At last! here is the new kitchen dresser for No.16.
This is made to a 1/12 plan from the Victorian Town House chapter in Venus and Martin Dodge's New Doll's House Do-It-Yourself Book. (There are in fact two different kitchen dressers in the book, of which this is the simpler.) Mine is made of bass wood with thin plywood for a back, finished with wood conditioner only (instead of stain) and two coats of Krylon spray lacquer. The drawer handles are glass-headed sewing pins.
This took an extraordinarily long time to put together, I must admit, though pretty much all of that was due to my clumsiness, and apparently an innate inability to glue at right angles. That said, the Dodges' plan is excellent, though fiddly, and I would recommend it either for beginners who are very patient or have an expert close at hand, otherwise for those with some modeling experience. I've learned a lot about the process, wh. is good.
I said before that I was tempted to just glue the drawer fronts into place, instead of making drawer boxes as the plan gives, but I realized that I would need something at the back to keep the fronts-only from being crooked, so was on the verge of cutting some lengths from a squareish scrap of plywood, one for each side of the two drawer holes, when David came home from Shanghai and said, "I'll just cut a block. But I have to rout out a space for the pins," so that I could secure them with super-glue (since of course I pictured a pin coming right out the moment anyone tried to pull out the drawer). So it turned out to be a little more trouble than my original idea, but not as much effort or time as a full drawer box. I'm glad we did it this way, as it happens, as the drawers look much more realistic if one is slightly less pushed-in than the other!
I will most likely either not use Gorilla Glue again, since it expands as it dries and therefore needs much more care in application than other glues, or let David do it! I can still see some lumps, especially in these close-up photos, that I couldn't sand off -- but really, in the room you don't really notice it.
The center divider between the two drawers is the only piece of wood with its end visible from the front, and unfortunately it didn't occur to me that the end-grain would take the wood conditioner differently from the straight-grain, wh. is why it is noticeably darker than any other bit of the dresser, but there it is.
Other than that, I'm quite charmed by it, and delighted to have the kitchen looking noticeably more kitchen-y than it has been -- and the dishes look perfect!
Jeanne, your furniture building skills will only improve. The dresser looks great!
Posted by: Sarina | February 29, 2016 at 06:01 PM