Working on the Kitchen floor, plus rough carpentry

Here's how the floor is looking after the first few coats of glaze.

There are things I quite like about it, and things I am really, really not happy with.  The floor was scored a little too enthusiastically in places :)  leaving big lumps and gaps.  Some of the stones look great.  Some look just ... fake.  What I Have Learned From This:  just as I learned not to score floors at night (from the Great Hall experience :)  I have now learned not to score floors all the way down to the wood, and to try to keep things lump free from the beginning!

I think I'm going to have to try cleaning up some of the grout lines, perhaps with my rotary tool, and then replastering some bits.  Or I'll stage the room so that this part of the floor is totally covered with stuff :)

But I'm very happy with the little shelf I built for the hot plate alcove!  It's balsa wood, with a very weak wash of burnt umber and white.  I think it adds a lot of interest over the charcoal burner.

And here's my first attempt at a rustic Tudor sideboard, as seen in Hampton Court.  I'm going to cut it down -- make it both less deep and shorter, so it'll fit in my space, but I'm pleased with the overall effect.  Again, it just got a weak colour wash so it would keep its rustic good looks :) It's a really rough piece of basswood I got in a craft package, and works well for this application right out of the bag. At the moment it's balancing on top of the chimney breast!

Playing with the kitchen :)

I've moved the Kitchen Hall up to my workroom, and I've been playing with furniture and accessories, trying to get a sense of scale and what I can fit in this room.

I think I'll put a shelf above the hotplate, so I'll make the arch a little higher there than it would have been.  It'll be nice to have some extra storage space for pots and so forth, because I think I'm going to be a little short of it, otherwise!  It's at times like this that I really regret only making the dolls castle 12 inches deep -- it's a bit skimpy sometimes.

This is the fireback I'm going to use here, and I moved the sucking-pig-on-a-spit in here from the Great Hall, where it lived over Christmas.  I won't need this sort of andiron here -- I'll have cob irons built in, with niches for logs on either side of the fire.  The back of the fireplace will be bricked.

You'll have to use your imagination extra hard, here!  Imagine there's a wall between the ovens and the next room, which will be the storeroom (see the barrels?) I think only a fairly slender table will work here -- I was going to put a plain wood settle on this wall, but I think I need storage and display space more than a comfy place for the cook (me!) to sit :)  The sideboard in the picture is a little too fancy for this time period for a kitchen, but I do like the potboard underneath it.  I bought it for my William and Mary house, but I guess it'll do here until I make something a bit more rustic!

Edited to add this photo of the perfect early Tudor sideboard, from Hampton Court -- this is it!  And the stone colour is the perfect reference for this floor ...

Egg carton stones

I've been researching making stones or bricks out of egg cartons, because I thought it might be a great way of edging the fireplaces in the kitchen.

Problem is, it's darned hard to find paper egg cartons with solidly flat lids where I live.  And the ones I can find are pretty flimsy (not like the egg cartons I remember when I was a child :)  But I really want to try this technique, so I guess I'll be buying a lot of eggs!  What can I make with a lot of eggs? (besides meringues, for pity's sake, because when I consume meringues, a great deal of whipped cream is involved :)

If you want to check out this technique, here are some two links:


China Doll -- Brick Tutorial

Carol Jones's Egg Carton tutorial at Victoria Miniland

This one also has some wonderful suggestions for grouting in general!

Castle kitchen - floor and hotplate

When the KnitWits met yesterday, we worked a bit on the kitchen.  Tiddles helped me cut the wood for the hot plate surround and she and Fred worked on the kitchen floor.  We smeared a relatively level amount of Poly Filla over the floor and then the kids scored it with knitting needles to make stones.  It needs to be sanded and so forth, but they did a great job :)

Later, I used the balsa wood cut outs that Tiddles made to construct the box in which the brick hot plate (over the charcoal burners) will live.  Again, it needs a lot of cleaning up (and I need to make the arch which will form the top of the hotplate opening) but it's starting to look like a room, already.  I'm not going to glue it in place yet -- at least not until Tiddles has had a chance to build the spiral staircase.

Tudor miniature shopping ... at Etsy!

I used to sell my artwork through Etsy, so I'm very familiar with the venue, and its good and bad points.  The good points definitely include some amazing artists and artisans who sell their work there.  I just thought I'd share links to a few of the Etsy shops that offer miniatures appropriate for the Tudor or miniature dolls house.

First up is Wightcraft, a miniature furniture builder from Cowes on the Isle of Wight in the UK.  The handcrafted settle, above, is one piece currently available from Wightcraft's shop.

Undancey is the name of Glenda Howell's shop:  she's a New Zealand artisan who makes very reasonably-priced miniature rush mats.  Wouldn't this little beauty (1.5" x 4.5") add a great level of detail to your Tudor bed chamber?

Cottage Miniatures is a UK-based shop which sells handcrafted 1:12 scale miniatures of all sorts, including some beautiful copper and brass ware (great for that Georgian house) or Tudor pieces like a punishment stocks and the lovely bed, pictured above.

And finally, for people looking for those hard-to-find Tudor items in half- or quarter-scale (1:24 or 1:48),  there's an Etsy shop called In Some Small Way, which makes both finished pieces and kits, like the half-scale dresser pictured above.  They have a quarter-scale loom kit which is the cutest thing!

