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  • Drawing Room (almost finished)
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Victorian Mini

~ Adventures in Modeling

Victorian Mini

Monthly Archives: December 2012

Kitchen matters

31 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by cider12 in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

dollhouse, miniatures, Victorian house

So today I thought I’d get to work on the kitchen, which was looking rather bare.

In a box, I found a lot of brown tiles I had started to make back in 2008 to create a kitchen floor, but when I lined them up, they didn’t look very good because they were quite irregular.

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So I decided to trash them and start from scratch.

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Based on my inspiration kitchen in Beaulieu Estate, I had bought a green paint yesterday and whatever packs of terracotta-looking modeling clay were in the local store.

Beaulieu kitchen2

I started by painting the wall pieces green and cream. It didn’t really matter how perfect the line between them was, since it was going to be covered by a black trim, which I also painted (you can see more of them them laid across the top of the pantry walls in order to dry).

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I wanted to glue the black trim in, but to do that I needed to put the door frame trim in first. So I thought I’d put that in, but I needed to know how high the floor would be. So I thought I’d start on the floor, but I realized in order to do that, I needed to know exactly where the fireplace would be. So I glued in the studs for the right-hand wall instead. I would have done the left one, too, but I ran out of supplies halfway through. So the chimney still isn’t glued in…

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Since the hobby stores were closed already, I started experimenting with other ways to create the floor. I tried several patterns and ended up with this one, but I’m not so happy with it. So I may try again tomorrow.

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Here’s the kitchen so far…I laid a couple strips of trim against the back wall, just to see what the black would be like. I think I like the colors together… There will be plenty more black trim and shelves before I’m done with it.

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Still a long way to go in the kitchen…

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Scrubbing the scullery

30 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by cider12 in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

dollhouse, miniatures, Victorian house

Today, I finally got started.

I needed to repair the scullery floor, because some creature(s) had decided to eat the buckwheat flour I had used as grout. Some of the flour had also gotten on the tiles and had stuck to them.

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First, I used a fine steel wool to scrub the tiles.

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Then I swept on a new layer of buckwheat flour.

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And then gave the whole thing several coats of clear acrylic matte coating, so no bugs would go looking for a meal there again…

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Which gave a pretty natural-looking result:

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The ‘linoleum’ for the butler’s pantry also needed to be repaired…some of the paint had peeled away onto the cardboard that had been resting on top of it. So I repainted those bits and gave the whole thing a couple coats of acrylic as well.

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Then, I glued the walls in and glued the linoleum onto the butler’s pantry floor (weighted down with professional weights, naturally…)

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Back in the scullery, I made a chair rail to finish off the one I had started on the right-hand wall and created a windowsill (the wall on the left isn’t glued in yet).

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I was inspired by this dish drying rack…

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…and decided to build one for the scullery.

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I started building a draining board to put under the drying rack, but I was getting tired. It’s propped up with modeling clay packages for now.

So here’s the scullery so far…

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Good night.

First attempts

28 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by cider12 in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

dollhouse, miniatures, Victorian house

Toward the end of grad school, when I needed an outlet in the middle of dissertation-writing, I took the plans out again. After having researched different ways of creating dollhouses, I concluded, due to my lack of wood-working skills, that I would do best with a poster-board walls / wooden studs and joists approach.

Apparently it makes for a lighter house but creates a solid framework…just like an old Victorian wooden frame house.

So early in 2008, I got to work. I started with the back of the house — the kitchen, scullery, and butler’s pantry area…I figured that would be the easiest place to begin.

First, I traced out the floor plan on poster board and added some pre-built furniture to get a sense of the size of the rooms.

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Then I cut the floor out.

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After cutting out a few walls, I propped them up to see what it would look like.

This is a view toward the kitchen, through the scullery on the left and the butler’s pantry on the right.

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I glued the beams and joists in the floor and the studs in the walls:

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Then I got to work on the scullery / wash room. I figured this is where all the dish-washing and laundry would happen, so it needed a good, solid stone floor. I found a couple of modeling clay colors that would work well and created these stone tiles, which I baked in the oven to harden them.

