Revisiting The Tree House....

 

Revisions, Repairs and Rocks.....

I Will not bore you, Dear Readers, with every tiny alteration I have made to the Rocky foundation upon which The Tree House sits, but suffice it to say that progress has been very slow! This is partly due to the very hot weather we have been having this summer, which saps one's energy and causes the need to keep the windows and blinds closed making visibility a struggle inside even in the daytime, and mostly due to the indecision about exactly what shapes I am trying to create in these rocks. And even the local Geology has to be taken into consideration... because I need the landscape to look somewhat natural. And in this part of the World, we have some very interesting geology! I am not a geologist, but the simple explanation is that the Connecticut River Valley (in which I reside) is formed by the ancient collision of two tectonic plates on the Earth' surface... when North America collided with North Africa long Long LONG before anyone was calling them such. The North American plate went under the North African one, and then when the land masses decided to split up and move apart (what a divorce that must have been!) the North American Plate took a large chunk of North Africa with it! The evidence of this happening is in the rocks to this day... on the Western side of "the divide" ie The Connecticut River Valley, the rocks are largely Shale and the mountains are waaaay older than the ones on the Eastern side of the Valley, which are mostly Granite of a type that is only found in North Africa! The collision formed what is now the White Mountains, the tallest mountains on the Eastern half of North America, with Mount Washington standing at approximately 6000 feet tall and only about 100 miles inland from the coastline. And all this is the reason I will tell you that the Bedrock at The Folly Garden is made up of the shale type of rocks, a dark gray multilayered and flat type of stone. It is used often for making slate roofing shingles because it can be so easily split into smooth flat layers. In the above picture you can see my "extended" base is trying to look like this sort of bedrock. The "real" rock you can see next to it is attempting to help me match the colors right.

But that is only Half the story! The other half is all the boulders that were brought in to support the foundation of The Folly house which are made from the Granite which is so prevalent just across the Valley from here. Granite is a much harder rock less inclined to erode and is mostly a much lighter gray tone, but can be found in tan and pinkish colors too. The structure allows it to be quarried in large blocks or chunks. And those are the grayer boulder shaped rocks in this small setting.

So while the rocks get endlessly fiddled with and altered and primed and painted and varnished and re-varnished and painted all over again, Dear Readers, I am also beginning to find my way around The Tree House again. One of the dangers of leaving a half-finished project for so long is forgetting what you did.... to make the various parts.... where you put the materials.... and what you intended to do in the first place. And what all the "not quite right and need fixing" parts there were already started and you would get to fixing someday when you had the time. Well.... those are completely forgotten now!

So I am searching high and low for the same type of wood that I used to make the stairs.... so I can complete that half finished staircase to the top floor (dare I say it will be the last floor?) and surprise of surprises, I found the already cut sections of wood!!! I almost didn't recognize them!

I had been looking for strip wood in the right thickness... in this case 3/16ths of an inch, which is fairly thick for strip wood. It turns out I had made mine from sheets of basswood cut to the right width (1/2") and then divided into squares for the steps. Yes, this makes for very narrow little staircases running up through the walls, or in this case spiraling up through the side of the tree trunk. (Remember, this is a 1/48th scale project set into the garden of a 1/12th scale project.... just to be confusing.)

But meanwhile, one of the very first fiddle around and fix it steps I accomplished was adding a tiny strip of wood to the bottom of the Nursery outer opening door. Can you see it in the picture below? 

 

The repair is not perfect... 

but it makes the bottom of the door actually meet

 the floor of the Nursery  at one edge, 

and helps the door stay closed even without the magnet to hold it.

 (For how many years has it been annoying me

by swinging open and needing to be taped shut......?) 

And when I could stand on my new step ladder

 and actually see into the Nanny's Room from above, 

I noticed a big hole where the floor did not meet the support post accurately....

 

Can you see the tiny patch   I put in place....?

 Oh, Dear.... time for the flash again.....

 

There.... now you can see it on the left by the post... 

as I said, not perfect, but much better!

And another small thing I had noticed was that

 many of the outer opening doors I had built

 stood "outside" the edge of the floor of the room they were closing.... 

so those floors needed small "extensions"

 to make the structure more "finish-able" 

when I get to adding the outer tree bark!

 

 In particular the Tree House Toilet Cubicle

 needed the floor extended.... 

you can see here the "before" picture....

 

And the "after" picture with the increased floor structure.

