Tutorial -- colour washing an aged wall

I've decided to take some photos while I prepare and colour wash one of the walls in the Castle's kitchen wing.

I started with a wall made of 3/8" plywood (obviously this isn't a scale model, per se, because the wall isn't thick enough for scale :)  I painted it white.

The surface is okay, but clearly shows the typical plywood grain and has a few large knots and gaps in it.  So the first thing I do, partly to fill in the obvious plywood gaps and partly to give it the texture of old plaster, is to roughly apply a partial coat of some kind of crack filler. (I'm not worrying about the area right around the door in this example, because I'm going to cover the bit of pink tape and the error in cutting with some framing for the doorway :)

In Canada we have various brands of Poly Filla available -- I've used all different kinds. This one is designed to fill bigger gaps so is more fibrous.

I applied it with a scrap of plastic, because I prefer a fairly flexible applicator for walls.

Okay, now you can apply your colour washes -- these would go for walls, chimney breasts or anything you want to keep fairly "whiteish" but want to look aged or rustic.

You need to do at least two washes, one "cool", one "warm".   Maybe start with a grey -- a little white, a tiny amount of black (very little black) and a lot of water. You want a nice, neutral, super watery grey. (I use artist's acrylics because that's what I have, but any water soluble craft paint would be fine).

Test your solution in an inconspicuous part of the model. It should change the colour, but not be really, really obvious. You'll notice it, but it shouldn't look too opaque.

If it's too heavy (as it clearly is in the photo above), immediately dilute it on the wall with a clean brush and more water.

That's better!

When you've got the solution to your liking, roughly brush some on all the parts you want to age. You do not want to cover all the white, just scumble the wash on a bit, stand back and look at it. Don't use a tiny brush -- a good half an inch diameter round brush would be perfect.

It looks okay, but it's a little flat.  Now mix up your second wash. This should be a warm one. It's the balance of warm and cool that really makes things look three dimensional. For the second wash here, I just added a little burnt umber to the very watery grey wash.  It's fine to work wet into wet, by the way.

Step back from the project often. Breathe. Have a cup of tea (or a gin and tonic). Come back and just let your eye wander over the work. You'll know when it's right!

Most of all, have fun :) Remember, if it really looks dreadful, just paint it over white and start again!

Kitchen Floor, possible final glaze

I used a varying glaze with a base of low lustre acrylic medium and differing amounts of raw umber.  Raw umber is always the go-to colour to muddy anything up and age it.  The floor looks a lot better now, after more sanding and polishing.  I will add the soot effects of the fire later, when I'm feeling braver (it always seems to take a lot of guts to really dirty up a nice clean kitchen (although I seem to do it with ease in my 1:1 kitchen :)

 Yesterday afternoon I added the wall between the kitchen and the pantry/storage room, which really helps define the space, of course.  And I glued together my little sideboard and put it in place.  It's just resting against the wall for the moment, because I need to be able to get into the oven opening and do a lot of busy work on that in the next few days.

And just before I go to bed, one last (arty) shot of the stone :)

Charcoal burner unit

I'm constructing the charcoal burner / hotplate as a separate unit, so that we can build spiral stairs behind it.  I wanted it to have an arch above the brick hotplate and shelf, so here's what I'm trying.

(Sorry for the photos, I did this part last night and it was dark :)  I bent a piece of cardstock (cut to fit the depth of the unit) until it made a nice arch, then taped it in position and trimmed it for length.  (Note the hot pink theatrical spike tape!  I couldn't find anything else, eh :))  I cut a piece of balsa wood the width of the unit and then taped the cardboard to it.  I marked the line of the arch and cut it out of the balsa wood.

I then taped the cardstock arch to the balsa wood front, and glued the arch in place.  I'll fill in the rest of the front with balsa and then plaster over it, hiding all my awkwardness, I hope, without creating too much more new awkwardness!

The brick hotplate is still removeable, and will stay that way, so that I can install or fix whatever lighting I decide to put inside this thing.

UPDATED 6:16 pm

Here's the charcoal burner unit so far.  I stuccoed the front of the unit with Poly Filla and because I was having problems making it smooth I decided to make a virtue of necessity and make it really textured :)  While it was still pliable I scored in the outlines of the stone arch above it (I also thought of making "stones" and setting them into the plaster, but laziness won out).  The stonework needs a wash of a warmer colour, but then I think's it's about done, except for the wiring and a piece of trim across the front.  Hooray!

Brickwork for kitchen fireplace

I'm going to use the same technique for the back of the kitchen fireplace as I used for the fireplace in the tower's Library. 

I made a paper pattern of the back of the fireplace.  Then I rolled out scrap polymer clay, making sure the sheet was larger than my pattern, and used one of the impress molds I bought from Malcolm's Miniatures (via the Dutch dolls' house store Silly Sisters).  I have quite a collection of these, now -- the one I picked was the Tudor brick -- these are longer and thinner than later bricks, and I thought it would give a nice detailed texture for the back of the big fireplace.  English bond would have been okay, too.

My impressing is so very far from perfect,  I almost crumbled it up and rerolled it, but I think after it's been painted and the fireplace has been filled with stuff, no one will notice my lousy work!

Then I baked the impressed sheet.  It baked a little wiggly in the oven, as it tends to -- I find that if I glue it down really well, everything comes out okay.  If you want to cut down on the wiggliness, then make your sheet of clay thicker and use more even pressure when impressing than I have here.

I cut it to shape using scissors (one of the wonderful things about impressing bricks into very thin sheets of polymer clay is that it's a cinch to trim). 

Here it is, fitted into the fireplace.  I will now paint it grey (for the grout) and then start painting in the bricks.

Here it is, back in the fireplace, after it's been painted grey and then had its first dry brushings with cadmium red,  raw sienna, burnt sienna and burnt umber. It now needs the detail work to bring out the grout, blacken the central bricks and so forth. In terms of sheer speediness, this technique is really great!

Does anyone else find that taking photos reveals all sorts of things that the naked eye can miss?  Looking at the photo below, I see that because the "brickwork" doesn't fit the fireplace cut out perfectly, I'd best paint the edges of the back of the fireplace in a nice bricky colour to help camoflage that :)

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.