The Base Day Three

Today I took all the masking tape off and sanded any bits of the base that I thought needed it. Gosh this timber is so splintery! Even the masking tape brought up little splinters along the edges.

The gluing isn't perfect and not every join is exact, but given that I am going to cover the base anyway, I am happy enough with it. For the same reason, I didn't bother with puttying the corners, or cleaning up the couple of glue spots on the floor (that's the kitchen, which will likely be flagstones).

I then painted one coat of Dark Grey over the foundation walls. I debated doing two coats, but since it is going to be covered in stonework, I decided that there wouldn't be much point.

Then it was onto experimenting with egg carton bricks and stones.  In the end I decided it would be easiest for me to go with the random stone placement. Making and laying so many tiny little bricks would have tested my patience (and stamina) I think. Ripping the carton into little pieces is so much quicker, lol.

I started laying along the back of the house so see how it looked. I'm pretty happy with it so far. The grey background looks much darker than it is in real life in this pic, but I think once I paint up the rocks, it will look OK.

I am using Tacky Glue and an old, small paint brush to apply the glue evenly to the back of the pieces, but it's a bit of a pain having to keep squeezing small amounts of glue out onto a plate to use! I am hesitant to have too much out at once in case it dries up too quickly and I waste it, but I guess I will get a better feeling for that as I go along.

I also need to do a proper dry fit so that I can see how much of an overhang there is over the top of the stonework. Not much point putting too much effort into the bits you won't see!