It Had To Be Done.....
I was Only part way through Constructing the Lord's Council Chamber, Dear Readers, when I stopped working on the Castle Tower all those years ago, and I truly couldn't remember how much of what was in the room had been glued in! I am sure you can remember what the room looked like Before I tore it all apart... the Wizard has been using it for making his Potions for several years now.... but I forgot to take a picture of the deconstruction. As I discovered, the fireplace had not been attached, but the stairs and the inner wall (already removed in the above picture) had been glued in place. So why did I feel it necessary to undo that work, I hear you wondering? Well, there was a problem with the stairs that was bothering me too much to let it go. The support beam for the upper floor on the left side had no cut-out for where the stairs would come up... and so it blocked a good part of the stair where it passed the beam! (Of course I have no picture of that!) So I needed to take the inner wall out and remove the stairs and try to cut a space into that beam. I thought maybe I could saw through it with the beam in place... but that was not working at all! There was nothing I could do but try to remove the beam (screwed and glued to the wall!) and replace it with the necessary gap for the stairs.
I had to swing the Tower away from the Great Hall portion of The Castle
in order to access the screws which are screwed from the exterior
into the floor supporting beams...
(I apologize for the dark pictures... it was ... still is...
incredibly dark and gloomy and rainy all weekend!)
Once they were unscrewed I could chisel the beam
away from the wall in order to cut it shorter.
But before I did that I remembered to drill two additional
screw holes where the shorter beam sections would be.
Here you can (sort of ) see the beam replaced with a gap for the stairs...
(the beam has been painted to resemble stone in case you are confused)
And with the upper floor back in place (not attached)
you can see there is no "beam" in the way of the opening...
even though the stairs have not been replaced yet.
In this picture you can sort of get a better sense of where the beam used to be!
Meanwhile I am still trying to get the "prosceniums"
and doors attached to this upper portion of the Tower.
But this is where we encounter some of the warping of the plywood....
You can see how much the outer wall is leaning in the upper two rooms!
This meant that the process of attaching the "prosceniums"
would be a bit tricky... as it needed to correct the warp if at all possible!
Of course I forgot to take any pictures of the process....
and this one shot is fairly blurry...
but I think it shows that we narrowed the gap between the Castle sections.
And Ta da....
the doors are attached for the Council Chamber!
None of these unpainted prosceniums and doors are glued yet...
I am simply drilling and attaching with the screws
which can be removed when the painting needs to be done.
And then I re-glued those stairs....
having decided not to rebuild them from scratch....
even though they are a bit uneven
and have gaps where they abut the wall....
because it is a narrow and dark stairwell where you can barely see....
(but the little people can easily scamper up and down the stairs now!)
The process of adding the proscenium to the Top floor
was a bit more challenging, Dear Readers,
because it was much more warped at the top,
and I also discovered that my measurements were a little off!
Because the screws are going into the narrow 3/8ths inch thick plywood,
I pre-drill the holes in the proscenium edge carefully centered on that width.
Next I hold it in place and drill one hole at a time into the wall,
making sure it is centered properly.
This requires that I force the bent wall into alignment
and hold it while I drill the screw hole and insert the screw!
At the top of the Tower
I needed to make sure the proscenium edge also aligned
with the top floor or ceiling of the Tower...
Which you can see here just propped in place...
(not drilled or screwed or glued)
And with the top aligned correctly...
it became clear that somewhere along the way
there had been a net loss of an eighth of an inch
in the prosceniums' collective height...
causing a gap at the foot of this proscenium.
But it was more important to have the tops aligned correctly...
this gap could be filled later.
Here you can see I have only drilled and screwed
the bottom two holes on the left side,
and only the bottom one on the right side
in order to hold it in place while I
slowly bend the walls back into alignment...
Here you can see a close-up of the warped top wall!
It required considerable coercion!
Both sides did!
Here you can (almost) see the results... screwed in alignment!
And the gap at the bottom of the wall will be filled with this piece...
which is why we Do NOT throw away the little pieces
we trim off of the doors to make them fit better...!
I will glue it in later... but first I want to add the doors!
Can you see all those hinges?
Now I can open and close all the doors!
Of course, I will need to take it apart
as I actually work on the rooms....
but for now the Tower is nearly "built"...!
I just need to add those "beams" to the top of the walls
where they abut the roof... and drill and screw and glue them in place.
Meanwhile I have re-attached the inner wall in the Lord's Council Chamber....
the stairs run behind it up to the Bed Chamber on the top floor.
And even though I had hoped to start in on the prosceniums and doors
for the Chapel Tower, Dear Readers, I ran out of time.
And the more I worked on the Guards Tower,
the more I realized that I will probably need
to undo a fair amount of the Chapel tower too!
But that is a task for next week.
For now I will leave you with a picture
of lilac blossom number twenty-one!
And the entire collection...!
Sometimes, Dear Readers,
Undoing Just has to be done!
