Challenges Make The Achievements All The Sweeter

Now that all of the openings have been cut I can finally start gluing the structure together! The bottom and the top are designed so that you can take the top off to play with the horses, if that's what you have the barn for. In our case, I need to join the top and bottom so that I can run the electrical tapewire. In this photo, you can see the bottom floor glued, taped and weighted together.

The roof pieces have an interesting barn shape. I took the end pieces and traced them onto some 1/4" plywood (minus the groove) before I glued them to the roof floor. This way, I have a pattern for the interior walls that I need to cut. In this photo I have the two interior walls cut and then used them to make a cardboard pattern for the future wall coverings.

In this photo I have placed the interior walls into their approximate location. I think the adjusted floor plan from left to right will be living room, bathroom then bedroom. My original plan was to also have the kitchen up here, but now I think it will have to go downstairs.

In this photo I have cut out the door openings. I'm seriously considering gluing down the woof floors before the interior walls are installed. It might be sooo much simpler. 

Later, I was able to get a couple coats of primer on the first floor and the main structure of the second floor. I drew all the lines for the shingles on the exterior of the roof pieces, and will hopefully get them primed tomorrow.

Our experiment using the miter saw to cut the unique roof angle on the dormers didn't go as smoothly as we'd have liked. Remember in my previous post the styrofoam jig we made for piece # 2&3? Well piece #1 slipped while Russ was cutting, leaving it a little "different" than 2&3. That left us an opportunity to make lemonade. The whole front roof piece looks a little Frankenstein-ish, but with a little love and a lot of trim I think we can make it look passable.

I think the next step after I primer the roof pieces will be to begin the tapewire process. Russ suggested I leave both floors as separate until absolutely necessary so that it is easier to work on both floors. He also suggested I make it so that the second floor just plugs into the main floor. I think he's on to something! Unless I decide to run power to the 2 interior walls for the upper floor, I can basically attach the small roof sections, run the tapewire, install all the plugs for the ceiling fixtures, install the wood floor, and leave the partition walls and front roof piece for last. That way, I can paint or paper them before installation and that is so much easier!

This is where things start to get both exciting and frustrating! You see your vision coming to life, and you have all sorts of little issues to work out. It makes the achievement so much sweeter, tho, because you have to get creative!

Here are a couple of inspiration photos for those of you who have a hard time visualizing what I have in mind for the end result. Hopefully, it I'll be able to incorporate some of these ideas, even tho the space I thought I was working with has been dramatically reduced.

Wish me luck!