Finally doing Chateau shingles

 It only took me a year to start applying the shingles that I stained for this Chateau. I started with marking the lines for all roof surfaces. Just doing that made me realize how much shinglind I had to do!

Next was deciding what kind of glue to use. Over the years I've tried multiple adhesives - hot glue, Quick Grip, Liquid Nails. I got a recommendation from a fellow miniaturist for one I hadn't tried - Loctite Power Grab. I got a small tube and found one size larger that had a caulklike applicator. The tube turned out to be really hard to squeeze, to the point of hurting and while I liked the adhesion, I got very disillusioned thinking about how much I had yet to do. 

I switched to the other applicator, and that actually worked much better, so I added more shingles.

I took a break for a few days and while at my local dollhouse shop, the owner gave me a tip on angles and shingling. She told me about doing a template on thin cardstock and applying a row vertically of shingles on that angled piece, and when dry, turn over and cut them on the angle. Then glue this template to the roof and continue shingling. And she mentioned she only now ever does hot glue. That sounded like a more reasonable and faster approach to this daunting task I have before me.

So I proceeded in this manner, did my templates on construction paper, and dug out my hot glue gun and sticks. Seeing that I had 3 dormers which means 6 angles to cut, I was determined to make this task a bit easier and not be frustrated with my lack of ability to get the nice clean angles that I have struggled with on previous houses that I've shingled. I wasn't going to do flashing for this and really just wanted a nice clean look.

What this meant in terms of templates is 12 pieces - 4 for each dormer. Anyway, I started, and the first was more an experiment. I had to decide the order - so the order was to do the roof surfaces first, and then come back around and butt the dormer roof sections to it. I hadn't considered that the roof section would need to extend to the top edge of the roof, and the template I had was for the dormer, just shy of the roof height. That's why you see a taped piece on my black template. 

So I got into the groove and ended up completing that left side. I'm very happy with the results and need to get back to this - do a section at a time.