The Shortlist of What Needs to be Done

When my guest from Canada arrived here over two months ago, it seemed like we had an ocean of time before us before he would have to go back home again.  Surely we would be able to finish a small two-room Tudor dollshouse?  Now there are a little less than three weeks left, and frankly the house is nowhere near finished.

I think we need to get a little bit more organized, and break down what remains to be done into steps.

And I also think I need to take this whole business a little less seriously!

1.  We need to sand with 0000 steel wool the planked floor of the upstairs room.

2.  We then need to give the floor a coat of sealer -- either Mod Podge (for its adhesive qualities) or plain old satin varnish.

3.  Then we can glue the floor down, assuming the planks are still sticking to their backing.  (We have had them weighted down for about two weeks under a pile of very heavy Philosophy books belonging to my husband.)

4.  Time then to situate the many interior beams that Jeff (our guest from Canada) so thoughtfully distressed and stained dark walnut.  We will probably also need baseboards, and maybe a hand-hewn cornice as well.  Lucky that we bought so many extra pieces of square Balsa dowel stock and an extra bottle of the dark walnut woodstain.

5.  Finally (for the upstairs, at least) we will need to cover up the hole in the roof where a dormer window originally was to have been.  The outside is covered with our version of "thatch" and the inside has only been patched, not covered.  I want to use something that will seem logical, like a painting, but I realise it will never actually be seen as part of the room since you have to lift the roof upwards in order to see inside. 

In retrospect it would probably have been better to retain the dormer window, but the house was designed in such a way that all of the visual interest was on the left-hand side of the house, and the right side looked strangely empty.  My solution was to remove at least one of the decorative elements from the left side:  the dormer window. 

6.  I would like to weather the far-too-even coverage of the warm ivory emulsion on  the exterior.  I ought to have done it before we stuck the exterior beams on.  Now I am too cowardly to approach them with a paintbrush and a dirty brownish-grey wash, but as is it looks too pristine and lacks character.  Maybe some brick-infill would help?  (You see why this is becoming the Neverending Story....)

And this is just for the upper floor.