The Castle....

 

Next Level Up.....

The Castle, Dear Readers, (Oh how I love my Castle!) as it Normally stands in my crowded small workroom (supposed to be the dining room) in my too small house gets used for storage on top of those lovely towers and inside any room that has yet to be finished. Which at this point is only the two remaining rooms above the newly completed Chapel in the Tower to the left which hides behind The Folly. It is almost impossible to get a good picture of the entire Castle! But now that the Chapel is Completed (!) it is time to Finally move up into the last remaining New territory in the Castle! This is Exciting! What will these rooms be? I hear you ask? Well, the next room up directly above the Chapel is the Ladies' Solar. This word does not mean what we now use it for. In Medieval Times it meant the place to be apart... or "sole" inhabitant... a private space as opposed to the public Great Hall. The Solar came about as the result of the invention of the chimney (sometime in the 1100's), allowing fires to be built in separate spaces and venting the smoke directly to the outside through the wall cavity rather than through the hole in the center of the roof. It contributed tot he "stratification" of society, allowing "some" to be treated better than others. In general a Solar was a place set aside to be alone, but in this case, the use will be as the "private" space for all the Ladies when they need to sew or weave or read or not be bothered by the "men" in the Castle. The Lord has his Council Chamber across the Great Hall... the Ladies have their dedicated workspace in this room. The Last room at the top is planned to be The Lady's Bedchamber.... and it will be a while before we can get to that room.... but it is on the list! 

 

 

And some of you might recall that a couple of years ago

 as I was finally getting back to work on the Chapel,

 I did a little bit of work on the room above it,

 specifically, reducing the too large openings

 for the two windows on the back wall. 

Of course, it is necessary to turn the Tower

 in order to access or see the back side at all.

 

( I apologize for the blurry and dark pictures... 

my house is not well lit when the shades are drawn

 to keep the heat out....)

 and suddenly you can see that there is a whole lot

 of work needing to be done on this Tower!

 The side wall has not even gotten the coat 

of primer and base color yet!

 Well, this has to do with the 

still to be added electrical panel

 and wire channels for this Tower... 

not to mention the Postern Gate entrance.... 

so you can see the list of "to dos" is growing

 now that we can move onward and upward. 

 

But what I had done a couple of years ago,

 as you can see here, was to reduce the openings

 for the back wall windows...

 even though the back wall of the Tower

 had already been painted a few years earlier. 

Now I could see that the new smaller openings

 on the back still needed to be painted to match

 the stone walls already finished.

 

This wasn't complicated. 

It took longer to dry than it did to paint....!

 First the primer coat....

 

Then the gray base and the "rock" texture details.....

 

You can see the narrow space I am working in.... 

here next to the Cupboard House and the cupboard it sits on....

 

Here you can see the painted "rocks" with the flash.... 

all it needs is the grout lines....

 

making those wall inserts really disappear! 

Because I really want to get the back windows completed 

before working on the interiors of these rooms.

 You know the drill... it is a complicated process

 of building the frames... 

one inner and one outer for each window...

 

I won't bore you with all the steps.... 

you can read about it in earlier posts... 

(see the archives) but it is days and days of work....

 

Inside and out. This is the interior view with flash...

 (so you can see it at all!) 

Because reaching in to the dark back wall of the room

 is so difficult, I decided to attach the glass panes

 from the outer back side, 

which means the interior frames 

are glued in place first.

 (It is impossible to reach both sides of the windows

 at the same time.)

 

And the glass panes are cut to fit the openings

 

 

and the faux "leading" applied, 

 

and trimmed to clean up the blobs....

 a whole other complex process you can read about in the archives. 

 

 

Then the glass panes are positioned and fitted from the back side. 

(With much double checking to look from the inside!)

 And of course, forgetting to take pictures when the going gets tricky.....

 

Both windows from the exterior....

 with the flash.... about as good as the view will get!

 

And from the inside...

 with the window crossbars added

 making sure they align properly with the leading.

 

And Lo and Behold, Dear Readers, 

we have two new windows completed... 

well, except for the shutters and stone trims and... well, 

you know how it goes... there is always a next step!

But at least we are now working on

 the Next Level Up!