 

And the little Bathroom Dressing Cubicle too.... 

which still is not all completed. 

It needs the window panes and the furniture at the least!

 These doors both need the magnet closures,

 even though they don't swing open on their own.

 

And yes, the little spiral stairs are continuing upward now...

 I had to straighten the support wire a little bit first... 

This is how far they had reached twelve years ago.....!

 

Now they reach just about to the level of the next (and I hope final) floor!

And while I am revisiting all these doors, Dear Readers,

 there is the Bedroom Door with the "promise" of

 a "Juliette Balcony" overlooking the brook below....

Do you remember me mentioning this "Someday" Balcony? 

 

Here I have added the first layer of the balcony "surround" 

to the floor that has been there since the beginning.

 

And the rest of the "surround" structure.... 

it is another place where a tree limb was cut off long ago

 and left a big scar..... and a hollow ...... 

it will eventually look much more "tree-like" 

when I get to adding all the outer bark to the Tree!

 

And this morning, I surprised Lady Arabella

 out on the Balcony for a moment of fresh air!

And did she look down at the Rocks 

and wonder if the brook would ever run past below....?

 

The bright morning light reveals so much about those rocks....

Can you see the "real" rocks up front for help with the painting....?

 

Oh, yes, and with the Final Rock... 

The "Balance Point" of the Brook.....?

 

And shall we have the Rhododendron in its place... 

showing how much it hides the Tree House from view....?

And can you spot all my "Pet Rocks" in the picture....?

 

And yes, you can rest assured... 

Mr. Gnome is keeping a watchful eye on all the "Rock Business"!

 The Balance Rock is not yet complete and will blend in better soon...

But I make no promises about the Brook for now....

Some things just will not be rushed! 

I am really Loving, Dear Readers,

 Revisiting the Tree House

 and Finding little things to

 Repair and Revise

And even if the Rocks take Ages to make.... 

They are finally becoming Rocks! 

Realizatons...

 

And Remembering...

As I have been laboring over those rocks, Dear Readers, and Dreaming of bedrocks and geology and the ice ages, and wrestling with the way the rocks must nestle against the Tree House's Roots, I have found myself looking up at The Tree House again and again! And the key word is looking "Up"! I am not a tall person and am used to looking up at things... but if you are trying to build it... it is very frustrating to not be able to see the project from above! It makes it quite impossible to see how things are fitting together....

The Tree House Nursery is right at my eye level... and I can't do anything without standing on a chair or a step stool! And as I looked around my many unfinished project this spring, I realized I had "maxed out" on all my buildings and everything was getting above eye level for me! No wonder I was having so much trouble with building them! And because I am no longer as young and spry as I was fifteen years ago... I don't trust the step stools or chairs.....! So I finally bought myself a new "trusty" step ladder with  a safety handle! (see the top photo if you haven't already noticed it!) I can't tell you how reassuring that handle is! And while we are talking about the Tree House...

  I am Sure there are a few of you, Dear Readers, who actually remember the Tree House way back at the beginning of building it in 2012! Has it really been that long, I hear you ask? Well, the first six rooms consumed nearly all my attention from May 2012 until September of 2013, with a few distractions along the way. And I think it was sometime in the summer of 2014 that I began the construction of the Nursery with it's curtained bed nook and the ceramic beads stove, but I didn't get terribly far with the construction and was distracted by all my other buildings and stories. The Tree House has waited patiently ever since for my close attention to resume. 

Well, DO You remember the Tree House? All those 1/48th scale little rooms tucked inside the huge old tree (still so incomplete!) beside The Folly? Perhaps you would like a reminder....

 

It is quite challenging to get all six stories

 (so far!) into one photo... 

and I am sorry the pictures are a bit dark. 

In this hot summer I keep the blinds closed a lot...  

but perhaps you want to come closer....

 

Here are the lower three rooms

 with the outer doors open and the lights on....

 but still, you need to come closer...!

 

Here is the kitchen at the bottom

 tucked between the roots underground.... 

I am sorry it is so difficult to get good photos.... 

I will show all the rooms first without flash....

they have more "atmosphere" that way. 

 

And above the kitchen is the Salon,

 the first ground level room...

 everything in these rooms is entirely hand made by me... 

you can read all about it in the blog archives...

 just click on May of 2012.... and keep reading forever!

 

Oh, and there is a painted domed ceiling too.....(of course there is!)

 

The next floor up ....

( and there are staircases winding up to each level inside the walls...!)

 is the Gothic Library... and all its many collections...

