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Egg carton stone foundation

After seeing some gorgeous results in other people’s galleries, I decided to try making a stone foundation for the Hillside Victorian out of egg cartons. It turned out to be surprisingly easy, and the price is right!

I started by painting the foundation gray, using a flat Behr paint I picked up off the “oops” rack at Home Depot a while back. The painted foundation had a bumpy, concrete-like look and at first I thought about leaving it like this. But my desire to rip up egg cartons got the better of me—luckily, it turns out, since I love the end result.

I started by tearing up three (gray) egg cartons and a (reddish) drink holder into small pieces. I didn’t use a template or anything, just ripped them randomly. Some areas didn’t work as well, like the rigid curves that formed “windows” on the top of the egg carton, so I tossed out those pieces.

Figuring I’d get better at this as I went along, I started with the side that will eventually be obstructed by the deck. I glued “stones” onto the foundation with The Ultimate glue, with the gray paint showing through to form grout lines.


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Breaking windows (on purpose)

Soon after painting two windows and a door for the Hillside Victorian, the lack of consistency among their pediments started to bother me. I bashed the door together and the pediment isn’t exactly the same as on the Houseworks Victorian windows, but it’s very close. However the pediment on the small window (also a Houseworks Victorian window, mind you) is different than the rest and it was sticking out like a sore thumb. I decided to bash one of the full sized windows into a small window, to make it consistent with the others.

The Victorian windows Houseworks sells now come with the window sill detached and the acrylic removable for easier painting. The house came with a bunch of older style windows that don’t have these handy features, but I did have one of the newer styles, so this is what I used. Since the sill was already detached, cutting down the sides was easy. Not wanting to cut too much accidentally, I erred on the side of caution to start.

I used the disc sander to sand the sides down, checking the fit every so often. One of the sides broke off the window in the process but it was a clean break, so not a problem.

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The Midas touch

King Midas got his hands on the Hillside Victorian today. But first, I finished up the front door. This morning I bought a piece of strip wood that’s the same width as the blue stripes on the windows. (It pays to have a miniature store in the neighborhood!)

And here’s the end result. The shoulder thingies could stand to be a bit longer to match up better with the windows, but I think it turned out pretty good for something that was cobbled together.

The other thing I’ve been working on for the past few weeks, which only started looking impressive today, are pieces of trim to cover up the paint mess where two colors meet. I’m using small crown molding at the edges of the white panels on the bay windows. (Actually, it’s “picture frame,” but it’s essentially the same thing as crown molding.) This creates a nice clean line and gives the house’s relatively plain trim a little oomph.

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