I one of my other lives I worked in a toy store that also
sold dollhouse supplies. In an issue of Dollhouse Miniatures magazine there was
an article where someone had made a PI office.
When I saw it, I immediately wanted to make it, but for some reason I
didn’t. However, the idea of making it
never left the back of my mind.
Years later, I obtained a copy of the article through
interlibrary loan. The instructions
called for making the office out of ½” thick foam core board. I searched around where I live and could
never find any, so I knew that I’d have to find an alternative.
While working at the toy store, I had participated in a
class where we were to make a garden inside a room box. All of our supplies were provided for us to
create the garden; however, I never finished mine and instead it sat on a shelf
in a closet for about a decade waiting for me to do something with it.
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| Contents of room box |
The box still had everything in it from the garden
class. I found that the brick walls had
been glued to the walls and that there was a “grass” covered thick piece of
Styrofoam. I was able to remove
everything except for the brick walls.
These I tried at first to remove by sticking an X-acto knife or
something similar behind it and wedging it from the walls of the box. This didn’t work, but I found that heating
the brick walls with a hair drier heated up the glue that was holding in place
enough for me to get a butter knife behind the walls and slowly peel them
off.
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| In the process of removing the brick walls |
After this arduous process, I found there were still remains
of the glue on the walls. This I sanded
off so that it wouldn’t interfere with my painting and papering of the
walls. My next step was to make a wood
floor for the office, which I did by using individual floor boards that had
come from a pack that I’d obtained from my days working at the toy store.
The boards were a wonderful walnut color and I wasn’t sure
if they would mesh well with my project.
Because my idea had been that I would stain the floor to co-ordinate
with the walls of the office. After
cutting and gluing the boards to a piece of cardboard cut to fit the inside of
the room box, I sanded it after the glue had dried. Then I searched through my stain samples to
see what stain would work best. I chose
Special Walnut as the color for the floor.
I stained the floor very lightly so that the floor wouldn’t be too
overly dark. After about 5-10 minutes I
rubbed off the excess stain with a rag and then let it dry thoroughly
overnight. The next day, I sanded the
floor and tried to create worn spots on the floor by excessively sanding
patches. I decided not to gloss the
floor so as to maintain the impression of a very worn floor and was concerned
that applying gloss would ruin this illusion.
I tested the fit of the floor in the box, and held off on
gluing it in place because I wanted to add electricity. My plan for electrifying the room was to have
a light in the bathroom area, a desk lamp, table lamp in the left corner, and a
light in the hall that would be behind the back wall.
My plan with the electricity also involved figuring out how
to arrange it so that the lights could be controlled independently. I tried to come up with different ways to do
this, but nothing seemed to work mainly because I wanted to use tape wire. The only way that I came up with how to
control the lights was to install a switch for each light or as I eventually
decided every couple of lights. The
bathroom and hall lights would be controlled by one switch each and then the
desk and table lamps would be controlled with one switch.
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| Tape Wiring |
Once the tape wire was installed along with the switches, I
painted over any of the wiring that might show by painting over it with gesso. Incidentally, I left out the wiring for the
bathroom light on purpose. It would be
put in place later, after the back wall was installed.
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| After painting the Raw Sienna Acrylic on the lower part of the walls |
After the gesso had dried, I painted the lower 3 ¾” of the walls
with a faux wood finish using a coat raw sienna acrylic. This I let dry completely and then added
another coat of a mixture of burnt umber acrylic paint and a gel staining
medium. By applying the stain in the
same direction as the paint it created a faux wood look. This staining method I duplicated on the back
wall that was made out of mat board.
Next after the paint was dry I wallpapered the walls with
miniature ceiling paper that had a stuccoed texture. This wallpaper was to have a smoky, well used
appearance. To achieve this according to
the article’s instructions, it needed to be covered with a light coat of raw
sienna and gel medium mixture by brushing it on and then wiping it off. This technique turned out to be more
difficult than it was described. I found
it difficult to get the paint and gel medium mixture to spread evenly. Wiping the mixture off seemed to really mean
scrub off even though that wasn’t what the instructions stated. However, the end product seemed to turn out
well enough. The walls looked a bit
darker than I remember, but since I didn’t have a color picture of the finished
project, and was only going by my memory of what the office walls looked like I
feel as though perhaps it’s my memory that’s faulty and not my painting of the
walls.
I glued the floor to the inside of the room box once the
paint on the wallpaper had dried. Then I
began cutting and painting the wood strip that would be baseboards and trim for
the windows, walls, and door. This trim
was then glued to the back wall around the windows, door, and along the bottom
to form a baseboard.
After the trim on the back wall was installed, I began
trying to make faux hinges, door knob, and mail slot. At first, I wasn’t sure how I would
accomplish making these things. My idea
at first had been to just buy the needed items, but as it turned out I didn’t
want to spend the money, so I decided to try and create them myself from
scratch. I measured the hinges on my
front door and scaled down the measurements to 1/12th scale. Then I measured a miniature doorknob that I
had on one of my other miniature structures.
The mail slot was a little trickier because I didn’t have ready access
to one. I have one on my door at work,
but had no interest in making a trip over to my office just to measure the mail
slot. Instead I just winged it and came
up with measurements that I thought would be to scale with the room and
door.
Round toothpicks turned out to be the perfect diameter to
use as hinges and were cut to the needed length. The mail slot was cut out of a piece of
cardboard as was the door plate for the door knob. A small key hole or impression of a key hole was
poked into the cardboard. The end of a
dowel was sanded into a rounded shape and then cut to the depth needed for a
door knob. Another narrower dowel was
added so that the door knob wouldn’t be flush against the door plate. All of the pieces for the doorknob including
the doorplate were glued together and then the hinges, mail slot, and door knob
were painted with gold metallic acrylic paint.
Once the paint was dried the door hardware was installed on the office
door.
The instructions called for adhering a piece of glass to the
back side of the inner wall and after adhering the letters on the door’s window
applying several coats of frosted window paint to create a frosted
appearance. My idea was to instead adhere
a piece of frosted acrylic plastic that I’d purchased for another project to
the back of the inner wall and the lettering would be printed on a clear laser
label which would be put over the door’s window opening.
This however didn’t work out. The label wasn’t large enough to cover the entire window and so I wound up copying the lettering onto tracing paper that I glued to the area around the door’s window. I glued an unlettered piece of tracing paper over the other windows so everything would match. The only hitch was that the door lettering was exposed and could be smudged. To prevent this, I glued another piece of acrylic over the tracing papered covered openings.
After the glue dried, I glued the wall in place along the
long side of the floor about 2 inches from the back of the room box. Once this was dried, I glued the partition
wall in place to the right of the door.
I mitered the ends of the 1/2” square strip wood that would
trim the top interior walls of the room box and then painted the pieces to
match the other wood in the room. I used
clear tacky glue to glue each piece in place.
Then cut and painted the baseboard and wainscoting trim to match. This was also glued in place using clear
tacky glue.
I cut another piece of 1/2” square strip wood to fit under
the top molding on the right side wall down to the floor and painted it as
well. This I glued in place to the right
wall to be in line with the partition wall.
This would define the area where the bathroom sink and medicine cabinet
will be. The plan is for this area to be
a washroom for the office.
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| The semi-finished office |
Next on my to do list is to fill in any gaps in the top
molding using a dark brown polymer clay, to add the third light switch to the
back of the room box for the washroom light. Lastly, I’ll work on making
furniture and accessories for the detective office.