 

This room took me months to complete!

 August through December of 2012...

 

And the next floor up is the Chinoiserie Bedchamber.... 

with the hand painted wall murals

 and the Pagoda Bed with the hand embroidered silk bed curtains...

 (embroidered by me over several years...)

 

Here it is showing the fireplace wall and the recamier.... 

alas, it is so dark.... 

I will do another batch with the flash... 

but it washes out so much detail in its own way.......

 

And the next level up is the abalone shell bathroom.... 

a complete fantasy of seashells....

Here you can see all the rooms with their doors open and the lights on.....

 

 

And the incomplete Nursery level....

 really just barely begun.

 

 

Oh, and I almost forgot to show you

 the tiny Dressing Room off the side of the Bedroom... 

with the rose garden murals....

 (hand painted of course....)

 

And how could I forget the tiny toilet cubicle... 

and the seahorses dressing room... 

also on the side of the Abalone Bathroom

 and not quite complete!

 

So, Dear Readers... 

I have promised you the flash views....  

so here they are....

 

The Kitchen.... 

with the stairs curving upward to the right side... 

you can't see the fire properly with the flash on...

 but you sure can see the other stuff! 

Remember this is all approximately 1/48th scale.

 The entire room is about 4 inches wide and 4 inches tall.

 

And the Salon with the flash..... 

I had to angle it so the flash wouldn't reflect

 in the mirror over the fireplace...

 

And the Gothic Library..... 

so many tiny details... 

collections in all those glass domes...

and all those cupboard doors do open...! 

 (But the flash destroys the ancestor portraits on the walls...) 

 

And here is the Chinoiserie Bedroom with the flash.... 

it does make terrible shadows... 

but you can clearly see the embroidered curtains...

 and the hand painted wall murals...

 

And the Abalone Shell Bathroom....  

with real beach shells gathered over the years....

 including the tiny scallop shells..... 

and the curtains for privacy.... 

well.... it is a fantasy after all!

 

And the beginnings of the Nursery... 

with the ceramic stove and the window bed nook...

 just waiting...

and waiting...... 

 

And the Tree House beside The Folly with the flash..... 

(just so you can see how closely together they are fitted.)

 

And has there been any progress at all with those rocks...?

 

Well, it is slow going!

The rocks need several layers... 

first primer then paint and polyurethane varnish... 

and each layer needs to dry when I can open the windows to ventilate the fumes.

But bit by bit the rocks are taking shape... 

and meanwhile I am climbing the new stepladder

 and fidgeting with the Nursery walls! 

And I am Realizing, Dear Readers,

How good all those memories are! 

 

Going With The Flow....

 

Getting Carried Away...

I Left you in my last Post, Dear Readers, with The Folly Garden Rocks pretty much the way they had been for more than a year while I worked on the Rhododendron Shrubs. But Every time I would walk past it, I would move a few rocks around, or add a few "new" sample rocks or just glare at it. Clearly, I had a long way to go and was not sure of the next steps. But as it came time to "launch" the Evergreen Rhododendron Shrub, I thought I could surely improve on the painting I had done on last year's new rocks. And the first step was to apply a few coats of polyurethane varnish to "seal" them and give them a more durable surface. Luckily there were a few nights with cool enough temperatures to open all the windows and let the breezes clear the air! (It has been hot so far this summer!)

 

 

This required clearing off all the "pet rocks" (aka Real rocks!)

 and applying varnish to the already "finished" rocks. 

And as soon as the varnish had cured, a second coat was added for durability. 

 

 

And because one of the things about the rocks that had been bothering me

 was that the acrylic paints were glossy when they dried...

 which made the rocks look wet all the time... 

So I bought flat paint samples in a bunch of "rock colors" 

and repainted all the rocks....

 

 

I am still just randomly adding layers of "stippled" colors,

 using a fairly dry brush to add speckled amounts of different colors in layers.

 This is not yet the finished product...

 but starts to build the tonal colors of the different rocks.

And I kept looking at that "other side of the brook"... 

and realized that I might as well construct those rocks now 

while I was painting the other rocks,

 or there might never be coherence in the end...

And did I mention how much foam board can be wasted, Dear Readers,

 as you try this rock here and that rock there

 and try to get a sense of how it all should go together

 and still look "natural" when finished?

 

 

 

Not to mention how many hours drift away as you carve one rock

 to maybe define a section of the brook edge 

(which needs to straddle the wooden landscape framework) 

or days float by as the rocks maybe fit 

but after all are not quite right when more are added.....

