The Rooftop Deck!

 In my own, real-life world, for a few years, the hub and I have batted around the idea of getting a new (much-needed-so-no-one-leans-on-the-rails-and-plummets-to-the-yard-or-ascends-the-stairs-hoping-they-don't-topple-over) deck for our house. Years is no exaggeration. So, if I scale that kind of time down to 1:12 miniature land, it probably makes sense that I started the rooftop deck for The House in May of 2020, and it took a year to finish it.

That kind of math just makes sense to me. 😊

I assuredly had a few, big life things that got in the way of progress, so I put together the pieces I finished so I could at least get an idea of what it would look like:

This was one of those moments, too, when I said something like, "Now, I KNOW I cut enough of those small pieces ..." when, clearly, I did not. And, I don't even know why I didn't have enough long ones, but there I was. I simply laid these pieces out without much attention to good fit and certainly no attention to keeping them in place. It was what it was at the time, but I liked where it was headed!

With July 4th on the way, I could not let outdoor BBQ season go by one more time without that deck being finished! So, this past weekend, I got to work. I started with picking up where I left off in terms of cutting enough pieces.

Popsicle stick cutting a-go-go.

My Dad used to use a miter box like this one. He made it look easy. I, on the other hand, do not seem to be awesome at it, but I manage. Anyway, what you see in that picture is a pile of "should be good" pieces and a pile of rejects. I dry fit the whole deck only to discover a good handful of the pieces were just short enough to create weird gaps. *see above note about not being awesome at the cutting with this box. While not looking for perfection, some of gaps were just stupid. So, I cut 'em again. A bit begrudgingly.

Then, all of the already cut pieces as well as the new pieces were collected for assembly:

Delivery is not always convenient, amiright?

Funny how the delivery is not interrupting the viewing
of "Nashville." 😄

There were just a few things to strongly consider before starting the real assembly. First, the trim along the front of the rooftop is not perfectly square. It's about a 16th of an inch off which meant I could not butt the deck pieces right up against it without creating the whole thing at an angle. (This discovery was a big surprise to me when I dry fit the pieces last year. Who the heck knew?!) I did get the pieces in a great place with this year's dry fit by maneuvering them under the little gap created by the roof trim. So, I left them where they were rather than pulling them up with the rest of the deck. Ultimately, this row did not get adhered to the rooftop. They're just wedged where they need to be.

Also before pulling up all of the pieces, I glued down just one row. That way, I could work from the middle out to the sides hopefully meeting up with that tricky row without major gap problems.

The only other issue I needed to consider was that I wasn't 100% certain if I wanted to leave the wood its natural color or stain it or ... Ultimately, I decided that leaving it natural allowed me to just get on with it and get it done! As I could feel just a wee-smidge of indecision about this, I decided to use just a thin line of regular Elmer's school glue to stick the pieces down. That way, should I change my mind at any point, it will be super easy to pop the pieces off.

Without further adieu, I just starting sticking them down! I realized quickly that I might have a few trouble spots where pieces don't align side-to-side, between the house and the trim, exactly how they did when I dry fit due to the fact that I mixed all of the imperfectly cut pieces up. And, I wondered if I was pushing them tighter together, front-to-back, in this real build to eliminate gaping between slats versus how I placed them in the dry fit. If it was much different, the fit was going to be different, too. And, to both issues, I decided I would just figure it out rather than stress over it and continued gluing.

In the end, I did have to smooth by hand the surface as I created a few buckles from pushing pieces together, but that was an easy fix. I also found more short pieces that were too short to go all the way to the side, but I decided some wood filler was going to take care of that problem. There was zero problem fitting pieces at the front of the house, and that was a huge victory! Frankly, that's all I really cared about. The other stuff is easy to deal with.

And, with that, the deck is ready for entertaining!

The gaps on the left by the actual
house are now filled with putty.

A few of the individual pieces warped a bit because I forgot all rules of crafting and didn't use wood-specific glue. I remembered this rule when I had about two rows to go. Perfect timing! But, given I used such a thin line of it, the buckling wasn't anything a little weighting of the whole deck as well as, after lifting the weight, a block wrapped in sandpaper couldn't take care of!

I loooooove how it turned out! July 4th, here we come!!