Exterior Almost Finished!

With the roof close to completion, the last major item that needed doing to finish the exterior of the folly was the front doors and windows.  I had already made a start on adapting the doors that came with the kit by knocking out the cross bars that gave the doors a standard french door look.  I finished the doors by adding pieces of card painted red across the bottoms.  The top sections were adorned with pieces of 3mm square balsa wood that had been cut and glued together in a oblong design.  The "glass" that came with the kit was then fitted to the back of the doors.

I still need to find some sort of oriental motif to decorate the bottoms of the doors and I also need to come up with some suitable door handles.  The front steps are now back at the front rather than at the side where I was going to put them.  I had cut them down to be narrower to fit at the side and being too lazy to bother widening them again, I've left them as is in the hopes that the pair of foo dogs I have bought will fit either side to fill the gap.  In the meantime I've positioned a pair of Japanese style figurines there.

The roof has been finished off too.  I found some white braid to trim the edges and dyed it by wetting it then dipping it in some of the paint used on the roof, slightly watered down.  Once this dried, it was glued around the edges to finish off the roof.  The whole roof was then given a few coats of gloss sealer to finish it off.

 Inside the folly on the top floor I decided I disliked the yellow walls and painted them a plum colour instead.  It does make the room look a little top heavy, but hopefully once there's furniture and other decoration in there it will balance out.  In any event, I am Not repainting the walls again.  You can see sitting in the middle of the floor the acetate pieces I've cut to glaze the windows at either end of the room.  I've started to make and install the frames for the windows.  At long last I'm nearly ready to start working on the furniture for this project.