A Door, Some Windows and More

Happy July, everyone!  We continue to shelter in place, enjoying our back deck, Zooming with our friends, wearing masks and practicing safe social distancing.  I am grateful that I can work from home and that I’ve figured out how to balance work and my mini time, but I will be very glad when this is all over.

This update doesn’t have as much eye candy, because I am doing basic components—windows and doors.

To start with, I made the door.  I wanted to do a three-diamond door for some visual interest. (Inspiration here.) There are, of course, no doors like that for sale in half-scale, and I wanted windows, so I used my tried-and-true method of cutting multiple layers with my Silhouette Cameo II.  It can’t cut wood, but it can cut wood veneer.  So I used wood veneer (thanks, Carrie!) for the outer layers, and three layers of the chipboard the Cameo can cut for the core. 

The three layers of chipboard turned out to be the exact thickness of the clear styrene I wanted to use for the panes, so that worked out well.  You can see that the diamonds for the core are a bit bigger than the diamonds for the exterior layers, so that the exterior layers will hold the styrene in place.  I don’t have sophisticated software for designing, so I generally create my designs in PowerPoint, save the slide as a JPEG file, import it into my Silhouette software, and trace the image.  Works like a charm.  After painting, staining, and varnishing (as appropriate), I glued everything together.  The diamonds looked a bit unfinished, so I framed them out with some HO 1x4 lumber.  I built the doorframe from 1/8” x 1/32” strip wood and used this tutorial to make the hinges.  In retrospect, I could have gone with a bit thicker wire for the hinges, but they work OK.  Added some door hardware and framed it with 3/16” x 1/32” strip wood, and I had a door!  I’m really pleased with the way it turned out.

I used more 1/8” x 1/32” strip wood and more railroad lumber to create my windows, then framed them with 3/16” x 1/32” strip wood.  One edge was always left open to insert the styrene.  I used a thinner styrene for the windows than I had for the door because the windows’ slots were necessarily narrower, and I needed to accommodate the mullions.

I used the HO 1x4 lumber for my mullions and pre-painted them white.  Then I used the incredibly high-tech method of printing out templates for my windows, taping the styrene over the templates, and gluing the mullions on with tiny dots of glue along the edges.  It took a bit of trying to get the templates for the mullions to line up with the stripes I had painted.  (You can see where I had cut out one of the templates to test.) 

On my first attempt, I added two vertical mullions to the front windows.  After looking at it in place, I decided it made each of the individual panes too small and made the window look too conventional.  Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture.  I just pulled it out, pulled off the mullions, and tried again.  I like the single centered mullion much better. 

I edged the side windows with additional strips of the HO lumber—one going right along the edge, and one going at a right angle to the styrene to cover the open side.  There is a slight gap where the two side windows meet.  I was going to use a thicker strip of wood along the left-hand window to cover that up, but it ended up looking too bulky.  I lost the “lightness” of the wrap-around window.  I guess I’ll live with the little gap.  😊

With the windows glued in place, the first floor is really starting to look finished. (Keep in mind that the "roof" and second floor are still the original foam core and not glued in place.)  Now, of course, I still have to do that curved window. I have an idea; we’ll see next time if it worked.  

Because I find making components a bit of a slog, I’ve also been working on more mini books.  I realized when I was looking at books for my art deco cabinet that some of Agatha Christie’s and Dorothy L. Sayers’ books are in the public domain now.  [An aside:  First of all, I am shocked that none of those books made the best-seller lists or “most significant” books list provided by UC Berkeley.  Seriously??  Our introduction to Lord Peter?  The debut of Hercule Poirot? Sacrilege, I tell you!  😉 Second, did you know that many more books, films and musical compositions are entering the public domain in the U.S. each year, now that the copyright extensions are finally expiring?  I always thought of the copyright extensions as “Mickey Mouse laws,” because I know Disney really wanted to extend its protection of Mickey; I had no idea the Gershwin Family Trust was also instrumental (forgive the pun) in getting these extensions passed.]  Anyway, I was able to get the .mobi files from Project Gutenberg and put them on my Kindle.  So now I have free books to read, and I have started writing summaries to use in my mini books.  The first book I did was Whose Body?, by Dorothy L. Sayers.  I like to set them up in both 1:24 and 1:12 scale while I’m at it.  Here you can see the comparison in size. 

The 1:12 book has a separate dust jacket; the 1:24 version does not, but I tried to simulate the look.  And, of course, my little homeowner now has the 1:24 scale version on her bedside table, ready for a little bedtime reading.

That’s all for now.  Hope every stays safe and healthy!  Thanks for stopping by!