Changes....

OK, first of all, Tessie has learned not to stand so close when I am gluing on shingles. At one point, she had her right cheek stuck to the roof. I had to pry her loose. You don't want to hear the words that she was using while I did it....

I am using plain old Aleene's to stick the egg cartons on the roof. It always takes way longer than I think it is going to. I cut all of the shingles with scissors. First into strips. Then into rectangles and then clipping two corners of each shingle....Yup. Lots longer than estimated.

I start out by just randomly cutting out a bunch of shingles about 1/2 to 3/4" across and about 3/4" tall. I use those for the most part. I have to cut special sizes here and there to fill in, but that's easy enough.

I want them to look like the slate is old, chipped and cracked when I am done, so I am not at all careful about making everything uniform.

After I get them all glued on, I will start doing washes over them. I will also have a stylus in my other hand to knock down the cut edges and make them worn and smooth.... The large end of the stylus is for that. The small end will be used to put in cracks and other defects as I go. It is easiest to do this with the egg crates wet....Therefore if I paint and poke all at the same time, I am again killing two birds with one slab of slate....No...I really don't kill birds, if there was any question. I have the best fed birds in Tucson, in my back yard.


You saw me leave the room yesterday and come back in the middle of the blog. This is what I was doing. The skylight looked too blah.

I cut the corners out and put in posts with finials at the top.

I think that I am going to have to put a second coat of stain on them. The walnut that I used doesn't soak up as much as the bass wood in the window frame.

I can see that there needs to be a touch up in the corner of the frame by Tessie's hand too.

All of this will get done eventually. It's amazing that I can spot the defects in the photos better than with the naked eye.

The other thing that I did yesterday, that I forgot to mention, was cut out all of the mullions in the other windows, thus making myself more work.

There will be six more diamond paned, leaded windows in those big old holes. The sixth one is in the top half of the door.

From the looks of things, I don't think that Zar is too comfortable on the roof. If Tessie falls off, she will just zap herself to a soft landing....Zar on the other hand is more breakable. He doesn't know how to zap.

Tessie has tried to teach him from time to time, but even though he is a Steampunk genius, there isn't a witchy bone anywhere in his body.

I guess I should go finish the roof and rescue him, not necessarily in that order. Tessie tends to zap him somewhere and then wander off and forget where she last left him.

Back to the real world of laundry and the better world of roofing...

See you tomorrow.