The Gothic Makeover Continues...

Today, my mini (no pun intended) vacation continued and I did some work on the windows.  There's still a lot of work to do--I kept getting sidetracked by my very interesting family--but I'm fairly happy with what I've got so far.  First, I did some research.  And no, my research didn't solely consist of watching Dark Shadows.  Which, by the way, was really bad!  I love Tim Burton but, sadly, art direction does not a movie make.

For the center window, I looked at number of different windows, both online and in my actual books.  I wish I knew where to credit this picture, it's wonderful--and gives a lot of really good suggestions, as far as the type of window I'm trying to make.

The rectangular windows are going to be comparatively simple; for inspiration, I looked at a variety of casement windows from different periods, Tudor through Empire.  This particular picture comes from the excellent library at the University of Washington.  It's especially useful for my purposes, as it's the same brick and stone combination I'm attempting with the Haunted Beacon Hill.

I'm back to thinking that light gray stone is the way to go, now that I've actually received my modeling dust packets in the mail.  The window doesn't have much depth right now, because I'm leaving room for the "glass."  Once it's properly installed, I'll sandwich it between two layers of "stone," and its from the second layer that the sensation of depth will come.

This was harder to design than it looks.

Once again, I went nuts with my Dremel.  The columns are a mishmash of different things: the actual columns themselves are 1/4" half rounds, and the foot and cap are bits I cut from veranda posts.  I cut the posts themselves in half, so they'd lie flush with the window, then cut out the bits I needed.  This is, arguably, wasteful but I find that, eventually, I end up using all my extra porch bits somehow.  I've got a box of odd but useful bits that I regularly root through.

The rectangular windows are going to be a combination of dressed stone and wood.  The surround itself will be dressed stone; the casements themselves will be wood and, as with their larger cousins in the earlier picture, they'll have smaller square panes.  Instead of lead golf tape, out of respect to the fact that lead is poisonous and I don't want anyone in my family eating it, I'll be using copper.  You'll have to use your imagination a little bit, here; without the smaller panes, the windows look a bit dull.

The extra bit of balsa will support a "carved stone" arch.  I fully assembled the window before deciding whether I wanted to add it.  It's tough, too, because sometimes things that look horribly plain in naked basswood look horribly over-fixed once they've been clad in brick, stone, etc.

Thoughts?  How's everyone else doing their windows?