Learning to Solder

 My Chateau electrical connections have been giving me lots of trouble - warm wall where the power source comes in, bulbs burning out quickly and then all the angles and tapewire connections on the roof sections. 

I fed tapewire up to the 3rd floor and to the angled ceilings in the kitchen and solarium. So there are lots of connections to potentially fail. I have 6 lights each in the kitchen and solarium, and my eyelet connections on the roof sections of these wings were tenuous, not to mention the extremely thin wire on some of these lights. A variety of vendors - Lighting Bug, NovaLyte and Ray Storey - use varying thicknesses of wire, making wrapping around eyelets a challenge. 

First purchase was a bust - I went with a Cir-Kit soldering iron and started a test board. It was extremely frustrating and I only got success on a horizontal surface. Yes, I watched videos and was getting nowhere fast. I was beginning to doubt my determination to learn soldering. 

I marched off to a big box store and got a real soldering iron - A Weller, it's got multiple bits - one being a chisel. That gave me purchase on a larger spot to heat up. This soldering iron has a wider ring around it, and an LED light. For me, the appeal was the wider section - provides a buffer between the hot tip and my hands/arms. The instance of my burning my hands dropped dramatically. 

My collection of soldering supplies and my test board house.

Here's one of my more successful soldered connections on my test house.

My dilemma with the warm wall, I think the wall thickness was one of the problems, it was thin. I think the electricity was connecting from the outside.

My fix was to remove the tapewire on the inside wall. 

Here's the roof of the Solarium - lots of eyelets and tape holding it all down. It will get covered by a strip of grey board. But still I don't want to trust this scotch tape. 

Here's the soldered connections. I got good at this once I found a way to strip the mylar off the top of the tapewire where my connection was going to be made. 

One of the chandelier soldered lights 

I even got good enough to do a vertical solder - this goes to the very top roof and will now be a secure connection.

Chateau Conservatory - morphing into a room

I made enough arches for the kitchen and the conservatory, as they have the same cathedral ceilings. I've changed my mind several times about wallpaper for this room. I chose a Les Chinoiseries paper that has muted florals. 

First up was mimicking the adjustments to where the walls meet the ceilings - building up the outer edge just a bit and attaching the inner roof/ceiling, filling the gaps. It meant removing wood strips along where the ceiling meets the walls. These were 1/2" square strips of the room's length and were intended to support cross-ceiling beams. I had forgotten the fun of prying out nails, sanding, filling, and priming. I had to re-route some tapewire in the process. The lighting would be similar to the kitchen so it would need a path up to the very top, and then out to the roof. 

The wallpaper went up like a dream, as has been my recent experience with Les Chinoiseries paper. Once the paper was up, I attached the arches, and the lighting. The Ray Storey lights I used in the kitchen are no longer available as he has retired. I got similar ones from Lighting Bug, though they are smaller. I also have 3 LED can lights in the peak of the ceiling to add more light. Those are really hidden but provide more ambiance to the room. 

The Sue Cook corbels - they got held up for months. Just as Sue shipped them, the Royal Mail had a cyber security attach and everything leaving the country got halted. They have now finally arrived and are now on my to do list.

Chateau Planning

 I'm working on painting the inside of the dormers and adding more tapewire on the second floor and making the connections with eyelets.

The kitchen - probably going to wall up/fill that 2nd doorway in the back so only one remains, going into dining room. This wing was originally designed to be 2 rooms (kitchen and eating area) but both would be too small. This will also give me more wall space in the kitchen for cabinets, since the opposite wall has a french door and window.

I want a grand kitchen with the cathedral ceiling, probably arch trusses if I can figure out how to do it. My inspiration is a Whitledge-Burgess kitchen that has this dramatic effect. I was thinking about doing it for the French Country Manor but I would have had to cut out the floors in the wings. This house has that cathedral effect already.

Here's that kitchen idea...

One of the challenges I have with this house is how the second floor(s) were attached. They were supposed to sit on crown molding from the first floor. I want to choose and finish my crown separately and don't want to depend on it to support the second floor. 

