{"id":7113,"date":"2014-07-24T16:02:28","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T23:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/?p=7113"},"modified":"2016-07-28T07:51:24","modified_gmt":"2016-07-28T14:51:24","slug":"everybody-must-get-stoned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/?p=7113","title":{"rendered":"Everybody must get stoned!"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Not that<\/em> kind of stoned. If a Google search brought you here, my apologies.)<\/p>\n

When I made the front steps<\/a> for the Gull Bay, I impulsively made the stairs brick and painted the treads the color of the house, thinking “there must be stairs like this in real life, right?” I should have done some research first, because it appears that brick stairs with wood, house-colored treads don’t really exist in real life.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My dad suggested that the treads could be stone instead, and I started thinking about how I could do that without destroying what I’d already built. <\/p>\n

I started by masking off the brick so it wouldn’t get messed up. Then I spread watered-down wood filler over the treads, as you can see on the top step in the photo below. I used my finger and a piece of egg carton to give the wood filler a rough texture.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Next I painted a base coat of gray. (On the left is a planter for the Rosedale that I painted at the same time.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When the base coat dried, I did my usual “fake stone” painting technique, splatting on different shades of gray with a dry brush. I included a dark blue\/gray slate color that’s similar to the Gull Bay’s stained shingles and shutters.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When I peeled up the masking tape, some of the painted wood filler came with it, exposing unpainted wood filler and the yellow treads below.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I used a chisel brush to carefully paint over the bare spots with the gray base coat, and then splatted on my shades of gray again, using a small brush so as not to get paint all over the bricks. Finally, I covered the treads with a coat of matte varnish.<\/p>\n

Ta da! It looks reasonably like stone.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’ve also been adding bits and pieces to the front porch to give it a lived-in, cottage-near-the-beach look. I salvaged the porch light from the one that broke off<\/a> the front of my Queen Anne Rowhouse. I inserted what remained of the lamp’s stem into a bronze-colored bead to form a new base, then sanded off some of the black on the lamp so it would match the bead better. The lamp isn’t electrified but it looked weird without a bulb, so I put one in.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I bought these wind chimes many years ago at the Good Sam show intending to use them on my Orchid, which I no longer own. They’re a tad large but wind chimes can be any size, after all…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The white table by the door is made from a Quicker Wicker kit. I posted about my first experience with these kits here<\/a>. This one was about the same, sort of frustrating but also fairly quick and simple. The welcome mat came from this year’s half scale swap<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I think I’ll add a house number above the white table, to balance out the coach light on the other side of the door. Also maybe a hanging plant or two. Any other ideas?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Not that kind of stoned. If a Google search brought you here, my apologies.) When I made the front steps for the Gull Bay, I impulsively made the stairs brick and painted the treads the color of the house, thinking “there must be stairs like this in real life, right?” I should have done some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[36,19,31],"class_list":["post-7113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dollhouses","tag-gull-bay-cottage","tag-half-scale","tag-tutorial","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7113"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7615,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7113\/revisions\/7615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}