The Walls Go Up!

It's not much to look at yet, but this is the start of a new roombox. In an earlier blog, I showed a picture of a PowerPoint slide where I had drawn out the floor plan.

Since this was my idea to make an old-fashioned barbershop, I'm leading our miniature club in this project. I hope it turns out well!

As you can see, we glued a framework very much like what you'd see in a real building, except for one thing - these boards would be 4 x 4's if they were in full dimension. I discovered when I built my last roombox using this methodology that gluing up a scale 2 x 4 wall was flimsy. When 2 x 4 frames are built in real life, builders use big honking nails to hold the pieces together. But in miniature, I used only glue. End result? My walls weren't very solid - they fell apart on me a couple of times when I moved the frame around. This time, I've used a heavier base wood (3/8" x 3/4") and 3/8" x 3/8" timbers for the uprights. As a result, the walls are far more sturdy.

I will change the photo in the back wall. I didn't like the angle, and there were too many cars in the photo. I took a different photograph from First Street in Salida, Colorado, did some photo shop work to remove two cars, and now have a wonderful set of Victorian store fronts with no cars!

We'll add acid free matte board to the front of the framework above to create the walls for this old fashioned barbershop. Next month we'll be adding the revised "view" out the front window, walls with wallpaper, a wall of bricks outside the shop door along the back, and maybe even the tin ceiling and if time allows. It will be a busy day of building!

Layers of Wood Make an Impression

At the left is the newel post of my latest dollhouse. I turned the ball portion of the post on my miniature, Dremel lathe. Once I had turned the piece, then I used my Dremel tool to rout out the side of the post near the base.

Next, I took a 3/32" piece of walnut and rounded the edges of the wood using the Dremel tool again. Once I made the half-round edge, I ran it through my miniature table saw to cut the molding that protrudes just above and below the flowers on the post. I had to carefully miter these pieces to fit the post. (I cut this wood extra long so I had plenty of wood in case I made any erroneous cuts, and I did make a few bad cuts.)

Last, I took out my trusty jeweler's saw and cut out three very tiny flower appliques from 1/16" walnut. I then used my carving knives, rifler files and emery board to add the detail to the center of the flower and the flower petals. Then I glued the appliques to the post.

The finish started with some clear stain applied to the post to bring out the wood's natural color. I finished it off with several coats of Deft spray varnish, rubbed down with 4 ought steel wool between coats of varnish.

Whimsy in a Box

This jack-in-the-box is in the baby's room of Pam's dollhouse.

I made this piece a number of years ago. The teddy bear in the box is made of Fimo. The box itself is cherry wood that I cut on my old Dremel table saw (which I wore out completely over the years).

The B on the front of the box and the raised wood on the edges surrounding the B help to give it an old-fashioned building block appearance. (I used my jeweler's saw to cut out the B on the front.)

I used watercolor paint to paint the toy horse on the side of the cube. There's a picture on the top, too, although, where it sits in the dollhouse, no one ever sees it. I added wood stain over the top of the watercolor painting, which gave the piece a somewhat aged appearance.

I mounted the bear on a toothpick and then inserted the toothpick onto a ballpoint pen spring. So, if anyone ever picks up the toy, the bear wobbles inside just like it would in a real jack-in-the-box. However, I didn't make it so that the bear pops up out of the box. The lid is permanently ajar.

(By the way, if you click on the photo, I think you can get a much closer/larger view of the box. This Web site works that way on my PC, at least.)

Building Exact Replicas

This is a replica of the secretary desk my grandmother purchased from a second-hand store in Kansas City back in the 1920's. It's solid cherry wood, and it's cut out exactly to the dimensions and details of the old desk.

In fact, the flip-down writing desk has some ink stains on the original where someone dripped ink down the side of a bottle of ink - probably when they were filling a fountain pen. I duplicated that ink stain as well using a brush and some india ink. I didn't stuff the little drawer full of pens, however. (Whenever I needed a pen or pencil, I went to that top, right-hand drawer to get one.) Going to that extreme with the realism was just too much work for no visible reward!

I couldn't have made this replica without the use of the scale I described in my first blog. For those of you who didn't read that one, I've taken some pictures to show how this works. You can see in the first picture I'm measuring a tiny drawer from another full-size object.
Next, I take that measurement over to the 1" to 1' conversion scale and set the ruler down onto the scale.

Finally, I turn the ruler sideways on the conversion scale (see photo below) and then measure up to the mark I made on the scale. I now have a precise measurement of the drawer in 1/12th inch scale.

I created the conversion scale using PowerPoint and printed it out on a legal size piece of paper. If you'd like me to send you that file, please post a comment and let me know. I'm happy to share it. Thanks!

Waiting for a Home...

I saw this fireplace in a home decorating magazine and it looked so tasty, I just had to try to build it! Our club had recently learned how to make faux marble; so I used those techniques to paint the wood.

The hardest part of making this fireplace was to do the turnings on each side of the firebox. They still aren't quite perfect, but I'm not going to go back and do it again at this point.

On either side of the round inset near the top, there's a leaf pattern carved into the "marble." I used my jeweler's saw and simply cut out the effect and then when I painted it, I allowed the paint to settle down into the hole cut by the saw. That was probably the easiest part of making the whole piece!

Soon, very soon, this fireplace surround will find a home in front of a pretty, painted yellow wall with a window beside it and a view of the Collegiate Peaks in the distance. But I first need to finish the dollhouse and the barbershop!

Tiny and Very Messy Workshop

Okay, I have visual proof that it's time for me to slow down, and spend a complete weekend cleaning up and reorganizing my workshop. There isn't a single surface that isn't currently cluttered! For those of you who have followed this blog for a while, here are two different views of my tiny workshop. It would make a very small bedroom, if I cleaned everything out of the room.

The top photo shows the cabinet I built to sit on top of my workbench. The bottom two drawers have small paint bottles in them. The area overhead holds all my miniature wood and various types of moldings. I used cardboard tubes from wrapping paper to create small, long containers to hold the various pieces of molding.

In the lower photo, you can see the start of a new room box sitting on my workbench with a picture frame on top of it. Michaels had a sale on them; so I bought one I liked for the antique barbershop I'm building.

S-c-r-o-o-g-e!!

I thought you all might enjoy seeing a complete view of one of the roomboxes I've built. This is the Scrooge! roombox I built a number of years ago. It won a blue ribbon and best of show at the Iowa State Fair. I did my best to incorporate everything Dickens described in Ebenezer Scrooge's bedroom, including the barely burning coals in his fireplace.

I also let my imagination spin free with adding details I think would have been a part of Scrooge's room, such as cracks in the walls, a broken window with a rag stuffed in it, a broken chair leg propped up with books and a board, a hole in the ceiling and items with IOU tags attached to them throughout the room.

This project started with my building the fancy bed and wondering, "Now, what do I do with this?" The bed had a fancy coverlet on it. Once I realized it had to be Ebenezer's bed, I took the coverlet off, created a sagging mattress and stained the sheets with tea bags. I left the bed unmade. That's how I imagined Scrooge would live. He never would have taken the time to fuss with making a bed - a useless expenditure of energy!

I drew the image of Marley's ghost, then had it photographically etched into a piece of glass that now fills the doorway. The ghost "glows" because I placed a light that shines down on the edge of the glass. I also drew the fireplace tiles and stitched the fireplace screen. I carved Scrooge from a 2x4 piece of pine, and created all of the furniture in the room. (My Web browser allows me to click on the top image and view it in much greater detail. I encourage you to try that, since the quality and details are so much better when it's larger!)