Kitchen cabinet

I am getting bolder and bolder with my Chippendale kits, so I have now taken two kits that I have done before, closed cabinet top (the first I ever made) and hutch cabinet, to make something different. I felt I could sacrifice both these kits because they are rather common and could be replaced if I ruined them. I have more respect for some rare pieces I yet have to venture on.

The challenge was not so much combining these two bits, because the instructions actually suggest exactly this as a possible combination (my other top cabinet is placed on a desk). The challenge was the finish. I wanted this to be a kitchen cabinet for the best kitchen, where nice china would be displayed for admiration. I had various ideas, but finally decided to use wash technique. In case you don't know what it is: you dilute paint with water, and depending on the surface you can add some glue. I didn't, but just painted coat upon coat with diluted paint which was plain white with a few drops of green.

I used the same green to paint the inside of the drawer, the fronts and the top cabinet. 

I must admit that I had not anticipated it to be difficult, although I should have known better. It is extremely difficult to paint an even edge between two colours. I had to do it over and over again. Also because I painted before assembly I had miscalculated and painted the wrong colour in a few places, and it's quite hard to paint white wash over dark green.

For handles this time I used small nails.

But the most difficult task was still ahead. Thinking back on it, I feel I was very brave when I made the first kit because it isn't one of the easiest. The fronts have to be aligned:

Twice they broke. It's just starting all over again. Then gluing on the glass panels:

Hinging the fronts it quite a task. With the base cabinet, one door was really non-collaborative. I let it reflect over its lack of collegiality overnight. It usually helps. The top cabinet hinges went relatively easy.

I am very pleased with the result. I think the wash works fine together with the green, for an original look.

Comparing the two pieces, this and the mahogany cabinet, you'd almost never guess that they were made from the same kit.

I am not yet sure where the cabinet will be and what kind of objects it will be filled with, so this is just a test:

Chippendale cupboard

Last weekend I started making a cupboard, and today I finished it. (Sort of. May need some further improvement).

 

This kit came with one of my big bargains, and since after the three-drawer chest challenge I now feel more confident about making something other than the prescribed mahogany (and also because I am running out of space in the main house), I decided to make a kitchen cupboard to replace one of my very first pieces, from the time I had no experience and no proper tools. The blog post is from 2012, but I made the cupboard in January 2008. So maybe I shouldn't feel guilty about replacing it. Even in a 1:1 world I may replace a kitchen cabinet after eight years.

Anyway, I decided to make this cupboard in dark oak, and it was quite straightforward, except that it turned out to be a REALLY difficult piece, with a lot of precision work and tiny details to align, and the glue had to set after each step, and with several steps I had to leave the assembly overnight, held by rubber bands. There are some cracks where I didn't get it quite right, but nobody will know.

The only real issue I had was handles. The originally supplied hardware goes well with a mahogany piece, but not with an oak kitchen cupboard. I tried beads. I tried nails and pushpins, painted in copper. I tried champagne wire. I even tried tiny chess pieces - pawns' heads. But it just didn't look right. I was rummaging through a box of clock parts when I found a set of clock hands that I bought some time ago in a hobby shop when I worked on the clockmaker's shop. I never used those clock hands, and they weren't much use as drawer handles, but the set included tiny clips to fasten the hands, and see - this was just what I needed.

I am glad I had patience and didn't go for something I wasn't hundred per cent happy with.

From the beginning I also knew that I wanted a top to go on this base, but I didn't have a kit for that. In fact I had never seen any such kit, although I eventually saw that the box for the base said it was to be used with a certain kit. So, reckless as I am, I decided that I could make a cupboard top. What gave me confidence was that the description for the base - they have these lovely historical explanations - mentioned a "Welsh dresser", and Welsh dresser was what my first clumsy cupboard was supposed to be. I said to myself: If you managed to make that one without experience, without proper tools, using bits of Venetian blind, surely you can make a top cabinet now, with your experience, tools and materials. I found a picture of the top on the net, studied it carefully and decided I could do it. I also found the instruction sheet for chest on chest because it seemed the closest to what I was aiming at. Rather than working with my eternal Venetian blind, which is very hard wood, I took some balsa pieces, staining them with the same stain I used for the base. I wasn't sure the stain would look the same, but it did.

Balsa is soft and easy to cut, but it crumbles and is difficult to sand even. One uncertain movement, and you have sanded away too much. Also there was no way I could make grooves for the shelves so instead I used matches as shelf supports.

I used the chest on chest instructions for the order of assembly, but because there were no grooves on the sides it proved more complicated. 

I was quite proud of myself until I tested the top with the base (at that point still unfinished) and realised that it was too high, too broad and too deep. 

In such situations I usually turn to my Facebook groups, which I of course should have done in the first place. It so happened that one of my miniature friends was making this very cupboard. First I asked her to share pictures. Then I asked for the exact measurements. Then it turned out that she was soooo much smarter than I because she took a picture of the instruction sheet and shared it. And I realised that I had made everything wrong. Not just the size. 

