Castle Starcaster - Week Eleven

Well, the mailman came back again today! This time he brought me a small telescope and open astrological book bought on ebay from seller whydgc. The telescope will find a home in the top floor of the castle and enable the castle's resident to get a better view of the dragons that fly over the distant mountains. You may wonder how can he see anything through the castle walls, but the answer is simple: there is now a large picture window in the back wall of the castle's top floor.

I'm really pleased with this window. I painted the scene of mountains and somehow managed to make it look almost realistic (well, by the standards of my ability to paint anything it looks almost realistic). The arches that frame the window and decorate the other walls were cut from balsawood. Those for the back wall were joined together with tape and the window scene glued in place before the whole construction was attached to the back wall. The remaining arches were glued directly to the side walls.

I think the walls look very effective with one exception; the door. I cut the hole in the left side wall to provide access to the roof before assembling the castle and long before I had the idea to put decorative arches on the walls, thus the size, shape and position of the door doesn't work with the arches. I haven't quite decided how to fix this yet. I started by making and installing the door and door frame, but that didn't help me sort out what to do about the arches around the door.

I've gotten ahead of myself because all this happened after I laid the floor in the top room and also in the Library downstairs. While the top room has simple straight planks covering the floor, the Library floor was laid in a herringbone pattern. The method I used was the same as the floor in the centre room, so if you want to know more about it, please read Week Ten's post. I had been worried about how I was going to handle a complicated design like this and keep it all straight and even, but it was much easier than I had expected.

The rest of the progress for the week was in little bits and pieces. I made a door for the bedroom, but haven't managed to do the walls in there yet. I added some trim around the top of the walls in the Entry Hall, but I'm still not sure I like the ceiling in there. I made four hinges and still have about twenty-eight to go. As the doorhandles that came with the castle have a pewter look, I made the hinges in a pewter tone as well. (They are made from faux leadlighting outliner.)

This week I am preparing to build the Stratford Bakery kit over Easter so it can start to become a witches shop. If you have any ideas what such a shop could be called, please click the photo at the top right of this page to enter my giveaway.