I've been busy with several work related things -- committee reports, I'm going up for tenure this year, so I had a lot of things keeping me away from working more on the vardo. But we did get several things done in the last week or so. First, I did make the windows for the mollycroft:
although I still need to clean up some paint and get them installed. They have plexi to keep them light. All of the windows need to have a bead of silicone run around the edges of the glass now that I have them all painted, so that's something I'll get done this week. We also installed the door:
We had the door knob keyed to our house so we don't have to keep track of an additional key. Drilling for the lockset was fun - we bought a kit from Lowe's because it looked like all the templates and coordinating drill bits would make the job easier - except that one of the hole saws was so off center we coudln't use it --but other than that, it went easily enough. We had to cut down one of the hinges - the top one on the top half, so it would fit, but that went well enough. My husband doesn't like that the painting gets covered up somewhat, but it doesn't bother me, since I know there are a lot of other details that'll be added, so one or two covered up is no big deal. I got the soffits and trim painted, little at a time over the past week, then this morning, I got the flowers painted all along the top band. I created a set of stamps for the leaves:
so I could just apply paint there with a brush, then press them on the board. I did all the leaves last night, then got the flowers done this morning, before it gets too hot. We're having yet another heat wave down here in Southern California, it was over 100 yesterday, so getting things down around the heat of the day is another challenge. After getting all these flowers painted, I put a coat of clear acrylic over them, and also over the entire roof.
So the other thing we've been doing this last couple of weeks is collect some free furniture by checking the "free" section of craigslist. We've picked up 3 pieces that we're going to cannibalize for our interior so far.
To keep costs down, we're going to issue ourselves a challenge to see how much of the interior we can create without spending any money. So these three pieces will provide a lot of the wood for any structure, although they are heavier than we need so we'll be taking lots of wood out of them. The first piece up there on the left, we're going to use the front of the bottom for the drawers and under bed storage - we'll just use the front face of the cabinet, and the drawers, then use the sides and tabletop to cut framing. We will use the top crown and trim and the back panel is a piece of 1/4" masonite that we'll use for walls under the bed. The piece in the middle I got for the top two doors, which will be the doors for a tall thin cabinet (I'll use the doors like this:)[code]
The bottom half will be part of our galley cabinets. The small endtable on the far right will be a short cabinet on one side. Again, all these cabinets will be cut up to some extent, taking out additional wood to lighten them up, and then at the end, they'll be painted the same color to create a cohesive look. We look for some kind of interesting feature, like the carved posts on the endtable, or the cool doors.
On the inside, the only thing we've gotten done is insulation and one coat of paint on the ceiling. This week my goal is to paint the ceiling again, and get the shutters made for the windows. I need to know what the shutters will cover so I can begin my exterior painting. We are also planning our electric so we can get that roughed in before we start on our interior -- we've been shopping for solar panels and figuring out where our lights and outlets, etc. will go so we can get that all placed before getting the interior walls on. We've been perusing the various resources on this site, which has helped a lot. I've also been checking out a lot of build journals to keep the ideas flowing ---