Well, I dismantled it and cut the pieces to measure and glued and had to dismantle it again and then cut a new piece because the old one crumbled away. But in the end I got it more or less the way I wanted it.

You cannot see it in this picture, but there is cutlery and other stuff in the drawers. 

I removed most of the objects from the room for better view.

I am very proud of myself for several reasons. Firstly, that I was brave enough to try it at all. It is psychologically challenging to combine a precision-cut kit with a few bits of balsa, but it turned out well, didn't it? I am also happy that I didn't cheat and leave the first attempt as it was, because I would have been irritated every time I looked at it. 

So now I have evidence that I can make a simple piece of furniture to match a sophisticated kit. I may do it again. Or I may replace my creation with the real thing if I get hold of it.

Another big disaster

To be frank, it came before the one I have already admited. It was so frustrating that I just went on to do something else, although it wasn't very hard to correct.

Do you remember the cupboard I got in my bargain about a month ago? I mended it to the best of my abilities, putting "glass" in the doors, and moved the pretty china from the old cupboard that wasn't to scale and generally unsatisfactory. (I know I am repeating myself, but it is remarkable how, when you make an improvement, you wonder how on earth you could put up with an unsatisfactory solution).

The cupboard was going into the rear corridor behind the dining room.

Clever as I am, I tested carefully that, unlike the bookshelf in the smoking room that had to be attached permanently before I sealed off the corridor, this cupboard went easily through the door.

Only it didn't. Not after the partition was in place. The corridor was too narrow.

This was one of those moments when I want to give up and throw the whole project into a garbage bin. No, actually I want to throw myself into a garbage bin, worthless as I am.

Instead, as I said, I switched my attention over to something else and for a couple of weeks pretended that the dining room didn't exist. But of course it did, and I could not postpone dealing with it forever. I didn't take step-by-step pictures because it was painful, almost humiliating. I pulled out the partition, tearing down wallpaper. I believe this is when my ceiling decoration fell off. I put in the cupboard. I redecorated the back wall, including the chimney breast. I trimmed the corners. I glued on door surrounds. All this was very difficult to do inside the room. All in all, it took me about twelve hours.

While I was at it, I repaired the crystal chandelier. To be honest, I merged two old chandeliers, simply adding six more threads in between the existing ones. It was a huge improvement.Then I had to tear up floorboards in the room above to fix the chandelier.

Here is the result.

No mouldings yet, and you can see I have just started making a new floor. I will tell you about it in the next post.

Collecting

I have repeatedly stated that I am a maker, not a collector, but I have recently succumbed to a number of purchases that have taken me off my maker's trajectory. The interesting thing about buying an unusual piece, such as the Marx clock, is that, if you are curious like me, you learn a lot. Sometimes it is something every miniaturist knows, or should know, but I am, as noted, not a collector, and I really don't know much about dollhouse and toy companies.

Last week in Stockholm, a friend took me on an antique shop round, which we usually do when we meet. I was tempted, and I fell. I could have fallen for more, but I showed character. This is what I bought:

I didn't have any particular project in mind, but I couldn't resist it. I think that by now I recognise an interesting piece when I see it.

In fact, the only piece I recognised was the Arne Jacobsen chair, The Egg.

 

I learned about Jacobsen when I was in Copenhagen some years ago, staying in a hotel that had Jacobsen furniture and folders explaining it. They also sold models in 1:6 scale, which I refrained from buying. I had since then been scouting for the Lundby-scale Egg on ebay, and it turns up every now and then, fetching fancy prices. I paid a fancy price for this one, but somehow it is different when you hold it in your hand. It feels authentic in a way you cannot be certain about a picture on ebay. Of course I know that sellers "age" their merchandise, but I am pretty sure that this chair is a genuine Jacobsen from the late '50s. (And if it isn't, I don't care).

Another piece that needed some research was this sofa:

The piece of paper says "Dollhouse furniture, architect J Udd". The person in the shop could not provide any further information. Web search yielded meagre results. "Architect J Udd produced models of dollhouse furniture of good quality in a nice, period-correct '50s design. Produced in the Gothenburg area". Hmmm... helpful. More search. Picture! Just like mine. "Fantastic sofa by architect J Udd. He produced his furniture during the '40s and 50s outside Leksand". Right, slightly contradictory information, but someone in my miniature group confirmed that John Udd made dollhouse furniture and lived in Dalecarlia, not far from Leksand. My miniature-collecting cousin said she had some furniture by Udd, and yet another virtual friend displayed a whole dollhouse of Udd furniture. So now I know that I have a rare piece, but so far I haven't been able to find any further information about the mysterious architect, not on the web, not in the National Encyclopedia or Who Is Who. Investigation continues.

Filling the shelves

Meanwhile, I filled the kitchen cupboard with some utensils.

