Restoring a Tri-ang DH/7 Townhouse - Part Four

It's been over a month since I last posted about my DH/7 but I have made quite a lot of progress in the meantime.

Last time I showed how I made various repairs to the roof and it was while I was sanding down one of those repairs that I discovered how the roof would have looked originally.

As the surface layer of paint came off, the original tile paper was revealed. I was ridiculously overjoyed to see this as I'd been dithering about what to do with the roof.

I had seen Tri-angs of this age with this tile paper on the roof but I wasn't sure if mine would have had it originally - question answered!

 

Reproduction Paper next to the Original

Next I wondered if I would be able to uncover all of the original paper but as I experimented with this I realised that there were areas where it was in awful condition and removing the layer of paint on top wasn't consistently successful either.

And of course this particular roof paper is available as a reproduction, so I decided to go with that and simply paste it on top of what was there. It's a big roof, so SIX sheets of paper later....

... here it is! I've also painted the wooden parts of the roof.

I used Farrow and Ball 'Off-White No.3' which I intend to use of the front of the house too. I like the finish provided by using the F&B 'Estate Emulsion finished off with a coat of Humbrol 'Matt Cote'.

So that's the roof almost finished but not quite.

My earlier sanding activities also revealed that the bottom edge of the roof originally had an edging strip on it. You can see its brick pattern in the photo above and also just make out the little dots below the bricks.

I'm familiar with this edging strip from my Tri-ang No. 37 which has it along the front edge of the downstairs floor paper. Unfortunately, I'm not aware that it's available to buy as a reproduction so I'll probably have to think of a way to reproduce it myself. Another job for a rainy day!

The other thing missing from the roof was the finial.

I'm enormously lucky that my friend Claire has a DH/7 with its original finial AND she has a neighbour who is very handy with his lathe who has kindly turned me an exact copy.

I'm so pleased to have this perfect crowing glory for my house!

So, that's it for today. There is a lot more progress to report but I'm sticking to short and sweet.

Until next time,

Zoe