I Am Floored Again!!!

This morning I got up and plastered all of the walls and ceiling in the weaver's room. I used a bottle of gesso that I purposely left open to thicken it. I pounced it on the surfaces with a very stiff stencil brush. The walls still have to be painted, but I won't be able to do that until tomorrow, when the gesso is thoroughly dry.

So to keep busy, I did the floor. I wanted it to be the same as in the colonial kitchen. That's slate.

I cut a piece of illustration board the exact size of the room interior. Then I painted it on both sides with charcoal Ceramcoat acrylic. I scrubbed it on in every direction and wasn't careful about coverage. As y0u can see, Tessie came up with the brilliant idea of using water bottles down the length of the bowed center. That works better than books, because there is more uncovered surface and it dries much faster that way.

Next I started at one front corner and cut, at random, pieces of slate paper and glued them down, one piece at a time. I cut as I went and fitted each piece into the ones before.
Here you can see some of the pieces glued in place and the sheet of slate paper that I am cutting from next to it. It takes a while doing it this way, but it is worth the trouble.

Here's the floor all glued down. After I do that I go over all of the grout lines with a ball stylus....In this case, the ball stylus ran away and hid when it heard I was coming, so I used a poor knitting needle instead. Hey! It worked!

When that was finished, I got out the Prismacolor pencils to shade with various colors. I used grey in all of the grout lines and about 10 different colors lightly rubbed over the slate itself.

Unfortunately, it doesn't show up well in the photo, but it is worth the effort. It gives more depth to the stones.

I slid it into the room box to fit and Tessie zapped the loom in place to see how it looked.

We both approve. Now I have to go back to cutting the beams for the ceiling and other trim.

First I will have to pull Tessie out of there. I think that she is excited about this. I haven't heard a word about the townhouse for a couple of days now. She is pretty good at weaving and will love having a workshop.

She is, however, still nagging anybody that will listen to go vote for her. She has completely taken over. I am not going to get in her way. I really don't like getting poked with her sign while I am typing.

I have tried to tell her that people can't see her carrying the sign through the computer. She is bound and determined that they can. Please keep voting. I appreciate every vote that comes our way. You are great! Thanks so much for the support!

See you tomorrow for the blog's third anniversary! 1251 entries and counting........