Goblin Halloween Diorama- Part 2

First mock up.

At last!  Some time to get back into my studio.  I have missed it so much.  When I start a diorama project, I make up some cardboard mock ups to give me some idea of the scale of things.  I know what I want to do, but I don't always have a good idea of how large objects are in relation to each other.  The card board mock ups help me to understand what I can do on a base of a certain size.

Field 4-13-2014

In this case, I think the house is too large in relation to the base, so it is back to the drawing board.  The problem is that in reducing the size of the house, I will also have to reduce the size of the figures.  As this diorama is supposed to be more about the goblins, I don't want to make them too small.  I need to find a way to keep them the focus of the piece.  Also, as I learned in making the Folk Art Carousel, smaller pieces are really hard to work with.  Working with pieces so small that I needed to use tweezers to place tiny bits of tape or paper was very difficult and uncomfortable.  It may be that I will put a backing piece on the diorama as I did in my diorama called Devil Looking for Trouble in a Small Town.  The backing piece allowed the buildings to be just facades rather than whole buildings.  So, it is back to the drawing board to see what I can work out.

Diorama with building facade.

Today's field picture was taken at 8:30 am.  The temperature was 61 degrees Fahrenheit.  Wind were from the south at 9 miles per hour.  It won't be long before the field is plowed and planted.  There are two other fields nearby.  One has already been planted with hay. That hay is already about a foot high.  The tractor was in the other field getting ready to plow yesterday.  The farmer should be ready to plant this field next.  Last year's crop was corn, so I am guessing that this year soy beans will be planted.  Time will tell.

Repairs are coming along on the basement.  The plumbers were here on Monday.  They had to jack hammer some more of the floor to replace the pipe to re-route the washing machine line.  Bill and I spent yesterday pouring concrete.  The concrete has to cure under plastic for three days, then it can harden the rest of the way without any plastic over it.  We also ordered the new laminate flooring this weekend.  It will be a few more weeks before the flooring can go down because the concrete has to cure before laminate can be laid.  As I have learned, it is not just a number of days, but also a matter of how much moisture is in the concrete.  We have to do a calcium chloride test to determine the amount of moisture, just a meter reading by itself won't do.  If the flooring is put down too soon, it could void the warranty on the flooring or worse yet, ruin the flooring.  Details!

As we are putting in new flooring, we had to do some other repairs as well.  When the original laminate went down, we had oil fired, hot water baseboard heat.  We loved it, but the furnace was old and needed to be replaced.  At the time, the price of oil was sky high and the cost of replacing the heater was outrageous compared to heat pumps.  We ended up opting to purchase a heat pump.  That meant we had some old plumbing and the heat registers still in place.  Now that we are having to lay a new floor, it is time to remove the remnants of the old heating.   So we had to patch in some dry wall.  Which was done earlier in the week.

On top of the dry wall, the rest of the room has a textured wall paper.  It looks like plaster.  This type of wall paper is meant to be painted over, which we had painted white.  You can't tell that the wall is not plastered.  Now that the drywall has been patched and primed, it was time to add the new wall paper.  Of course, when we paint the room will look dingy compared to new white paint, so we will be painting the whole room.  Before we can paint, we have to move all the furniture out of the den.  The furniture from all the rooms downstairs have been placed in that one room while the concrete work was being done in the other rooms.  Before we can do that, we have to let the rest of the concrete dry.  Although we hope we did a good job, it could be that we have to grind down high spots on the concrete.  So at the moment, we have done all that we can do until next weekend.  Except, for priming the wallpaper that we put up yesterday.

This rebuild of the basement is a lot of work, but thankfully, we are in good health and up to the task.  It might not be the best idea for everyone to tackle a rebuild, but we developed the skills to do it over many years of home projects.  It is hard work, but it is worth it.