In looking at this tonight, I decided I will nail and glue in the floors. Here's how that will work. For the dining room I will nail from the kitchen side and then from the foyer side.  There is a beam in the kitchen lengthwise along the wall that is next to the dining room, and I will either remove the beam or simply nail right through it. You can see the beam just barely in the photo above. Same on the other wing - nail from the study into the living room ceiling and from the foyer into the living room ceiling. The foyer itself will then be pretty sturdy and tight so simply gluing down that partial floor should work.

I feel much better about the flooring attachment. I have tapewire done, and have a plan to secure the flooring. I'm looking at wallpapers that I have from my stash and starting to get a sense of what this house might look like. In each of my other houses, there was a theme or era that guided me through these choices. This will likely be in recent times, don't want to go back in history. But trying to solidify the feel for the house...thinking about what a chateau might look like. Thinking toile, a bit romantic, country french. 

Here's the foyer. It has an opening for stairs on the left by the door. 

Here's an earlier picture with the floors in:

Below is the center part of the house, (not showing the wings on either end of the house) capturing the placement of tapewire. Lower left is dining room then center is foyer of course, right is living room (and to the far right, beyond the photo is the study.

Second floor, may do a bathroom on left, then hallway/stairway, then on the right is the master bedroom. You will notice in the photo above, in the master bedroom there is a partition, almost splitting the room in half. That is supposed to be a bathroom but I just think its taking up too much space in the master bedroom. I can't imagine how I could place a bed in there with the partition! 

This photo  below shows the tapewire up under the peak This is more for my reference so I recall how I did it and where it is. Its up behind the hinge on the third floor. Kind of an awkward angle but that's what I have!

Getting into Chateau planning mode

 Now that I've made headway on shinging, its time to turn my sights on what is next with the Chateau. I have primed the interior, and started laying the tapewire for electricity. I will need to continue the tapewire, adding more and then making the eyelet connections for every join. 

My eyelet outlet tool hasn't been working well, and I've broken tips and replaced them a few times. So I ordered another and it should be a week or so before it comes. I also have a BamBam eyelet outlet tool and honestly haven't had much luck with it or I'm just too boneheaded on how to really use it. Here's some photos of the tools and the interior where I have started the tapewire. I did that over a year ago and in looking at it again, I know I stopped because I was unsure how I wanted to handle wiring without the actual 2nd and 3rd floors in place. 

The first is the regular eyelet outlet tool, and then the BamBam tool (it makes a Bam sound when you pull on the spring and release it).

Overview of the beginnings of tapewire.

Here I adhered the tapewire where it will be at about baseboard height on the 3rd floor, and there's some sort of knee wall thing I'm going to have to accommodate.

This house is different than the French Country in that the 2nd and 3rd floors are held in place by the crown molding of the floor below it. I ripped out all that 'crown' because I wasn't sure I wanted that style or size, and so I could prime and do tapewire. So I sort of have to plan this all out again, now that I'm more focused on it. I could potentially glue the floors in place but I can't back up that support with nails from the outside since I have completed the exterior. The 3rd floor is actually one piece, but the 2nd floor is 3 separate pieces. 

Here's a photo before I ripped out the crown molding

I think I can easily continue to tapewire and make my connections with what I have and I will come back later and run tapewire as I install the floors. 

I am reminded that I want to make thin triangle templates for the three 3rd floor windows, for the walls in the dormer. I want to sand and paint those too while I have all the floors out of the way. These triangular pieces will simply fill the space and make the walls flush with the roof cutout surface. Hope that makes sense. There's not much room in there and its really too tight to do anything else with. 

This photo shows the tapewire I adhered to the 3rd floor peak, just behind the hinge of the roof. I try not to put tapewire on walls where they tend to show or are slightly thicker under the wallpaper. While it hides the tapewire it is a challenge to apply, and then to get into those tight spots to do an eyelet connection.