Chippendale breakfront

All this past month my miniature group has been making one of the most magnificent House of Miniatures pieces: the breakfront.

 

It is a rare piece, and I have paid more for it than I will admit, but I fell in love with it at first sight. I bought it last spring, knowing well that it would take years before I was bold enough to start on such a complicated kit, but here I am, encouraged by the group.

I will not show all 29 step-by-step pictures because some of them involved technicalities only interesting during the building itself. The number of parts was intimidating, but practice makes the master, and after all cabinets and chests I had made it was easier to identify parts and decide where they go.

But the first thing was, of course, sanding all parts and then staining. I had recently bought some new stains, including Light Teak, and that's what I used. To my surprise, it turned out much more like the Swedish red mahogany that I used for my very early furniture. But it worked well. I am very patient these days, so I painted four or five coats of stain before I was satisfied.

As I was doing this I noticed that a tiny bit of the magnificent top cornice was broken and realised that I had just thrown away this very tiny bit. Fortunately, I hadn't emptied the wastepaper basket so I could find this bit, no more than a centimeter long. I glued it, sanded and hoped it would stay. It did. Nobody will ever guess it was broken and mended.

There were several points in the instructions that I found confusing and did things differently, with no worse result. Patience was the keyword, particularly with doors, letting the glue set properly.

 

But the difficult part turned up to be the shelves. It was a completely different technique from all previous cabinets and chests, because the shelves had to be assembled directly on the back, left to right:

It looked easy and straightforward, but guess what happened when I came to the right side? Exactly:

Since I had been patient and let the glue set it was all firmly fixed. I had two options: take it apart again, by putting it into a microwave oven to melt the glue, risking that the delicate pieces might break. Or insert a tiny strip of wood into the gap. Which I did. As it turned out, I wasn't the only one having trouble with this assembly. It is really strange that some of these "precision-cut" kits lack precision. My group mates dealt with this in various ways. But I was brutal. I inserted a strip into the gap, and somebody who buys this piece on ebay twenty years from now will hate me and the seller. But from the front, you cannot tell, can you?

 

The rest was easy. I was most anxious about hanging doors, but it went smoothly. You never know. Eventually, it turned out to be easier than some other kits I had made.

This piece is far too large to fit into any of my rooms. I tried it here and there. It needs to be displayed nicely, but most of my rooms have fireplaces at the back. I have temporarily placed it in the upper corridor. I haven't decided what to put inside. The description doesn't say what the owner would display in such a cabinet. China? Silver? Ornaments? Books?

Nursery cabinet

I wanted to make a cabinet to match the nursery bed, and I decided to combine a hutch cabinet and an open cabinet top.

I have made the hutch cabinet twice: one is in a rear corridor, the other as a base for a kitchen cabinet. 

I have made two closed cabinet tops, but it seems that the open top is less common. Now I have one.

I will not show step-by-step pictures. The top cabinet was probably the easiest Chippendale piece I have made, and I have now made more than thirty.

 

I painted the outside with the same paint as the bed, a plain acrylic from a kids' paint set. The inside I painted with the remains of paint from the wardrobe. It is not plain white and I think it goes well with blue.

The base proved easy too, because this was the third time, and I almost didn't have to check the instructions. Not even the hinges were evil this time - both sides went in at first attempt.

For handles, I used small silver beads. I left both the inside of the main cabinet and the drawer unpainted.

As I tried to put some objects on the shelves I realised that the shelves were much smaller than my original nursery shelf made from Jenga blocks ten years ago. Even then I remember that some toys were too big.

 

So now most of the toys will have to lie scattered on the floor. As they do in nurseries.

Hepplewhite cellarette

 How many times have I said that miniature-making is highly educational? Until three weeks ago I didn't know what a cellarette was. If you think logically, a cellarette is a small (wine) cellar so it makes perfect sense. But I had never seen one in full scale. Or maybe I had, but didn't know? I don't think so because I am usually curious about strange objects in museums and ask.

Anyway, a cellarette kit was among my recent purchases, and I couldn't wait to make it. To begin with, it was quite straightforward.

 

Simply a box on top of a table with a drawer and a pull-out shelf.

