Witch Shop - Week Four

At the start of the week, the back of the shop looked like this:

Needless to say it needed some tidying up. As you'll see in the next photo, the MDF was painted purple to match the front. The duct tape was removed from around the polystyrene panel and the entire piece of polystyrene was covered with a pice of card painted to match the rest of the walls. A beam of balsa wood covered the top and the hinges on the roof had the paint cleaned off them. After a quick polish of the DHE badge (the round blue thing at the bottom) and the back was finally as presentable as the front.

After turning the shop back around to face the front I installed a chain to stop the roof opening too far. By default, the roof in this kit is supposed to open all the way so that the opening upper roof sits on the fixed lower roof. I found that doing this was causing damage to the roof tiles where they met. It was also putting strain on the hinges; after only a couple of times opened, the middle hinge was pulling out of the MDF. The final reason for the chain is that if fully opened, the house would have to sit about 15cm out from a wall to allow the roof space to open. Using a chain to prevent the roof opening all the way should eliminate these issues.

Now that I was happier about opening up the roof, I could do some work on the top floor rooms at last. The first job that needed doing was the laying of the floorboards. The floorboards used are just under an inch wide iron-on strips. These were cut to length, stained and then ironed down. After they had cooled I lay the rug for the big room on the floor and was really pleased with the way the colours in the rug toned with the new floor. The browns in the rug match the floor while the beige matches the walls.

I've pretty much given up on the idea of adding a fireplace to the room. I just don't think there's enough space (despite thinking when I first put the kit together "wow, it's huge". I'm now thinking "wow, it's shrunk!"). The bedsit next door is having a similar lack-of-space-for-fire crisis. They are witches after all, they can keep themselves warm without a fire, right?

The last major change for the week is the addition of the roof over the external steps. This open framework of balsawood beams will eventually have vines growing through it.