had always known the music room flooring would be "green marble". They are sticky tile sheets by Model Builder's Supply out of Canada. I had used them before in my tea house and learned some tips/tricks from that experience 18 years ago. First, don't place the whole sheet down at once or you can tell exactly where the sheets start/end:
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| I can see exactly where the 6 sheets are when I laid them in the room to get the idea of how it'd look |
So I knew I was going to have to break off each tile to mix them up before applying them to my flooring template. And, to save some money on the project, I bought "seconds" (tile sheets that were imperfect: they are not perfect 1" squares). Some were 1" x 7/8" while others could be 1-1/8" x 1-1/8". Which meant that each tile had to be measured to make sure it was the same size as the other tiles in the row. It was a tedious, laborious task with a lot of tiles needing to be either trimmed down or discarded, but overall the end result was satisfactory! (Pictures show the flooring with protective film on the tiles so that is why some look wrinkled or hazy.)
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| Measuring out the tiles |
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| All done! |
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| And in the house it went! |
I papered the bays with wallpaper liner to hide some imperfections in the wood seams. Then painted them Trailside Tan.
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| The house with the wallpaper liners on the bays |
The table saw I use to cut the stone siding is (of course) bolted to the workroom table at work, so every evening I would mark where the stone needed to be cut, take it in to work the next day and make the cut, then return home in the afternoon and clamp the piece in place so I could hold up the next piece and mark it for cutting the next day. A slow process (might have been easier to unbolt the saw to bring it home), but it gave me the excuse to take the time to work on the Lady's bedroom flooring and the music room floor!
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| Stone siding isn't glued on yet; just clamped in place until I get them all cut |
So I am making progress! Now I have hit the stumbling block of deciding on trims and shingles...this massive of a house would have had slate or Spanish tile roofing. But slate is gray or black (wouldn't "match" my color scheme). And the Spanish tile roofing available on the market is too red/orange for the house (and I am not patient or crazy enough to make my own tile roofing one at a time -- looking at you, Marjorie!
http://www.sticksandstonesandstyrofoam.com/). Wooden shingles wouldn't look right, in my opinion. And asphalt shingles are the wrong time era for this fantasy Victorian mansion. So time for more coffee and chocolate while I debate roofing options....
