Goblin Halloween Diorama - Part 10- Field Project

Windows in place.

Since Wednesday I have been working on the windows.  Regular readers may recall that my Plan A did not work as well as I had hoped.  Plan B worked well.  I have all the windows in now.

The broken window.

I began by building the muntin bars.  That is the word for the pieces of wood that hold the individual panes of glass within the window.  I had to look that up because I could not remember what it was called.  I was thinking mullions, but that was not quite right.  The house in my diorama is an older home, and it has the windows with multiple panes of glass.  Unlike real windows which have the glass set in to the wood and held with glazing points, my muntin bars are just for looks and to keep the "glass" from bowing inward into the building.

The muntin bars are made from wooden toothpicks.  The building is made from foam core board, essentially a thin sheet of styrofoam with a rigid plastic sheet on each side.  I cut a toothpick slightly larger than the width of the window.  (Fortunately the pieces did not have to be exactly accurate.  That is hard to do when working on such a small scale.) 

Field 7-27-2014

Then I dipped each end of the toothpick into some glue and shoved it into the styrofoam.  If it wasn't quite even, I pushed until I had it in the right spot.  The foam moved out of the way very easily while still giving a little support.  Once I had it where I wanted it, I added in a little extra glue.  Then I cut the vertical pieces and dipped them in glue.  One end was butted up against the horizontal toothpick and the other was pushed into the Styrofoam.  After everything was in place and the glue had dried, I painted the bars with some diluted black paint in the same strength as I painted the boards that will become the clapboards.  At the moment, they look a little light compared to the black paint on the foam core board.  They will look better when the clapboards are in place.  They may still be a little lighter, as they are a different type of wood.  That is okay.  The windows would be protected slightly protected by the eaves and would not be subject to as much direct weathering.

Once the muntin bars were in place I cut a piece of a clear report cover and glued it over the hole for the window.  Everything went on easy enough.  Before gluing the plastic piece on I gently (emphasis on gently because all you need is to barely brush the surface) brushed the clear plastic with some fine grain sandpaper).  The plastic is so clear that it was hard to tell it was there.  A very light brushing with the sand paper gave it a look of an older window that has been etched by blowing grit and bad weather.  Besides, this is a house in disrepair.  Its windows should be dirty.  I used a craft knife to cut a small hole in the window as if a pane had been broken out.  I may go back and do more of that. 

I will say that you have to use a little caution when you put the glue around the window frame.  The glue will mush out from under the clear plastic and tended to make a mess on the "glass" of the window.   A little trial and error showed that placing the glue back about an eighth inch from the edge kept most of it from getting onto the window pane.  The glue dries clear, but it is still visible.  I guess it looks a little like there is dirt built up here and there.  Once the clapboards are on, you won't see the edges of the window any more.

So things are progressing.  Next, I will be working on the door.  More about that on the next post.

It's Sunday, so it is time to post the latest picture of the field. It is raining and foggy today.  The temperature is 71 degrees Fahrenheit.  We have rain and fog.  Winds are from the South South West at six miles per hour.  The humidity is 90%  Thunderstorms are expected by noon.

It is strange that I should choose to do the weekly photo project of the field the year that things get weird there.  When I started the project on the first day of winter I had no idea that I would be doing anything other than shooting pictures of growing crops.  Something is starting to grow in the field, but I cannot tell what it is.  The grass buffer is deep enough that I can't quite see what it is.  Although some things are growing, and are now taller than the grass that is in with it; not every place that was plowed has something growing.  If you look closely at the photo, there is a black wheel barrow towards the upper right hand side of the picture.  Although the field was plowed by a tractor, the soil amendments are being worked in by hand.  It seems to be taking quite a while.  It is not business as usual in this field this year.  Intensive organic farming perhaps?