 

 

I started at the corner where the Tree House opens

 right above the brook... at the uphill side of the property.

 And I needed to be sure there was clearance for the opening doors!

 

 

At first I was just determined to get the outer wall covered... 

or converted to a rock border....

 but I soon realized it looked too artificial... 

too much like a canal and not enough like a wild brook.

 

 

 

And part of the plan has always been that there is a small dam in the brook, 

creating an "upper pool" in front of the Tree House and a "lower pool" at the other corner

 where the brook overflows into the meadow beyond the property.

 And just to complicate things, The Tree House itself is constructed on it's own base

 which lifts in and out of The Folly Landscape.

 If you look carefully in the above picture, you can see where the two bases separate.

 A small bit of the Tree House base needs to be a rock at the edge of the brook...

  but That will be added later. For now, the bottom of the "upper pool" 

needs to be elevated above the level of the "lower pool".....

 

 

Here you can see that section of the "upper pool" inserted,

carefully carved to curve along the edge of The Tree House Base

 so it can still be lifted out.

 

 

And because the "upper pool" will need to have a certain depth of water, 

there needed to be a larger "rock" in front of the Tree House opening door...

 a sort of doorstep if you will.

 

 

And then I needed to test the sort of "dam"

 that kept the Tree House "upper pool"

 separate from the more public "lower pool"..... 

and got a long way into a dead end idea....

 

 

Still adding rocks to the brook side....

 

 

But not happy with the overall feel of the brook.

 It looks more like a canal than a brook!

And the next morning, Dear Readers,

 I realized I had dreamed all night about the wild, tumbling rocks

 that overflow off the edge of the "landscape".....

 and decided there was nothing to do but

 extend The Folly landscape base!

 

 

Mind you, I was only adding a 5/8th inch "buttress" 

to support these wandering rocks

 that were so necessary to the dream! 

You can see it screwed and glued on in the above picture.

 

 

And while I was changing the structure,

 I remembered it was necessary to lower the wall in the "lower pool"

 where the brook needed to exit the landscape... 

 

 

Here you can see I have started to saw into the wall... 

it will need to be chiseled out.... 

and I am testing the "extra supporting landscape" beyond the wall....

 

 

And the following morning I had realized that the dam was all wrong... 

(I dreamed of the rocks again...)

 and knew that there needed to be a "big boulder"

 which over the years had been nudged partway into the brook

 by the huge roots of the Huge Old Willow Tree which houses The Tree House!

 (These roots have always been planned to be part of the landscape...)

 so I pulled out the offending dam and created a really large rock

 (by foam panel standards) and positioned it carefully to obstruct half of the brook.

 

 

You can sort of see the huge rock halfway into the brook....

 

 

 

And I had also realized that the rock on the other side of the brook

 would need to be larger and probably knocked aside

 by the weight of the Big Boulder.... 

 

 

together they would form the "dam"

 where the water gets held back in the upper pool.... 

and the tipped rock would need to be "stabilized"

 by the ground below it..... 

 

 

Which would require more "support" 

in the form of an "extension" to the extension already in place....

 which you can see above.

 I am always aware of how vulnerable

 the edges of the property are when being moved...

 people will grab "the base" and expect it to be solid and sturdy.... 

so I make sure it is!

 

 

This is the view of the Tree House "upper pool" looking down from above.... 

you can see the "tight spot" between the two boulders

 which creates the "dam".

 And the pool itself is a more natural curved shape....

 

 

 

But the new "extension" to the base is going to need integrating....

 and the rest of the brook needs its rocks.... 

and another day or three had drifted downstream... 

Which made me Dream that night of "bedrock"..... 

and of establishing the "solid ground"

 that supported all these jumbled rocks.... 

and to ponder the flow of water and ice

 and the very Geology of the region...!

 

 

 

And in the morning I added a huge slab of "solid ground" 

to cover most of the "extensions"....

 

 

And then I had to carefully "notch" the original corner boulder into it...

 

 

And then make the tipped boulder"settle" onto the "bedrock" 

in a way that might be natural.. or at least believable!

 

 

And then pile on more rocks to cover that base wall.... 

but I can already assure you, 

they are not right as they are 

and will need.... something done....!

 

So you can see, Dear Readers,

 I have been going with the flow 

and getting carried far far away....

But didn't someone say Life is but a Dream?