Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)
This project started out as a gift for someone. However halfway through I realized the relative sizes were wrong (out of scale) between the first two pieces built, so I split the project in two and built an additional tower to fit the original house, and a new house to fit the original tower – more or less. The end result became two separate projects. The problem is now my wife wants both of them, but I had promised the original to someone else. My wife however, did most of the painting of the windows, doors, etc., so she is entitled to at least one of therm I think – her choice! She even painted in cats lying on window sills in each building. One is just barely visible in the next to the last photo if you look closely. I think she had fun too.The structures are mounted on a heavy hardwood planks which have been fiberglassed 360 degrees all around, then painted for weather protection. The towers and the roofs of the buildings are also covered with one layer of fiberglass cloth for the same reason. The towers are hollow to keep the weight down, with the cylindrical tower being made of tapered and beveled staves glued to round discs top and bottom. The discs are fixed to a round wooden dowel to keep everything plumb and aligned. After the glue set, the tower was put in the lathe for the final rounding and trueing up & was fun to build. Each tower has 'handrails' around the top made from copper nails with fine copper wire soldered to each nail. Fussy, but that made a lot of difference to the end product's appearance.The tallest tower tops out at 32 and the shorter one around 20. I think the biggest challenge was getting the painted spirals right on the round tapered tower so they come out right from top to bottom. I believe mine are now pretty close, but there was some amount of head-scratching and trial and error involvedThe solar lights were ordered online and work great. They automatically turn off in daylight and light up after dark. The last picture shows them glowing brightly during my test.