8 Weeks Now

It has been 8 weeks since I started building the castle. I had hoped to be fully done with this project by now, but I am still enjoying every moment of building it. Most of these last 8 weeks I have worked nearly non-stop on it. This weekend was a little different. We went to a friend's BBQ party on Saturday that was from 2pm-8pm. So yeah, I didn't get a lot of work done that day obviously. Today we went to the park and a million little things that kept me from getting out there. I DID get a few tiny things done though.

First of all during the last week I did get a little of the trim done. Mostly because I took my daughter to the doctor's office one day and took the rest of the afternoon off. She was tired and slept all afternoon while I got this trim done. Add a bit of sunshine to quickly dry my layers of paint and I was able to make fairly good progress.

First off, I trimmed out the screen window I installed last weekend. It is WAY less ugly now. :-) In fact, I quite like it. I put in the waterproof caulk around the edge and it looks pretty schnazzy.

Here is a close up of the window. I basically made a square frame of wood and wrapped the screen around it and stapled it. Much like covering a footstool with fabric. I put the trim about 1/4 of an inch back from it. I thought the fact the grey screen material covers the white of the frame it would look odd, but since the castle is grey, it actually makes it look like it was supposed to be this way.

As you can see, the kids think the windowsill is actually the car garage. I think its cute, so I let them leave them there. I will move them when I make the second part of the window with the Plexiglas.



I was able to build the second screen window for the other side of the castle. The large window in the tower. I still need to finish caulking it before adding the trim, but at least I can stop worrying about the kids falling through it!

Here is a close up of the screen window. You can see it is just a simple frame of wood with screen material wrapped around it. I just tapped it into place and then screwed it to the window frame in 8-10 places. A bit of overkill, but I feel safer knowing its not going to be easily pushed out etc. The frame will cover all the white window frame and come over the screen frame leaving about 1/4 inch showing.

Finally this weekend I started the interior trim work. I have one piece left to cut since I biffed the other one I had for that spot. Wont take long...maybe tomorrow night.

As a final attempt to accomplish something, I also got the piece of wood cut to enclose the stairs. For fun, I decided to paint the piece yellow instead of purple. Just to keep it colorful. I was thinking of maybe adding some stuff in this area. Like a magnetic board with letter and numbers. Or animals, or I don't know. Just to keep each room with a play area I guess. I still want to add carpet to the stairs just to make them less hard on the hands and knees when crawling up them.

Every weekend I think "This is going to be the last weekend". And then it isn't. I feel like I can never get anything done. And yet it IS getting done. This week I hope to make some progress on the sun room and the final trim work on the windows. Stay tuned!