Making the fake door
I wanted to have a door behind the counter that would lead to an unseen kitchen. Not wanting to deal with the expense of purchasing this said door, I decided to make one. I knew that I wanted a window in the door that I could put the picture of the knife and fork symbol that is shown in Kath Dalmeny’s Dollhouse Style. The color scheme I decided on for the door was brown and then the molding around it would be maroon.
I measured the height of the front door to the diner and then put the counter in place and measured the width of the area to obtain the size I wanted for my door. I took a piece of thin cardboard from a cereal box and then measured out the size I had decided on. I cut this out. Then I needed to come to a decision on the size of the window in the door. I drew a couple of different sized rectangles on the door piece before coming to one that suited my needs.
After cutting out the window from the door piece, I painted it with brown acrylic paint. Next I cut out a piece of thin cardboard to use as the grey/silver wall piece that would show through the window. I painted this with several coats of silver metallic acrylic paint. I tested the fit of the silver wall piece once both sections were completely dry. The window ‘glass’ that I wanted to use has a hazy glaze to it. It’s actually a small piece of non-glare plexi glass. I cut this down to size with a plexi glasscutter while wearing safety goggles.
Previously I had scanned the page from Dollhouse Style that has a picture of the knife and fork symbol and a clock face that I want to use for this project as well. I manipulated the symbol with my husband’s help in a photo-editing program. I needed to make the background of the symbol transparent so it could be printed onto a clear label. Once the symbol was printed out, I set it aside for a couple of days so the ink could dry.
After it was dry, I cut away just enough of the clear label so that it could just be put on the window ‘glass’ without a line being visible around it. Then I glued the ‘glass’ to the backside of the door and let it dry. After the glue had dried, I glued the silver wall piece to the backside of the door’s window and after that section had dried, I glued it to the wall behind the counter.
The next step was to make the molding around the door, paint it and glue in place. I cut out three sections of thin cardboard that would fit around the door. These I glued together to form the door’s molding. When it was dry, I painted it with maroon acrylic paint. After the paint dried, the molding was glued in place around the door.
Making the table posts
Next on my list of things to do with the diner was to make the table posts. In Kath Dalmeny’s book, she mentions using buttons painted silver as the base for the posts or table legs. The posts are really dowels painted with silver metallic paint.
I wasn’t interested in using buttons. Frequently miniature books mention using things like buttons and jewelry findings to make miniature things, as though everyone has such things just lying around their house. I don’t have a huge quantity of buttons that I’m willing to surrender to my latest miniature project. I also don’t have random jewelry findings floating around my home either. It’d be nice if someone wrote a miniature book about items that people actually do have in their house. I’ll get off my soapbox now.
Since I didn’t want to use buttons, I had decided to use washers instead of the buttons. My husband had gotten me the washers for Christmas one year. I cut the dowels to the correct length with my razor saw and miter box. Then I glued the cut dowel lengths to the washers with Tacky glue. When the glue was dry, I painted the dowels with silver metallic paint.
Painting the interior cornice trim
While deciding on my next step, I noticed that the cornice molding in the diner needed to be painted. I had toyed with the idea of somehow covering that area with lighting. There’s already a light fixture in the diner, so I don’t really need to put lights on the molding.
I decided to paint the molding with maroon acrylic paint. I tore off long pieces of masking tape and placed these around the edges of the molding to keep paint from getting onto to the walls and then painted the molding with one coat of paint.
When the paint was dry, I removed the masking tape and was left with nicely painted cornice molding.
Installing LED lighting strip
A few years ago the Hobby Builder’s Supply catalog began selling LED lighting. They sell a strip of LED lights that will stick onto pretty much any surface. When I saw this being sold, I thought immediately of my diner. This Christmas, I put these lights on my Christmas list, and sure enough Santa gave them to me.
As I mentioned earlier, the diner already has lights in it. However, my plan was to install the strip of LED lights and remove the one lighting fixture that I had installed. When I got the lights, I read the installation directions. It said to affix the lighting strip to the positive side of the tape wire run with brass eyelets. Unfortunately, I’m not one for using eyelets in my electrical runs. I’m more of a brass brads type of gal. I was apprehensive to use something different then what the instructions called for, but came to the conclusion that the worst that would happen is the strip wouldn’t light up. Most likely the diner wouldn’t burn down. I removed the paper backing from the LED lighting strip and then affixed to the wall and ran it from the middle of one bay window to the next. Then I pressed a brass brad at each end on the positive side of the tape wire. I plugged in my lead-in wire to the junction splice and flipped the switch—and there was light!
The effect of the LED lighting was absolutely wonderful and added to the retro look of the diner. Definitely worth it!!
After a week or so, I removed the old lighting fixture that I had installed when I initially began to decorate. It was pretty easy to pull the one wall scone off the wall and then pull out the brads with the wire from the sconce wrapped around them from the wall. I did need to touch up a few areas with paint after I removed more of the glue that had held the sconce in place.
