Plastic furniture upcycling

My recent acquisitions of cheap plastic furniture include these items:



All are used, some heavily used, some broken, and none is a valuable vintage object. My new obsession with chalk paint demanded that these things be upcycled into something more interesting. Decide for yourself whether I have been successful. I will show before and after pictures, with occasional comments.

You cannot see it very well in the picture, but the paint created a nice fabric effect on the bedspread.

I will replace the mirror, which was crooked anyway, with a real mirror sheet.

 
I had nothing against the fabric, but I had to remove it, and it was glued firmly and couldn't be saved. I am not sure this is the best fabric, so I may replace it later.

The desk was the right colour, but still looked like plastic. Upcycled, it looked like ancient oak.

This is the result of two afternoons. More to come.

More chalk painting

I have been experimenting further with chalk paint, and while I am still learning, I believe that I have found a technology that I am going to fully embrace in my future miniature-making. Here are some more examples of upcycling furniture that is generally of good quality, but not perfectly finished. Once again, you can paint it with ordinary paint, but you need to remove polish either chemically or by fierce sanding. Chalk paint covers any surface smoothly.

To start with, I repainted the dressing table I showed a few weeks ago. I was quite happy with it then, but my demands on myself have risen. So I used Versailles and waxed first with clear and then with dark wax.

I think this is an improvement.

I got this sideboard at the same car boot sale, just before I left Cambridge.

It is a nice piece, but unnaturally shiny as most similar miniatures, so I repainted it with the paint called Coco. Maybe the difference is not all that striking in pictures, but believe me, it is in reality.

Meanwhile, I raided my son's basement where he had put all dollhouse stuff that my granddaughters didn't want any more. They are too old to play with dollhouses, but too young to engage with them seriously, and if and when they show interest, we will negotiate.

Most of these items are 1:18 scale (Lundby) that I don't normally work with, but this is an excellent opportunity to experiment with paint. Some of these I gave to one of the girls a few years ago when she was visiting and thought she might want. Among them were two cupboards that came with my Tudor house (don't ask me why). I never did anything with these pieces, precisely because they didn't fit into any of my projects, neither in scale nor in style.

Otherwise, it is a nice piece. I used Duck Egg Blue and again clear and dark wax. I used paper clips for knobs. 

 

I put it in a house - the only one I have at the moment - although it is totally wrong style, but it still gives a sense of what it will look like in an appropriate surrounding. 

The second one is similar. I added the tile back all those many years ago, but I never used it in any project except my antique shop where I would put all kinds of things that didn't fit with anything else.

I used the same paint, and I took a picture halfway, just to show the transformation. 

Final look:

Now you may ask, why do I use the same paint for these items? There are several explanations, the simple being that I only have a few tester jars, and because the paint is expensive I want to be absolutely sure that I like it, before I invest in a broader selection. Secondly, I am just playing, and these pieces are not going into any specific project, at least not at the moment, and if they do at some point, they are probably not going into the same project, so it won't matter. And of course I can always paint it over.

In summary, I can confirm that chalk paint is a revolution in miniature upcycling and possibly in miniature-making as well, which I will test as soon as possible. Watch this space.

Exterior progress

My impulsive work on the fronts had unexpected consequences. I liked the colour scheme on the left-hand front so without any further considerations I painted and papered the inside.

 

I am very happy with this, although I still need to add fake mouldings. I will need to visit the DIY store and pinch some 1:1 embossed wallpaper.

But you may have noticed something. The windows are in. And the doors!

Yes, that's right. But it sounds far too simple, and it wasn't. I had completely forgotten what an ordeal it was to put in windows. Just to put me off guard, the first window went in nicely, but the remaining seven were a pain. I realised that I must measure and cut the opening in the paper before I put in the window, but paper after I have put in the window. With one window I forgot, and it was a lot of extra work. Sand, scratch, sand, sand, sand... But when I finally turned the front over to glue on the surrounds I felt that the time had come! Honestly, I hadn't planned to do this until much, much later. But I just couldn't help it.

Everything had been prepared: primed, sanded, painted and sanded again. But as with all steps in this project, the actual work implies much more than the instruction "Glue in place...". The pillars wouldn't go into the pillar caps, and in fact the pillars were 3mm too long and I had to saw it off. The supports didn't fit the openings. The quoins were either 5mm too long or too short, depending on how you view it. I didn't take step-by-step pictures because there wasn't really much to show, but I swore all the way. There were new edges to paint (I had thought I had painted them all), mouldings to cut ("Cut mouldings to size", says the instruction, child's play), yards of masking tape to hold things together.

But my biggest problem, that I had been supressing all the time, was the front door. My beautiful front door that I stained and painted more than six months ago! I said then that it would be months before I got that far, and I was right. Six and a half months later I must eventually face the problem I knew was there all along. The door is bigger than the opening. This is because I bought this door separately - the door provided with the kit wasn't nearly as beautiful.

Now, the kit has been cut with precision laser, and I had to make the opening 1 cm larger. I don't have a laser, and I don't have a proper tool to perform this operation. I won't tell you how I did it because you would view me as a barbarian, but it doesn't matter: after many hours of toil it's done, and whatever didn't look proper is now forever hidden behind the surround.

