Painting The Rocks...

 

Becoming A Castle....

Some of you may Recall, Dear Readers, that Two years ago I had decided it was necessary to just get the back walls of the Castle painted because the wood was becoming brittle and warped in its unprotected condition. It was a major effort, but Oh My, it gave me a true taste of the future view of the Castle when it would be complete! Those Rocks! That forbidding fortress feeling! It was so exciting to finally see my imaginings coming to reality.... but it was only the Back walls of the Castle that were completed. And they were turned back to wall where they are never seen. And life moved on and it surely took me longer than I expected to complete the Side wall of the Tower so it could finally be painted too! The buttress has been glued and screwed to the side of the Tower and the wires are all buried inside and the electrical box is built and the Stairs are attached... all that remained was gluing the stairs wall in place and painting the rocks! So you can see above, I began by carefully aligning the "rocks" for the buttress addition with the already painted rocks of the back wall of the Tower. It is essential that I continue the "courses" all the way around the Castle at the same spacing so they will eventually all meet at the front wall of the castle in the proper alignment! So I measure and carefully space the same way I had begun, keeping a sense of how the rocks "really" would be aligned and spaced. It is a little complicated, but I had already established a really good pattern on the back side and just need to keep it consistent. 

 It needed to go around the buttress and continue along

the Tower Side wall, with the rocks all aligning

 as they would in a real wall.

  

Because the door was right beside the buttress, 

I needed to start the pattern for the rocks

 by starting at the top of the buttress

 (where there was just the Tower corner)

 and set the pattern from there.

 Once I had the courses established at the corner, 

I could work down and up from there.

(I can't seem to make blogger give me single spacing here.... grrrr)

 

I couldn't go much further without gluing the front of the stairs wall in place .

  

Covering all those screws with spackle!

 

In the light of morning you can see the spackle has been

 painted over with the light gray base paint.

I needed to continue the "rocks" around the Stable entry...

The setting sun lights up this corner for a minute or two!

And the following day I began to fill in the "rocks" texture.

This does not take very long once the rock shapes are all laid out.

I know, the flash is a bit strong... 

but this room is dark on a too hot day

 with the blinds closed...

Finally, starting to paint the grout lines!

Slow going.... rock by rock....

Step by step....

And once again.... 

the Evening sunlight comes to play...

I still have a long way to go with the grout...

And this is just the Side wall of the Castle, Dear Readers,

But I do believe it is Finally 

Becoming a Castle!