But then the lid was supposed to be hinged. And I am not very good with hinging. Frankly, I am hopeless with hinges. Of course, one of the very first Chippendale pieces I made had hinges. But at that time I thought that handles and keyholes were more difficult. Now I started to mortice (new word! if you don't know what it means, google it) and realised I would never manage to make it neat and was about to ruin a very beautiful and rare piece. Therefore I stopped morticing and instead used a ribbon, which works just as well.

This is the finished piece. I think it is exceptionally pretty. And when you open it -

 

I will have to make smaller wine bottles to fit into it, but otherwise you see the point, don't you? Such an unusual piece! I will also have to make corkscrews and other implements to put in the tiny drawer. 

Since it is supposed to be movable I have simply placed it in the foreground in the dining room. I may move it to the reception room later.

Funkis kitchen cabinet

I wanted to make a cabinet for the funkis kitchen, because it would look more natural, and also to display some utensils. I had various ideas how to make the cabinet, including close or open, real or fake doors, and I finally decided on a compromise. I had some styrene sheets that I had bought long time ago in a hobby shop, for undefined purposes, possibly for furniture making, so it came handy. I used a candy box of a suitable size as a base and glued the white plastic sheet on it, which I think gave a nice effect. The handles are plastic beads.

The cabinet is very light, and I though it could be easily fixed with sticky dots, but it wouldn't cooperate. I tried double-sided tape, I tried this and that, and finally I made brackets from paper clips. You cannot even see them unless you look closely.

This is the new kitchen. By the way, I also have a new cooker that matched the rest better:

More replacements

I have replaced another piece in my Victorian house. Among the many things from the flea market there was a plastic coffee table, not particularly pretty, but I thought I would decorate it with egg-shell mosaic. I saved egg shells, painted them in two shades of gold, and while they were drying, I took the plastic table to see how it would fit in the room. Frankly, the room is rather crammed already, so another table would probably be too much. And then I suddenly saw the coffee table I made all the way back five and a half years ago when I was taking my very first steps as a miniature maker. I was very proud of myself then, because I had either pinched from somewhere or discovered myself that chess pieces came handy. But it was then. Today, I see how clumsy the table is:

There simply aren't tables like that. And I realised that I didn't have to bother about mosaic; that the plastic table would be just fine. Don't you think?

 

Then I put in the display cabinet from the same flea market round. The displayed objects are too large, but it will have to be so for a while. 

Filling the shelves

A beautiful cabinet needs beautiful books. I printed out rows of books, but as you can see the printie simply replicates the same pattern. To make it more realistic, I re-shuffled books on one of the shelves. I glued the row onto card and left two flaps on both sides. It is also important to cut out the top of the books, otherwise it looks unnatural.

 To make it still more realistic, I added some individual books that can lean agaist each other or lie flat. Such details make the obverver forget that the rest is fake.

Advanced cabinet making

Happy New Year! I believe there are many miniature makers all over the world playing with their Christmas presents today, the last day of the holiday season. I got a lovely present from my children, a kit from a collection that I hadn't known much about - frankly, hadn't known anything about. But this is one of the many joys of miniature hobby: you learn so much. The piece they gave me is a top cabinet, that is, a cabinet to place on top of either a chest or a desk.

Now if anyone had told me five years ago that I would venture on a sophisticated project like this, I'd say no way. Yet here I am.

I must say first of all that the instruction is perfect, which is not always the case with kits. The layout sheet to sort the pieces worked very well. So the first thing I did was stain. There seems to be an ongoing controversy whether you should stain first or glue first, and in passing I learned how how tint glue if you want to glue first, but I didn't do it this time. I stained first, which was yesterday since it takes 24 hours to dry.

The most remarkable technique I learned for this project is Pinning Pattern. I was first genuinely puzzled, but finally figured it out, and the person who invented this should have a Nobel Prize in engineering. I suppose this is a technique cabinet makers have been using ever since the first cabinet was made through trial and error. This is so clever! I wish I had known it before. I am sure all miniature makers are familiar with it, but I have never made anything as advanced as this.

I used a coat of varnish on the surfaces after I had assembed the cabinet and the doors. Then I glued in "glass" panels. Glueing on the door handles was quite a job. Not to do in a hurry. Putting in the door hinges was also hard. In the end, your own fingers are better tools than tweezers. At least for me. But all the tiny pre-drilled holes worked fine.

Isn't it a beauty? But now I will have to get a chest or a desk to put it on, and, really, I take back everything I have ever said about how boring it is to make furniture from kit.