Kitchen construction -- first phase

I finished my cut outs this morning and then I helped David put the basic box together.

From the first project (the Great Hall), David chose a method of construction which is simple and very, very strong.  On the back wall I first put the horizontal member that will support the back of the roof.  Then David put lengths of pine off cuts, roughly .75" square in section, running from just under the horizontal supports, down to the bottom of the back wall.  These vertical supports look just fine for this sort of dolls house, and mean that the sides are being nailed to something very sturdy. 

The side walls are then glued and pinned to the vertical supports (David uses a nail gun, because we happen to have one, but you could just as well use a hammer and nails) and then the whole thing is turned upside down and the base is glued and nailed to the back and sides.  This is the only part of the project where we nail into end grain, which helps make it very sturdy -- when this piece is done, you can sit on it, which is great if it's a building being played with by kids.

You could certainly do this sort of project with just an electric drill and jig saw.  For smoother cuts of the plywood (we used 1/2" for the base and 3/8" for the back and walls) just ask your local building supply centre to make the cuts for you -- they'll usually do this for only a few dollars a cut.  If you don't mind a purely rectangular building, it's an inexpensive and easy way to put it together.  I figure we'll use about $30 worth of plywood in this hall, with the floor and the roof and the dividing walls.

The photo above will give you a better idea of what I meant when I said that the ovens on the back wall would be cut out of 2" thick lumber (actually I laminated two pieces of maple together, because that's what I had on hand.)  It's not really very deep, but I think it will be deep enough.  I might build out the surround with some egg carton stones worked around the fireplace and oven openings.

Kitchen Plan

Before I go any further, here's a little sketch of the ground floor of the kitchen wing.  It's not to scale, but shows the relative placement of features.

David and I cut the floor and walls of this wing a couple of days ago out of 3/8" plywood.  I marked the back up for windows and doors, and I've cut most of these out with a hand-held jigsaw.  I just have a few more to do, and then we can assemble the shell, leaving off the main floor's room.


I've planned the fireplace/oven wall of the kitchen so that I will add 2" depth of wood in which the fireplace and oven openings have been cut.  David made those cuts earlier today on the band saw.   The fireplace will need a brick back and two cob irons.  The ovens will need to be built into the sawn gap as per Brian Long's instructions.

With the hotplate top just about finished, I'll be able to construct that inner wall; one reason I made the hotplate first!

Tiddles wants to make the circular staircase all by herself, so she'll be in charge of that. I found instructions varying from the terminally vague to the over elaborate, so we'll have to fake our way through it!

Brick hotplate top, more detail

Okay, I decided to go ahead and do some more work on the hotplate top.

First of all I finished the bricking (it actually took a full package of mini bricks -- 50 of them) then painted the individual bricks to give them more character.  I mixed the acrylic artist's paint with a medium lustre acrylic medium, so I sealed them as I painted them.

Then I mixed down some Poly Fix -- a fairly fine crack filler -- with water to make it the consistency of thick glue.  I tinted it a little, but could have tinted it more.  (As it is, I'll have to go over the grout and "age' it.)

I then loaded up the tool on the right of the photo, above -- it's a "Monoject" syringe used for gluing, and I happened to have a spare one.  It worked just fine, once I trimmed a little off the tip (making the opening big enough for whatever particles are in the Poly Fix.)

I grouted the bricks, then cleaned them off (I used baby wipes, because I always have them around for polymer clay work).  I left the piece then for about three hours, and when I came back, the grout had very politely sunk more deeply into the lines, and I applied a second layer of the stuff, and cleaned it off again.

I think it'll look quite good when I "dirty" it up a little with paint and it's set in place!  I'm already looking for mini cauldrons and such to put on the hot plate when it's done :)

UPDATED:  just had to add these two photos of the finished work.  I'll add some more soot when the thing is in situ.

Brick hotplate top

I intend to build in a Tudor charcoal burner on the left hand wall of the kitchen, using Brian Long's instructions, by and large.  I wanted it to have a brick top, like the hotplate in one of the kitchens at Hampton Court (see photo below).

I'm using a base of balsa wood just to have something to glue the bricks to.  Here's what I've got so far:

These are Houseworks mini bricks, available from most dolls' house stockists.  They're a little too regular for the period, so I'm shaping them as I go.  I'm nipping the bricks with a pair of pliers, which works well, but results in a lot of waste.  I'm sure there's a better way to do it, but I have a couple of packages of little bricks so I'm feeling profligate :)

I'll hand paint them for detail when I'm done.

I have no idea what I'm going to use for grout.  If you have any suggestions, let me know, othewise, stay tuned!

Castle Kitchen

This weekend we started work on the castle's kitchen wing.  When finished it will have a hallway, the kitchen and a storage room on the main floor and three small bedrooms above.  I've been working with Brian Long's book The authentic Tudor and Stuart dolls' house, which has very detailed plans for various types of kitchen fireplaces and ovens.  The kitchen will have a large fireplace with cob irons, three baking ovens and a bank of hot plates, all taken from Long's book.

I have a little more cutting to do, then we'll assemble the first stages tomorrow, I hope!