It's alive!!!

After a couple days staring hopelessly at the Worthington, it's started telling me what it wants to be. It isn't whispering - it's shouting so loudly I can hardly think straight.

There is a famous chef married to a well-known author and they have a couple teenage kids. They bought the house for cheap and have spent the last few years restoring and modernizing the interior. A state-of-the-art kitchen with a bay window breakfast nook, an entertainment parlor with old-fashioned marble fireplace, a library with a fireplace and a book nook, a master suite, a guest suite, a rounded southern portico with widow's walk, a solarium, a small attic storage place, and a mud room / laundry room. I am kicking around the idea of a servant's staircase and a dumb waiter.


As for now, this is the color scheme and general idea for the kitchen.

Rockin'

I've spent a large portion of the last couple weeks working on laying rocks and grouting. This isn't the clearest picture, but it gets the idea across.

If you're wondering, the candlesticks were regular brass. I painted them with self-etching primer from Rustoleum (wrap the electric parts in masking tape first), then coated with matte black, and a coat of matte sealer. Later I dabbed them with a mixture of Americana acrylics in Bittersweet Chocolate and Fawn. I still have to work on the candles themselves, but I had to let the sticks dry for a couple days without touching them so all the paint wouldn't come off.

The wire that is hanging down in the firebox is from one of the candlesticks. It is now routed through the wall and taped down. To do the grouting and painting around the candlesticks, I left the wires loose through the hole so I could slide them in and out as I worked. By now, most of the interior walls are painted and sealed. I still need to seal and grout the base of the firebox before I can put the fireplace in permanently. As soon as it's glued in place I can add the side bricks before painting and sealing and grouting. After the grout is dry, I will cover the whole thing with matte sealer before I begin work on the second floor. 

Waiting in the wings...

I have plans to go pick up a new house tomorrow evening. This is the photo from the listing I found.

Some lovely people on the miniature forum kindly identified it for me as the Artply Worthington. It's about 4' wide and 29" high, so... big. I won't get to it for a while but... Maybe I'll have to bump the Victorian for this. I looked at the listing a few times and passed it by because I'm not a huge fan of Georgian mansions (because I'm a huge sucker for Victorians) and, quite frankly, I think the exterior is ghastly. But it's up for sale for $40, so... the worst that can happen is I'll ignore it and re-sell it in the future. But I'm finding that the more I look at it, the more it screams ideas at me and I'm getting really excited about it.

I've been hard at work on my HBS Creatin' Contest entry the last few days, but as it were, I can't show it. Truthfully, it may not be finished on time and I'm decidedly okay with that - plus it has a forever home in Florida as soon as I get it done and photographed so it's all good either way :-)

Also, I've been cutting egg carton bricks once in a while so I can build up my stash for my Victorian project, but that isn't anything to show just yet. 

So anyway, I just thought I'd drop in and update since I haven't been posting much. Thanks for stopping by :-)