The French door wasn't much of a trouble except the very last detail that freaked me out: peeling off the protective plastic from the glass. I was clever and put in the door before I glued on the balcony rail, but I didn't want to take off the plastic in case I spilled glue or paint.

I am aware you are getting impatient and don't want any more words, you want a picture! And here it is:




I wish I could say: It's finished, but of course it isn't. The right-hand front isn't even started - you can see one window is crooked because it is just white-tacked. So six more windows, mouldings, quoins, and many, many tiny details that need attention. And of course there is the whole front staircase to build. Now the exterior feels odd without it.

And yet I am glad I have taken this important step. The house is not finished and won't be for a long time. But it looks more finished than a week ago, and an untrained eye won't even notice all the missing details. However, I do. Still a long, long way to go.

Slated roof, continued

I never got another box of biscuits for my slated roof, but fortunately I have immense supply of thin card from the recycling bin at work. I want to show the steps, because when you have seen the result you may not believe that I have made it myself. So here is if not the before, but at least the half-way through:

Yes, it is tedious, therefore I only did it now and then, not at one go. It doesn't matter that the slates are different colour because I will paint them anyway.

When it was finished and looked rather funny, I admit, it was time to paint. I considered red-brown brick tiles, but decided against them because they would contrast too much with the delicate light green of the walls. And anyway, a Georgian house would have slates rather than tiles. Jean Nisbett suggests a mix of gray, yellow and green to produce a good slate colour, which I would have never thought of myself. So I mixed white and black to get gray, then added yellow and green drop by drop, because it is very easy to overdose, and then you will have to throw it away. I got the mix I wanted very quickly and painted with a broad brush.

The effect I had not anticipated was that some slates raised slightly, which made the roof look much more natural. I couldn't have done it on purpose (I tried when they were still dry, but they wouldn't stay). I also, as Nisbett suggests, painted some random slates with a darker shade, for variation and a more authentic look.

And here is a close-up. 

Since I had some paint left I also painted the flat roof top and dormer roofs.

When the slates were dry I varnished them. All in all, I believe that it has taken me 16 hours to make the roof.

Now, once again, you may ask why I am doing the roof which will most likely be the very last part I add to the house, some time a year from now at the very earliest. Firstly, I like variation, and I have been doing interior work for quite a while. Secondly, I like seeing results of my work, and this result has surpassed my wildest expectations. Finally, when I have done almost everything and only have the roof left, it will be ready to attach.

Testing colours

I will not describe every piece I have sealed and primed: this will be a neverending story. I sealed one window today, just to test.

Let's say it takes me half an hour to paint this window with one coat of paint. It's a low estimate, I believe it's more (will take time with the next one) because it is a very delicate job. Prime, sand, prime again, first coat, second coat... Let's say roughly four hours per window. There are twenty-eight windows in this house (basement not counted). Simple maths. When I made windows for my modern house, there were just nineteen, and they didn't have to be primed. (They had to be cut to measure instead). I don't remember how long it took, but I know it was many evenings. But I am not in a hurry. I still haven't received assembly instructions.

What I did today was test the facade colour. Yesterday I bought a tester, which miraculously was just about enough for two coats, although I may have to paint another one.

I painted the ground floor with sandstone paint. I thought the pattern looked stony. The pictures of Downton Manor on the web are all the same. I suppose people who have made this house don't call it Downton. I will call it something else when the house reveals its true name to me. If you are reading this and have, or know of, other pictures, please share. But even if I am building from kit I want my house to be unique. That's what it looks like after I painted on top of the sandstone. The paint is deliberately uneven. When it was even it didn't look natural.

 

I painted outdoors, on the garden table. I used two pieces of hard foam to hold the frame. One site that I have read recommended to put painted pieces on spagetti while drying. It may seem a good idea, but I believe it is unethical to use food for anything other than eating. 

I am pleased with my achievement today. It's not a lot, but it feels a good start.

A Swedish kitchen

About a year ago, a cousin gave me a miniature kit from Kotte Toys, who offer a fabulous range of chairs, but also have some other furniture kits, including "Lina's sofa" inspired by illustrations from Astrid Lindgren's Emil books. The sofa is a typical Swedish piece from mid-19th century.

It took me a long time to start on the sofa because it didn't fit into any of the projects I was working on, but then one day I decided to make it and see what happens.

This was the first piece I made from kit, and it was quite straightforward. The instruction was excellent, and all bits fit in perfectly. The interesting part, however, was painting. Sofas like this would typically be red, white or blue. I didn't want red, and I thought that white would be too plain, so blue it was. But of course simply painting it blue wouldn't be any challenge. It had to look old and worn-out. And there is a special technique to do it. I had read about how to make picture frames look old, but it was just as suitable for sofas.

First, you paint your piece the colour you want it to be. Then you apply an ordinary candle every here and there. Then you paint over with a coat of white, and then rub away the white with sandpaper. Where the candle wax has been applied, streaks of white remain. The first time I did it, it became far too worn-out, so I had to do it all over again several times before I was happy. And I had a piece of fabric that was just right.

I had the sofa in my bookshelf, all alone, because it didn't fit within any of my houses or roomboxes. It was obviously waiting for its own project. And then, one day...