Starcaster Layout

I was going to show you some rather poor quality diagrams of my planned layout of the castle in this post but when I try to upload the images all I get is a white box with a little red cross.  So I'm going to have to try and explain in words alone what I have in mind.

Let's start on the ground floor.  There are three rooms.  The room on the left is connected to the central room by a large open archway.  The room on the right has no direct access to the adjoining room but does come with a fake door to give the impression of access.  The front door opens into the middle room.  This makes the logical uses of these three rooms (from the left) Dining Hall, Entry Hall and Kitchen.  Most Cumberland Castle kits I've seen pictures of have used this basic layout.

The next floor is also three rooms.  The left room is connected by a door to the central room while the right room depends on fake doors for access.  I've cut a hole in the floor of the right side room to allow for stairs up from the kitchen.  These three rooms will be (from the left again) bedroom, library and a mystery room.  As it is connected by stairs directly to the kitchen, the mystery room will be something domestic like a laundry, a buttery, servants quaters, storage, etc.

The top level consists of one central room.  The will be the workroom of the castle's resident wizard.  A hole has been cut in the floor to allow for access to the room by a spiral staircase from the Library below.  A hole in the side wall gives access out onto the roof of the bedroom where I may add a roof garden.  A trapdoor cut in the roof of this room give access to the high roof where the wizard may have a telescope set up.

This is the basic plan I had for the castle until this morning.  Now I am considering re-arranging it all to something like this:

Ground floor from left: kitchen (block off open arch), Hall, solar
First Floor from left: bedroom, wardrobe (add wall to divide middle room), hallway/stairs up, Library
Top Floor: Magic Workroom

Or possibly leave the kitchen out entirely and make the ground floor: Dining, Hall/Entrance,solar
Or maybe have two bedrooms at either end of the first floor, one masculine, one feminine.

Or . . . . perhaps I could try making up my mind and sticking with it.

I still have time to debate the internal layout as my first task is to be the exterior.  Anticipating the arrival of the castle, I ordered some more of Malcom's Miniatures Impress Moulds from Silly Sisters webshop.  I bought some brick moulds for the Dancing Dragon and apart from the clay cracking, I was really pleased with the result.  This time I bought some stone moulds to create a stone castle.  I was expecting the moulds to be the same as the brick ones, a single square with raised bits in a brick pattern that creates a square inch of brickwork.  Instead, the stone moulds are a half dozen individual moulds, one per stone.  This is a good idea as it will let me randomise the stonework, but a bad idea because switching between separate moulds will take longer to do. 

Lastly, I'd like to welcome my newest follower minimariba to the blog.  Minimariba doesn't seem to have a blog of her own.