Messy kitchen, part 2

The second part of my messy kitchen project was focused on details. The joy of a project like this is thinking of all small things that add to the authenticity, as well as tell a story. This scene tells a sad story, but it cannot be helped.

To begin with, I removed all objects from the box and added mold in the corners and dirt on the floor.

I made this really disgusting green mold by applying a thin layer of glue and rubbing in green oasis foam. I think the result is very convincing. Dirt is simply diluted brown paint.

Next, I put back the units, the fridge, the table and the cupboard and started playing with small objects. I put them in and removed and moved them around. Some items I initially was sure would be there proved superfluous, for various reasons. Some were slightly wrong scale, and you could see it. Some just didn't feel right. Also while I wanted chaos I didn't want to overload the scene too much.

When I thought I had found the right place, I fixed the item with a glue dot - it can be removed if needed. 

After a couple of intensive hours, here is what it looks like.

Of course, you cannot see all details in this picture, so let's have a closer look, clockwise from left bottom corner.

 

There is a garbage bin, a shopping basket, a dustpan and a pair of rubber boots. More or less tidy. Maybe not used too often. The bin is a shampoo bottle cap; the rest are commercial items that came in different lots. I have painted the basket.

A flattened package of cereal. It was already flattened when it arrived in a lot, and for once I didn't have to mend it. An empty bottle of juice - eye-drop container with a label cut from a catalogue. Quite a few objects here come from my retro kitchen, now demolished. The towel rack is made from a cooking-oil bottle cap, and the towel is a bit of a full-scale towel.

I showed the arrangement on the cooker, corner unit and sink in the previous post, and I haven't added much. The kitchen towel rack is commercial, and the brush - doesn't this pink colour speak volumes about its owner? - is from a larger lot. It is a perfect finishing touch on the hob.

The clock on the wall is made from a spice-jar lid, and the clock face is cut out from a catalogue. 

I have added a few things on the table, including a shoe and a roll of toilet paper, neither belonging there. Another shoe has somehow got into a fruit bowl on the floor, and there are bottles everywhere. Only a few bottles are authentic, with real labels. They are in the foreground, to catch attention. The rest are eye-drop containers, painted green. There is also a food magazine on the floor - an ironic or even sarcastic detail.

On the fridge, an ice tray - almost all ice has melted. A bottle and a can of coke. And you cannot see that the fridge door has been mended, can you?

On the chair, there is another whisky bottle, a fake bottle and a cap - whose cap? In the foreground, another shoe, another bottle (nice wine, can this person appreciate it? Maybe someone gave it to them), another crushed package, an old cassette player, a crumpled newspaper - and a fire extinguisher! At least if there is a fire, maybe it can be stopped.

The cupboard is relatively tidy, with plates and cups and groceries, but there is another empty bottle and a tooth brush. And what is a champagne bottle doing there?

There are of course many further details I can add. A full ashtray. A withered plant. A half-eaten bread roll. But I will stop for a while. A project is never finished.

One final thing I made was a LED-strip over the cooker. It is not essential, but can be nice for display.

I am pleased with the final look.

Messy kitchen

It has been a while since I did any upcycling projects. I had planned to upcycle this kitchen for a long time.

It is good quality, but a dime a dozen, and my idea was to paint it with chalk paint, maybe distressing a bit. But as I started painting I suddenly felt I wanted to use it in a scene. Working on the book nook has made me eager to create more living environments. Some comments that I have received pointed out that the book nook very clearly told a story. I don't think any of my projects tell a story, not even the largest dollhouse. They are static, frozen in a moment. I want them all to tell a story, or many stories, but I haven't got there yet. I want there to be broken tea cups, spilled milk, dirty clothes, opened books. Tokens of presence.

This is why I decided to use the kitchen set in a scene of a messy kitchen. I haven't yet decided how messy, but I'd like to create an impression that someone has just left it in haste, and maybe this person hasn't been very tidy to begin with. The time will be vague 1960s-70s as I have many objects from those days.

I had already painted the kitchen units when I got the idea, and there wasn't much I had to change.

Obviously, the oven had to be black inside, and the front white. I painted the knobs and taps that were far too shiny. I added a drain in the sink (jewellery finding). I distressed a bit, not too much yet, it will depend on how the project develops.

I had saved a good cardboard box, exactly the same size as wine boxes that I had used before for room boxes and that are impossible to get these days. I made the first tentative layout.

I wanted a door in the back because a door always creates a sense of extra space. This door has been used in several earlier projects - I am sure this is not the last time. I can make a door of cardboard, but I happened to find it as I was looking for something else, so I can just as well use it.

The lovely fridge needs a door so I will have to figure out how to make it.

The cupboard is not quite in the same style, but it will work if I don't find anything better.

