My Miniature Madness

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Roof Vents and Conduit

I found myself with a couple of free hours this morning, and naturally, I decided the time would be best spent working on Alki Point!

The next part of the project to tackle was camouflaging the ends of the can light sockets. This was necessary, as the roof thickness of the kit is only 1/8". The height of the socket sticking out of the roof was about 3/8". The most realistic solution was to add roof vents.

I looked online at examples, and boy! Who knew they could be so intricate and fancy! I was looking for a more plain Jane version, so a model that was essentially a rectangle box with vents on the sides sounded doable. I had some Woodsies that were rectangle, and about the right width and length. Adding some 1/8" x 1/4" side pieces would make a simple vent box. I also had some plastic screen from packaging that I could use for the vent screens.

I was also going to need to hide the wires as they ran down and through holes in the roof where they would eventually tie in to the power source. I saw many photos of beach houses built in the 40's. A lot of them had been updated, and seemed to use conduit on the roofs and down to electrical boxes to house wiring. I had some straws that I thought might just work!

I built the basic vent boxes, then drilled holes in them for the wires to run through. The lower set of vent boxes needed two sets of holes drilled - one for the upper wires to enter, then one for both sets to exit.

I glued the upper vent boxes to the roof, over the sockets, running the wires out of the drilled hole. If you look closely, you can see the plastic screen glued to the side of the vent box. I hope the textural detail shows up when I paint them.

Once the glue had set, I measured and cut the conduit that would carry the wires to the lower vent boxes. I strung the wires through, then glued them to the roof. Once that glue had set, I ran the wires from the conduit into the hole on the lower vent boxes. Then both sets of wires were run through the bottom holes on the vent boxes.

Now I needed to attach all of the wires together - yellow to yellow and brown to brown. I would also need to extend the length of the wires using regular white 12 volt wires. The brown wires would attach to one of the white cord's wires, and the yellow to the other. The yellow wire is the positive for these lights, and that is important to know. LED lights only work if they are plugged in the right way. Since the yellow was positive, I used yellow electrical tape to mark the positive side of the white wire so that I would know which way to plug them in later.

Then again, all of the wiring was run through the conduit. This time, though, the conduit needed to go down through the roof. This is where the bendy part of the straw came in really handy! The main power supply panel will be in the back of the structure, but I want to be able to remove the roof for cleaning. For this reason, the conduit will remain part of the roof, and the wire ends that exit it will have a plug so that I can simply unplug the lights when the roof needs to be removed.

This is as far as I want to go with the roof panel for now. I won't paint the vent boxes or conduit until I do the final touch up paint on everything. For now, I want to get started on the siding. I'm really looking forward to seeing the outside of Alki Point start to look like a real home! I'm also excited to see what the vinegar and steel wool stain will turn out like! Now hopefully, I'll be able to find some more free time again soon!

Friday, January 29, 2016

A Little Adventure, A Little Good Luck

It's always about this time of year that the hubs and I start to experience cabin fever. Our normal weekend get away destination, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, is mostly under snow, having roads closed due to mud slides, or subject to seasonal road closures. This doesn't leave many options for close distance and inexpensive mini trips, so we start to get a little cranky.

Last weekend, we decided to try a new area a little closer to the coast. Sure there'd be rain, but that's not a game ender. There's less snow near the coast! We often like to find a secluded camp spot to spend an afternoon reading, listing to spooky podcasts, daydreaming and taking little naps. Olympic National Forest turned out to be a wonderful little adventure. We will definitely visit the area again, as it was wild, woody, and very beautiful!

One of our favorite things is getting to see all of the interesting sights along the way. My favorite this time was this little A frame cabin. Can you imagine that folks actually lived in this place at one time? Kind of reminds me of the bunk house Russ and I lived in when we were newly married! The mossy pallet front step, old tires and range couldn't be more perfect! One day I will recreate this scene in miniature and call it Appalachian Oasis.

After a really lovely weekend, I was ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work on Alki Point. When I last posted, I was waiting for the spackle to dry so I could see if that solved my "heavy roof texture" problem. As luck (the good kind finally) would have it, it worked out perfectly! I painted several coats of black on the roof surface and the skylight frames and I am pleased with how they turned out.

I measured, cut and sanded the interior frames, then set to work gluing and painting them.

I wanted the windows to be pretty sturdy, so rather than using the stuff that came with the kit, I ordered a Lexan sheet from Amazon. I traced the frames and used the special plastic cutting tool to cut the out. I taped my stainless steel ruler to the surface to make sure it did not slip while I scored it.

I glued the lexan to the frames, then the frames to the roof, then added the mullions last so that they would line up with the ones that were already a part of the roof.

I had a challenge when I added the caulk to the seems. The tube arrived with no cap, and that didn't worry me. I could cope with that. The problem arose when squeezing the tube to apply the caulk to the seems. The end of the caulk tube was apparently not sealed well, so all of the caulk was coming out of the end of the tube making a giant mess! There's always a challenge with minis, right? We are nothing if not resilient, so I cut off the bad end and used several layers of packaging tape to re-seal the end. Ta-Da!

Now, here's where it's handy to have a husband with a garage full of ~~crap~~ useful stuff. "Honey", I said, "I need finish rings for my can lights and the grommets I have are too small. Do you have anything that might work?" Literally, four minutes later he comes in with these:

Perfect, just like him! And he even took and sent photos to me so that I could share them with you! Also, he had a hole gauge, so I knew instantly the diameter drill bit I needed to make the holes for the light sockets.

Probably most of you already know a lot of this stuff. Like I have said before, I am usually late to the party. For those mini friends who, like me, find themselves a little behind the mini knowledge curve (and get really excited making new discoveries), I may redundantly state what to most might be the obvious. Nevertheless, I hope the information helps someone!

I wanted recessed LED lighting, but wanted to find a solution where they did not cost over $10 each. Enter eBay, and mini LED lighting from Hong Kong. $11.99 for 10 bulbs, 10 sockets with wires, and 10 clips (which I did not use on this project but may in future ones), free shipping and I had them in less than two weeks. One negative... I ordered WARM, and I got 5 warm and 5 cool. To make them warm if they are cool, you can add some orange or yellow Gallery Glass paint to the tip.

Here's what they look like in the ceiling with the rings. I'll get the "all lit up" photos once I connect all of the wiring and tidy that up.

Speaking of tidying up... I need to make rooftop vents and run conduit to conceal the wires on the roof. That will be the next To Do, then I can finally get back to The Siding Experiment!