Barn Raising: Construction

I was really nervous about assembling my 1:44 scale barn - the pieces were so tiny! 

I laid out the pieces in alphabet order according to the instructions to be sure I had them all, took a deep breath, and began.

The gable on the roof was the first to be put together - nothing like starting with the absolute TINIEST pieces in the whole project to build your confidence! 

But it came together and looked so cute that it actually did build my confidence. If I could put that teeny tiny gable together, I could do the rest.

The stall walls were next,

then the sides and the floor of the hay mow. The directions said that this would be the trickiest part of constructing the barn, and that proved true. There were a lot of tabs to fit together into four different pieces at the same time.

It wasn't until fitting in the green rail above the doors that I realized that the barn doors would be able to slide open and shut.

They were tricky to install - the wood is very thin and fragile and I didn't want to snap it. Due to that fragility, I decided that I would keep the barn doors closed. At this point I was getting very excited about how it was looking.

And when I put the roof on and the instructions said I was done, I was thrilled with how my mini barn had turned out. It looked so cute and I could not wait to get Little Lynn and Circus Girl out and take some photos of them with it.

But as I looked closer, I realized that, even though the instructions said I had completed building the barn, I had some finishing touches to do. See those brown spots on either side of the roof?

And the three brown spots on the side of the barn? Those are tabs from the other pieces which were inserted through holes and glued. They needed to be painted to match the pieces where they were visible.

So often that is the way a project goes - you think you have finished and then discover little things that could still be done. Depending on what you want, you leave them and are content, or you sit down again and get back to work.

I sat down again and got back to work.