I think I have mentioned repeatedly in my posting that when I work on a project I like to put in as many details as possible from start, even if I then need to take them out again. It gives me a better sense of what I am doing. So after I had painted the walls and ceiling and attached suitable floors, I put in the furniture and dozens of objects that may or may not be part of the final scene, but play a role in the process. For instance, one of the chairs got knocked over unintentionally, but I saw immediately that it would be precisely like that in the final scene.

I mended the fridge to my best ability with what I had at home. One day when I can go to craft shops again I can make a better door, but it will be in the background so will work for now - or so I hope.

I haven't yet decided how messy my messy person will be, for instance, will they leave the fridge door open, but in any case there must be at least some stuff there. I will also add fridge magnets and such.

Next I "dressed" the sink.

This is something I would never, ever have in my kitchen, but that's the point of miniature-making, isn't it - creating something you would never have in real life. I didn't want to use my nice vintage plates in this project, and they wouldn't even be fully visible. Instead, I made plates from egg cartons, gluing them together at random and adding some disgusting food remnants. The knives and forks are cheap ones from Tiger, but they were far too new and shiny, as pointed out by someone with whom I shared this step, so I aged them a bit. Soap bottle came with a lot. From the cabinet, a garbage bag is falling out. But I am most proud of my mold. I had never seen a mold tutorial so I asked one of my miniatures groups. I got plenty of suggestions, but as often happens, others' advice can push you toward an original solution. Lint from tumble-dryer! I want patent on it.

I am quite pleased with this assembly. It looks truly disgusting to me.

Next, I did the corner cabinet. I didn't bother putting stuff into it since it won't be visible at all. But the counter must be crammed and untidy. 

The objects are a mix of commercial, mostly from large ebay lots, and handmade or upcycled by me. For instance, I added labels to wooden playscale bottles. To make spilled milk I used Tipp-Ex. Few people today will even know what it is. In the Stone Age before computers, it was used to paint over typos in typewritten manuscripts. It dries fast and is perfect for mock liquids, but it is the first time I used it. I recently got a bottle from a friend who had apparently saved it for the past thirty years - thanks a lot! The baking trays come from an eye-shadow box, and I put some unidentifiable food there. The rotten fruit is some dried berries I had in my grocery stall project. 

The next step was the hob. I had a little pan with eggs and black pudding that I used as it was. I put some couscous in a pot and covered with mold since I now knew how to make it. There is also some general dirt and coffee stains.

Setting the table was exciting. Here I wanted spilled coffee, and to make it I used grey chalk paint mixed with brown acrylic. For the right effect, I filled the cup, then tipped it so the liquid ran out in a natural way. What was left of the coffee, I poured into other cups, then almost emptied them to leave a bit at the bottom. I made some stain rings as well - in real life, they make me want to yell. For cereal, I used a few fennel seeds and covered them with Tipp-Ex. I had made all the bread from Fimo at a workshop some time ago. The whisky bottle completes the image of the person who lives here.

I will stop here for the time being and consider further details. I don't think this scene tells the whole story yet.

To be continued.

House restoration: basement

With the attic restoration done, I went three levels down to the basement. I know it probably doesn't make sense, but the basement also looked like it didn't need a lot of repair, and I was eager to have as many rooms as possible finished. Actually, there is some logic in getting kitchens done before anything else.

There are two kitchens in Womble Hall, as in any mansion with self-respect: best kitchen and working kitchen. Best kitchen is just for show; it is never used to cooking. It displays fine copper utensils and other implements that are never used. Best kitchen at Womble Hall is full of objects, a mixture of handmade and bought, and I keep adding to it.

The scope of damage was tolerable, mostly mouldings.

But of course the cutlery in the cupboard got muddled.

I am very particular about proper order of cutlery in my 1:1 kitchen so I spent some time sorting minicutlery with tweezers.

Then I put in most of the furniture and utensils. The greatest challenge was the shelf next to the stove. Everything else I could fill with pots and pans before inserting into the room, but for this shelf I had to reach into the room. A good deal of patience, and the show kitchen is done.

The working kitchen was miraculously almost fine, except for a broken window and a few tiles missing from the floor.

The window was easy just to press in gently. I found the tiles in the far corner and glued them back. I made this floor many years ago from air-drying clay. Today I would have done it from egg cartons, which would have been easier and neater. I think I will replace it some time, but not now. It looks fine. 

The stove was slightly broken.

It is handmade and easy to mend. And putting it back was also a good moment to see the room before it was filled with stuff.

When I opened the box marked "Kitchen, small things", I realised that it contained a mix of objects from all basement rooms, therefore it would make sense to deal with them at this point. The pantry looked fine, just a few broken shelf legs. And the mouldings had got unstuck.