Gluing booth seats to booth bases
While trying to put the furniture in the diner, I came to a conclusion. The only way that everything would fit would be if I first glued the booths to the floor and from there glued everything else. This meant that I would have to glue the booth seat pieces together before going any further. I glued the seats first to the base carefully positioning the cushion pieces so that the whole unit could be glued flush to a wall. The seats were of course covered with waxed paper and weighted down with books while the glue dried.
Once the glue had dried, the backs were glued and positioned to correspond with the seat cushions. Any glue that wanted to run down the edges was wiped away before it dried.
When the booths were finished I glued the ones that would rest against the back walls of the diner in place first. Then I placed another booth across from it and tested out the fit of the tables.
Redoing the table tops
After the paint dried on my table posts, I tested out how everything would look together. I came to the realization that when I had downsized the furniture that would go in my diner that I hadn’t taken into account the tables. The tables needed to be resized. I thought that I could just cut off part of the tabletop and then re-glue into place the strip of silver painted cardboard trim. This I realized wouldn’t work and I also needed to test out various sizes for the tables before settling on the size I would use. I cut out different sized pieces of cardboard and set them onto the table posts to test the effect. Finally I decided on a size and then cut two pieces of foam core board to that size. I cut heavy paper out and glued this to the tables just as I had done before. In my efforts to salvage something from the original tabletops that I had made, I carefully tore off the silver cardboard trim from around the tables and then glued this in place around my newly sized tabletops.
In my efforts to glue the trim, the silver metallic paint became marred. I tried to paint over this and touch it up in areas. This worked but in the process I also got paint onto the tabletops surface as well. I also tried to touch up areas of the trim surrounding the counter with similar results. Some of the paint could be scraped off carefully with an
X-acto knife, but other areas the paint was a permanent fixture.
To solve this problem, I cut out pieces of the heavy paper again and glued this to the tabletop’s surface. I cut away any excess or pressed it down between the trim and the foam core board.
With the tabletops restored, I then glued the other booths to the floor across from their mate. Gluing the table posts in place was next and was quickly followed up by gluing the tabletops to the posts.
Making the stools
I already made one stool cushion. With the booths and tables in place I could return to the difficult task of making the second stool cushion. For some reason, sewing the pieces together by hand went a bit faster than before. The second cushion appeared to be a bit thicker than the first, but oh well.
The next step was to glue two key rings together. Kath Dalmeny’s book says to use super glue for this task. I don’t have much experience with super glue and actually have almost an irrational fear of it. I tried using Tacky glue to glue the key rings together, but it didn’t work. So know I realized that the super glue was my only option.
My husband suggested wearing latex gloves when working with the super glue. I took his advice. Using the super glue on the key rings worked out nicely.
I had previously painted some lengths of thin dowel with silver paint and cut them to the size I needed. These were glued to the underside of the key ring and cushion combo with super glue. This was pretty tedious and some of the dowels just didn’t seem to want to stay straight.
When the dowels had dried in place I glued another larger key ring onto the dowel legs with super glue. This was even more tedious than the previous gluing task because it was difficult to get the key ring to stay straight. I used scotch tape to hold the key ring in place on the dowels. This seemed to do the trick, but I found that when I removed the tape I was left with dried clumps of super glue in places. So needless to say it didn’t look too great.
I tried to remedy the situation by taking nail polish remover to the glue globs. This worked to remove the glue in some spots, but also had the undesired effect of reactivating the super glue—good thing I was wearing gloves! In one instance the key ring came off of the dowels completely and had to be re-glued in place again. I didn’t use scotch tape to keep it straight and so it wound up being a bit askew.
The condition of the stools did bother me at the beginning, but I realized that I needed to get rid of my feelings that everything must be perfect. I put the stools in the diner in front of the counter and other than being a little tall (which can be remedied) they look wonderful and the glue issues aren’t that noticeable.
Tube Bender issues
I have a length of aluminum tube that will need to be curved to fit around the lower part of the counter to act as a footrest. I had no idea how to go about bending it, but thought that I might heat it up and then try to bend it.
One of the gifts I received at Christmas was a book on building 30’s and 40’s style dollhouse furniture. The book mentions using a tube bender as a tool to make some of the furnishings. I had never heard of a tube bender. My husband located a hobby shop, called Hobby Works that’s some distance from where we live and said that according to their website they carried it. The day after Christmas, I called the store and asked if they had a tube bender. The really nice man on the phone said that he would have one sent over from another location. I gave him my name and number and he said he would contact me when it came in. A few days went by and I didn’t receive a call, so I called again.
This time I talked to a pretty surly man who said that they had never carried tube benders and that if I wanted it I would have to come to the store and special order it. I found this whole episode to be a bit strange and decided to find it online. I bought it from a store called Hobbylinc. The cost was under $3 for the tube bender. This didn’t include shipping and handling, but at least I wouldn’t have to do a lot of driving and deal with a crabby salesperson.
