Learning Curve

Last post I left off with waiting for the mail. Story of a miniaturist's life, right? 😊 But this wee package held the big hopes of Roz and I, as they were potentially the last two windows for the trunkhouse. I saw them on eBay: Calico Critters replacement windows. While they're a little outside the box for a regular dollhouse (they are closer to half scale, too), Roz and I loved the size, the carved detailing and the working shutters. We thought it was worth taking a shot that they'd work for the living room. We weren't disappointed!

Like all the other windows in the trunkhouse, they had to have a little customization in order to work with the curved walls. The way the plastic windows are constructed, it was really easy to attach a box made of chipboard using wood glue.

Unlike the rest of the trunkhouse's windows, the boxed part will be outside of the room. This way, Roz can enjoy all their pretty details while she's sitting in the living room. And she can close the shutters when she wants a little privacy.

Of course, even more customization to the windows was requested from Roz, but more on that next post...

The next task to tackle was getting the living room ready for it's heat source: a wood burning stove. Being inside of a tree trunk, it was imperative that we have some kind of heat shield. So, I went over options with Roz, showing her photos to choose from. She really loved the look of natural stone, but again, we faced unique challenges because of the curved walls. The solution was quite simple, and in fact, also allowed us to recycle part of the Sonotube. We simply had to cut a scrap to the width and height we needed - the exact curve of the wall was already formed! For the hearth piece, it was only a matter of tracing the curve onto a scrap of chipboard and then cutting it out. I had pieces of nicely textured cardboard packaging saved, which proved to make perfect fieldstones.

The "fieldstone" has been applied to the wall and hearth pieces,
has been sealed and is getting ready to be grouted.

The wall piece after grouting, age washes and affixed to the wall.

With the heat shield and windows ready, it was time to begin the wall treatment. For this, I needed more "timbers" which I cut from cereal box cardboard. They are 1/2" wide and are glued together in three layers to achieve the right thickness. 

Here's where time has skipped far ahead and you see a jump in progress. Unexpectedly, I found myself with only tiny stretches of mini time (as a consequence of my real life activities hoarding my time). Something had to give and that was my chronicling process. In the photo below, you see I have already painted and installed the "timbers" to the living room walls as well as the baseboard and header timbers (which hold up the ceiling/kitchen floor).

Part of my "learning curve" was figuring out how to work in this tall, awkward, unbalanced tube. Laying it down on the table proved to be the best solution, though working in through the various openings was challenging. Here, I am applying glue to each "timbered" panel before I applied Paperclay to it.

I'm not sure at this point how the "tree bark" is going to tie into the openings, so I'm adding an outline with Paperclay to cover the cardboard edges.

Below you can see that I have applied Paperclay in between all of the "timbers". I tried my best to be neat, but wrestling with a round tube, this was the best I could do. I have plenty of painting, sanding and clean up ahead of me.

Here in the US we'll be celebrating our Independence with a long holiday weekend. Hopefully, with all that behind me, I'll have more interesting progress to post about!

Until then, hope you're enjoying a fun and busy summer, too!

xo xo,

Jodi