It is very difficult to work in the pantry because it is so narrow. When I put in my hand, I cannot see what I am doing. When I first built it, I used tweezers to put stuff on the shelves. I like moving things around so I don't glue them. I considered taking out the shelves to mend, but it felt too complicated. I just glued on the missing bits.

The entrance looked relatively fine.

One chain on the ceiling light has gone off, but I cannot do much about it now because it is attached from the floor above so I will deal with it when I move on to that room. I cannot fix it as it is, again because the room is too narrow.

The door into the rear corridor was jammed, and when I managed to open it, I discovered that the back stairs were broken.

 

This will be very difficult, not to say impossible to mend, because the rear corridor is sealed off, and I cannot access it without dismantling the whole basement. Of course I can just close the door, but it would be a shame because it is such an interesting feature. The corridor is also visible from side windows. I have no idea how to go about it.


Meanwhile, I took everything out of the box marked "Kitchen, small things", contemplating the sheer scope of objects I have in the basement alone.

Most of these I made from rubbish or upcycled. Here are some close-ups.

I was so overwhelmed by this sight that I sat still for a while, staring at it, not knowing where to start. If I hadn't had two destructive felines sharing my living space I would have left it until tomorrow, but my options were either find a place for every object or pack them all again. Guess what I chose! And it wasn't that bad at all, just as in full-scale (which I went through recently). Once you put every item where it belongs, it doesn't look crowded or messy.

Here is the working kitchen, just like it was before. The cook and the kitchen maids are happy.

 

There are a couple of details missing that I will hopefully find in another box of "Small things": two antique tin shelves where all the pewter stuff will go (which is a mix of expensive antique and painted plastic), as well as a set of servant bells. There may be other items scattered in various boxes.

Here is the pantry, full of goods.

 

I have considered gluing everything on with glue dots, but will wait a bit. I have recently attended a course in making miniature breads, so I may want to replace bread, cheese and pies that I made fifteen years ago. It is amazing how our standards rise. Fifteen years ago I was proud of my breads.

Finally, the entrance. As I said, the lamp will be mended later.

This lower entrance is used for deliveries, this is why there are so many food baskets. I still feel upset about the broken stairs, but now much I can do right now.

And not to forget the fronts.

I could never understand why people might NOT want to decorate the fronts. There is so much interesting space to be added. In this case, all the utensils to be proudly displayed.

Anyway, now the whole basement is in relatively acceptable shape. Relatively, because there is some work on the exterior to be done, and the wiring has either to be mended or removed and replaced. But I feel I have made clear progress.

To be continued.

Milk canister

I have made milk containers and canisters before, mostly using hotel-size shampoo bottles or eye-drop dispensers, like this one:

 

This time I wanted to do it a bit differently. I still used a plastic eye-drop bottle - I have endless supplies of these.

 

Don't throw away the cap - they make perfect lamp shades. But cut off the nozzle.

 

Acrylic paint doesn't work on plastic so I used enamel. It's messy, it smells and takes ages to dry. I use florist foam to let painted items dry on a stick.

 

For handles, I used heavy staples that come with wine crates. Or shall I say, used to come, as wine merchants don't give away or sell their wine crates any more. But I have a stash of these staples; they come handy for various things. It is easy to make holes in a plastic bottle.

 

Since my canister will be permanently sealed, I didn't bother cutting the staples to measure, they are simply inside the bottle.

For lid I used one of the many metal caps I once got from a miniaturist friend - I think they are for making fabric-covered buttons.

This was a quick project, apart from drying time.

Step by step: larder

There was no larder in the original Victorian house, but there was a cellar where storage of food, preserves, wine and other stuff started. There was no space for a cellar in the cabinet house, so some of the objects were in the kitchen and some were saved for later. And "later" came with Womble Hall that had a suitable room for a larder, to which a door leads from the working kitchen. The larder appeared briefly in some pictures in this previous post.

To display miniature food you need a lot of shelves and other storage so this is where I started. Then I just kept adding stuff, such as glass jars. Eventually, I built more shelves and also aged them with diluted stain for otherwise they didn't look natural.

Most of the food is handmade by me, although there are some things that came in large bundles. Of course cheese and bread would not be left on shelves, particularly with mice running around, but with closed cabinets of course you cannot see the stuff. So this is typical poetic license.

There is a lot more I can do in this room, like adding wall units or hooks to hang things from. The problem with overcrowded rooms is that eventually you cannot see anything in the background, and this room is narrow and deep. But even as it is I think it is a nice complement to the kitchen.

Step by step: working kitchen

Reiterating: the difference between best kitchen and working kitchen is that the former is for show while all cooking is done in the latter. This explains why the working kitchen in Womble Hall is so much more crowded and messy.

