The manor house is begun!!

Did I tell you that I treated myself to a 24th scale Georgian manor house kit this Christmas? I looked at it straight away (of course) but the instructions are so sparse (a single side of A4 drawings with not even one word in sight) that I panicked a bit and put everything straight back in the box. And there they've stayed - until last week. Now I've finally made a start.

As all the interior surfaces of the mdf are shiny and therefore won't hold glue, the first job was to paint primer on everything. Of course I couldn't resist screwing just a couple of pieces together along the way.

Then I painted the exterior of the windows and added glazing to the inside. These doors are pretty poor and will need a lot of work to make them fit for a Georgian mansion!

Inside, the windows are finished off pretty poorly too and for some reason the levels are all different so I spent several hours cutting tiny pieces of balsa wood strip, mount board and card into 3/8" wide strips and sticking them together in various combinations to fill the gaps. Then, because you'll be able to see one edge of these when the windows are finished, I painted one long edge of each before sticking them in place.

Once the interior is decorated I'll put moulding over these strips of wood and card to finish off the windows and make them look smart.

That was enough serious work and was actually a couple of days' work all in all so yesterday I played a bit and made some bird houses for my shabby chic shop. Then I painted some home made plant-pots with stone finish paint and painted them over in pink and lilac.

then added some primulas made from fimo to the plant-pots.

My brother has come to stay for a few days and yesterday we went over to Haworth to look around the Bronte museum and there on the main street of the village was a shop selling just the same kind of things as my miniature one will have. I couldn't resist taking a few photos.