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With a bit of wainscoting, a window, and the ceiling and lamp in place, the room almost looked believable…

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With a quick view from above to show how it worked:

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I experimented with various materials to form the sandy grout, and ended up using buckwheat flour and glue.

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Then I started in on the butler’s pantry. I was inspired by a photo I found. Not sure where it came from. (Addendum: This butler’s pantry photo is from the Meyer May House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Grand Rapids, Michigan.)

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And also by a pattern for Victorian linoleum I found in a book.

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So I traced out a similar pattern on a piece of poster-board and used an X-acto knife to simulate the grooves.

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And started painting away…

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The parts with no linoleum are where I was planning to have built-in cabinets. (I have no idea how I’m going to make those yet…)

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So now I had the basics for two of the rooms:

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Finally, I started the kitchen. I wanted to model it loosely on the kitchen at Beaulieu, in Hampshire, England, which was fully rebuilt during the 19th century (notice the scullery in the background):

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So I built a couple walls and a chimney to surround the stove I had bought.

2008 03 21 Kitchen Walls4b

And then somewhere around that time, I got busy with other things (finishing grad school, looking for jobs) and I packed everything into boxes (the walls were not glued in yet so it collapsed easily) and forgot about it all.

After a move to Indiana and a further move to Pennsylvania, I still had not unpacked the boxes, when, after having visited various local historic houses, I remembered I still had this in the garage somewhere.

So I dug it out. It seems to have weathered the moves well.

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The buckwheat grout seems a bit destroyed (did something try to eat it?…) but the rest is just fine.

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So now my challenge to myself is to go on with this project and document it as I go.

Time, I’ll find some somehow.  Inspiration, I have plenty of it. But technique, skills, materials, and patience…well, those I’ll just have to improvise as I go along.

(Please excuse the poor quality of these early photos. I had a lousy point-and-shoot at the time and I had no idea what white balance was.  Sigh…)

The best-laid plans…

28 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by cider12 in Uncategorized

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Tags

dollhouse, miniatures, Victorian house

It started in the late 1990’s….well, actually, it started a long time before then. I have always been fascinated by miniatures and by old houses.  But sometime in the late 90’s I was skimming through the shelves of the local library and I ran across a tall, slim book, full of architectural plans from 1891.

Fascinated, I took it home.

Somewhere in my brain, I decided one of these would be wonderful to turn into a miniature house, and I settled on this one:

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Along with the description:

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$10,000 for a whole house…maybe the dollhouse version might cost about that now.

Of course, there were a few things I wanted to add to the house….like a library. Every good Victorian house needs a library.  And a nursery.

So I started sketching a little model of what I wanted the floors to look like.

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First Floor Plan: With a huge library…  The arrows on the outside show where I wanted the walls to swing outward so you could see the inside of the house.

(I’m not sure why I thought it was important to show which direction was north, but apparently…) Image

Second Floor Plan : with a sewing room and nursery added…

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Third Floor Plan:  under the eaves…with a billiard room in the attic, just like Samuel Clemens. Although I pity the servants who had to haul that slate up to the third floor…

(I think the numbers on the bottom right are the total numbers of lamps I thought I’d need for the rooms.)

And finally the roof tops:

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Then I started measuring and sketching and making actual scale plans of the entire thing. My imagination was running wild, but I had no idea how to make these plans a reality.  So I dropped the whole project and went back to grad school instead…

Dusting off the cobwebs

28 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by cider12 in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

dollhouse, miniatures

I have a Victorian house in my head, plans and all…I’ve always wanted to turn it into a miniature house.

A few years ago, I started making that a reality, and then got distracted with more important things…life, jobs, etc.

Tonight I dug out the boxes in which I had packed away the project–boxes that had made it through two cross-country moves unopened–and here’s what I found.

Maybe if I start a blog, I’ll be inspired to get back to work on it again…

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  • Bedroom I (unfinished)
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  • Dining room (unfinished)

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