In my post about the best kitchen I described how it came about and how it developed so I won't repeat it. I will start with planning the working kitchen at Womble Hall.

Both kitchens would be in the basement, and after some considerations I decided that the working kitchen would be to the right, because from that room there was a door to what could only be a larder. (There is also a door at the back leading into the rear corridor to which I will return in due time).

I decided to keep the flagstone floor in the working kitchen, simply because I had put so much energy into it.  There were other options, but really, I liked that floor too much. I also kept the splash wallpaper, although of course I had to make a new set.

I worked quite a while on the basement before I put on the roof. And that didn't happen for a long time, by which I discovered that some things were left unfinished.

But after I assembled the whole house I didn't do anything radical in the kitchen, just kept adding things here and there. The most conspicuous change was the new cupboard. Reluctantly, as with many other items, I discarded the first dresser I made when I was a beginner. But the sink is still there, and the very first table is also there. As are the dolls.

The utensils in this room are mostly recycled rubbish. The milk canisters, for instance, are eye-drop containers. The black pots and pans on the shelf on the left wall are painted wood. But if you look carefully and know what you are looking for there are some expensive antiques hiding among other stuff.

Among interesting features of this room are servant bells.

The door in the foreground leads to the larder, which I will probably show next. The door in the background leads to the corridor, and when the main lights are switched off, light comes from the corridor, which I will also show in due time.

There isn't much space for more stuff here, but I have a whole wall of utensils on the inside of the front, and I keep adding to it. I need to put stuff into cupboard drawers. Nobody will ever see it, but it's important for authenticity.

Step by step: best kitchen

Don't try to google "best kitchen" - the first two million hits will be offers of kitchen design. Best kitchen in well-off Victorian houses or manors were kitchens for show only, kitchens where you would perhaps invite guests to admire you copperware. The real cooking was done in the working kitchen, and of course in a large houses there would be separate kitchens for servants, preparing different kind of food than for the masters and their guests.

I decided to have two kitchens in Womble Hall because I had so many interesting kitchen items, some of them not really matching each other, and kitchens are fun to make.

In the original house, I only had one kitchen that occupied a whole floor. It started very early, even before I made my very first piece of furniture. When I decided to go into dollhouses, almost exactly ten years ago, on December 27, 2007, I went to a huge permanent flea market in Stockholm to buy cheap recyclables, and among many things I found was a lovely handmade kitchen table in the right scale. I have always seen it as a good omen. And that was the beginning of the kitchen, where I made most things from rubbish.  I made a cupboard and filled it with stuff, I made a stove that I am still proud of, and it is still right there, in the best kitchen of Womble Hall. I made a kitchen sink which is also still there; and I kept adding and making things, because really, kitchens are probably the most exciting rooms to make. Some of those early things were very crude because I had neither tools nor materials nor skills. Other things I still have today, like milk bottles. I also tried making food from air-drying clay. I was on long-term sick leave, and making miniatures was a good way of coping with it. I know I am by far not the only one.

Then  we moved to Cambridge, and I rebuilt the house in a cabinet. Again, because kitchens are fun, I allowed a whole floor out of three for the kitchen. I spent hours making a flagstone floor. I wasn't on sick leave anymore, but I was depressed and very tired, trying to adapt to the new country and new job. Resurrecting and improving a lost world was soothing.

There was so much in the kitchen already, and then I got distracted and had other projects, involving a modern kitchen, a Tudor kitchen, a retro kitchen, a half-scale kitchen, so it was not until I started working on Womble Hall that I returned to the Victorian kitchen, when I also decided that I would have two.

Both were in the basement, and to begin with I wasn't sure which would be which. The suitable rooms were opposite each other, to the left and to the right, without a door between them. The right-hand room had a door into what would make a good larder, and that decided it. The working kitchen went to the right, and the best kitchen to the left. I made a marble floor for the best kitchen.

I kept moving objects between kitchens, but the principle was that showy things, like copper - real and fake - would be in the best kitchen, as well as the showy utensils, clearly not for everyday use.

The main design of the kitchen has remained the same, although I have added quite a few new pieces of furniture, including a cabinet, a chair table and some other tables. Tables are useful to display objects in a kitchen.

As to objects, I haven't made a lot, but I keep adding suitable items that I occasionally buy in antique shops. I don't buy many expensive things, but sometimes I cannot resist them. And this is a show off kitchen after all.

The door at the back leads to the rear corridor.  I will write a separate post about rear rooms, but note than when the main lights are off there is light coming from the corridor.

And if you look in through a side window you can see part of the corridor.

There is a lot more that can be done in this room, and I guess I will be adding to it forever.