The mugs or tankards on the upper shelf are pieces from a charm bracelet. The green jars on the next shelf are bits I retrived from a broken electronic device, possibly a printer. The blue and white pots are plastic beads. The yellow pot is a tiny bottle cap, and the frying pan comes from an ebay lot.

This is the most recent view of the kitchen, with the living room in the background. 

Improving kit furniture

While I was pleased with my bedroom furniture, I kept thinking that there must be a way of using the bits from the kit to make something less clumsy. I consulted my miniature group, and they confirmed: it was fully possible to get rid of the ugly tabs. I started with a chair because I had lots of them and could afford a failure. I glued the pieces together with the strongest glue I had and left it overnight. Then I cut off the tabs and sandpapered until the surface was smooth. It is still not as elegant as more expensive kits, but it looks much better.

I made the cupboard in the same way.

I found it quite remarkable that you could see the improvement so clearly. And when I painted it, the difference was still more striking.

 Last of all, I made the table. When I first assembled it, I thought it looked ok. But after I had improved the cupboard it didn't feel satisfactory at all:

Therefore I cut off the tabs (the frame broke in the process, but I managed to glue it back), and again the paint did the trick.

Here is the whole kitchen set:

And here it is in he room. Now I need to make some utensils.

Staircase

Some dollhouses have stairs, others don't. Since my dollhouse was built in a book shelf, it didn't have stairs. When I visited the Museum of Childhood in London with its collection of dollhouses I noticed that far from all dollhouses had stairs. They take a lot of space, but they surely add authenticity. You can buy a kit to build stairs, but I wanted to try myself. I still think, five years later, that it was the most challenging thing I have made. 

I knew from the beginning that the staircase would not lead anywhere, but it didn't really matter. I built the stairs from building blocks covered with self-adhesive shelf film. I glued the stairs to each other and to the sides, which are made from cardboard. The rails are tootpicks, and the holder, a plastic paper binder. The wallpaper is Christmas wrap. It took a long time and a good deal of thinking to make it all work.

 

The next stage was to make a landing, and of course I had to build it elsewhere and fit into the room that had to fit into the shelf. I made the railing the same way. I also made a mock door that does not lead anywhere. I made it, now quite confident, from a photo frame, cardboard and glued on decorations. Mock doors are mysterious and create an illusion of a larger space. This is why I added another mock door on the landing.

This little door used to be a cupboard door in a Barbie house. I painted it and pasted to the wall. It is not to scale at all, but it doesn't matter.

I now had a very interesting bit of space by the staiscase, asking for a piece of furniture. I knew exactly what I wanted to put there. I had been trying to make this cupboard from the very beginning, faling and failing, but finally figured out how to do it.

The base is made of cardboard with stained wooden strip glued on. The glass door is a piece of a broken lantern. It can be opened. This was what took ages to fix. The back mirror is an ordinary pocket mirror glued onto a piece of cardboard. I think it is a grand piece. And it fits precisely in the space by the stairs.

Bathroom

Bathrooms are more prominent in dollhouses than in real life, again because they are fun to make. My bathroom started with this bathtub

Coleslaw container that I painted in metallic and used buttons for legs.

Then I made a cupboard in the same manner I made the book case: from a photo frame

The sheets are old handkerchiefs with lace, and the towels are cut from towels. The big pitcher on top is my own creation in a pottery class. The tap on the bathtub comes from a Barbie house. The little mirror is from a flea market.The marble floor is self-adhesive shelf paper.

Cupboard

It is hard now to remember in what order I did these first miniatures. Possibly, I worked parallel on several projects. If you wonder how I had the time to do all this in just a couple of weeks, let me remind you that I was on sick leave, I couldn't read or do anything that I normally do for a living. It was winter, so I couldn't do any gardening. The only things I could do was exercise and miniatures. Therefore I made so many things right at the beginning.

For the kitchen, I wanted a cupboard, and I found good patterns and intructions in Vivienne Boulton's book. I had to adapt the size to the materials I had, which was once again the venetian blind.

 

It was quite a challenge for a beginning miniaturist, and today I would have made it easier and better, but I still have it and am quite happy about it. The back of the cupboard is a piece of cardboard foil from a package of salmon. Most of the utensils I made myself. The metal tankard on left top is a metal tube glued onto a button, and the handle is made of a tiny piece of foil. The bowl next to it is a plastic bowl painted in metallic. The blue pitcher is made from a ballpoint pen. The plates come from an old dollhouse. I described the coffee grinder in an earlier post. The jar is a transparent plastic tube with a button lid filled with white pepper. The pies and cakes are clay. The "apple slices" are sweet pepper seeds. The pie forms are beer-bottle caps. The citrus press is a toothpaste cap. The copper pans are from ebay, but the two "pewter" pots are painted plastic. Here some more things added, most made of lids, caps and buttons.

I am very proud of the next thing I made because I invented it myself: a butterchurn. 

Small pieces of wood (cut from a cheese box) are glued around a pill tube and held together by rubber bands. The lid is a button.