Fiesta Painted Hacienda Early Church

Post by **Tom Hull** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 11:08 am

I had wanted one of these early Hacienda churches painted in this "Fiesta" coat of many colors. The more standard form is seen on papatedsplace at the beginning of his section on Haciendas and the puts this around 1932 because of the raffia fence. Their are 3 stained glass windows that needed replacement - THANKS Paul. I was able to preserve a couple of the original damaged windows using the Liquetex's Gloss medium to glue a thin piece of white tissue to back the original torn and deteriorated windows. But these two (on either side) are special as they have an additional yellow set of panes which has not as yet been replicated. The raffia fence was virtually trashed and was only able to use a small part of one. Barb Haley made these for me as I am all thumbs when it comes to the sewing machine this was MOST appreciated. No steeple roof was present and so made that and the cross is just a piece of cardboard cut out and covered in aluminum foil. The missing priest is one from a mold I made from an original figure. Notice the tree is NOT a luffa on a stick which is the usual one you finds. but there were traces of this as there was a HUGE glob of that old brown glue they used with a bit of luffa glued on the back of the fence. Enjoy and at last I have my harlequin Church.

P.S. the first thing I did was to clean up this incredibly sooty church with Maria's FAVORITE sponge "Mr Cleans Magic Eraser". I had to remove the fences and the building (necessary anyway to work on the windows) to really get it clean. Unfortunately the camera is unable to capture this and in fact is likely why I bought it off of eBay as the camera really DOES clean up dirty houses. And it to at least 4 rounds of really scrubbing to get it clean. HOWEVER be very careful when using this product on the watercolor pained areas as it has a tendency to remove some of it in ways you will not want.

Post by **paulrace** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 2:59 pm

Tom,

Great work on the restoration.

About the windows with the extra yellow panes:

Are they same size as the smaller red-yellow-green version like you used to the right of the door?
Are the colors about the same tint?

Post by **Tom Hull** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 8:18 pm

Yes they are and that is what was in there. I forgot to give you credit for the nice vellum windows you sent. The door and window to the left and the rose window are all from you. Thanks they are neat. By the way what sort of glue does one use on it. One of them tried to lift off. Is it a plastic sheet or something? tkh

Post by **BrianB** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 9:04 pm

Love Love Love IT!! Another great restoration! Windows look super!!!! Just curious, but has anybody ever fond a way to reproduce the raffia fence. I have a little black coconut that is fairly common with a snow man out front, and it could benefit from such a thing.

Post by **Lee** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 9:10 pm

Wow. I am continually amazed at the wonderful things I see on here!

Post by **paulrace** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 6:33 am

Brian, there are tips about reproducing the raffia fence here:

http://www.cardboardchristmas.com/forum ... f=15&t=218

Also, working from Tom's photos, I've added the Hacienda colors versions of the printed stained glass windows. I've seen black mullions and dark gold mullions on the most common patterns, which is why there are two versions of those. The version with extra yellow panes I've only seen in the small size and with dark gold mullions. So I reproduced it with the dark gold mullions only but added the large size - which has never been observed in the wild.

http://www.cardboardchristmas.com/resou ... ndows2.pdf

Post by **BrianB** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 1:46 pm

Paul, Thanks for the link!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is awesome!! Can't wait to try this next time I get all my Putzing gear back out! There is a pretty common yellow coconut with raffia fence that I've been wanting to duplicate, it looks a lot like the house I grew up in.

Post by **maria** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 6:22 pm

So glad you are finding the Mr. Clean Magic Sponge/Eraser useful; I love that thing. A friend also uses one of those soft mushy pliable erasers for cleaning up her houses---I can't vouch for that as I've never tried it but thought I'd mention it.

Anyway a beautiful restoration.

Post by **paulrace** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 9:38 pm

Tom,

I haven't experimented much with the "vellum." I thought it was plastic until I got some wet and it did some very interesting things. I think it's paper that's been impregnated with a sort of plastic, which may, unfortunately make it hard to use with white glues.

Howard, how would you glue the vellum?

Paul