Floored

I was on a bit of a roll, and so I put together both of these floors recently -- the lighter one is for the tea-room-to-be and the darker one for the corner shop.  I had stained the floor I made for the carpet shop, and was delighted with the results, but for these I thought I'd just use the craft sticks in their natural state, with only the linseed and beeswax finish.  Since I'd wanted a dark floor for the carpet shop, I had chosen the bags of sticks by which had the most dark ones in it, and of course there were quite a lot left, so I decided to make one floor with the lightest sticks and the other with the darkest ones.

Who would have thought there would be so much beauty in a humble craft stick!  The ones I chose seemed to me to have a bit of "character" to them -- knots here or there, perhaps a warped edge, grains going this way or that and sometimes both at once, one in the tea shop even has something that looks just like a water stain!  I added a bit of "wear and tear" to the dark floor, repeatedly dropping David's work keys on it from my shoulder height, and a couple of scratches from some tool or other that I had on hand, but I didn't do anything to the light one at all.

These two floors are made in the same way as the first one, with a piece of 1/8" plywood as a "subfloor" marked with lines 1 1/4" apart where the joists would be in reality.  I trimmed and dry-fitted all of the sticks at once, so that I could move any that seemed to "clash" -- too much dark or light in one area, grain lines all going in the same direction, etc. -- then glued them on a few courses at a time, clamping and letting them dry overnight before moving on to the next few courses.  Each floor has three coats of Tried & True finish, with a moderate amount of buffing with a dry cloth in between.  The recommendation on the label is two coats, but some of the sticks on the carpet shop floor seemed noticeably drier than others, or more absorbent, and so I did a third coat to get it looking more even, and did the same this time with the other two floors.  (There is a bit of gunk between many of the boards on all three floors, which might be dust from the preparatory sanding that didn't come off on the tack cloth, or might be bits of coagulated beeswax, or both.  It looked more unpleasant after I tried to pick it out, so I've just left it.)

Here are photos of the finished floors with some sticks in their natural state, so that you can see the effect of the finish.  Apparently, linseed oil adds a noticeably golden tone to wood -- the lighter sticks originally were a very pale gold and now are a lovely sort of wheaty-gold, and the dark sticks, which were a rather ashy brown to start, now have a beautiful rich amber-gold color.  They are both rather changeable in different lights or from different angles, and the digital camera makes this even more apparent, as I'm sure you can tell from the variety in these photos!  It's rather like watching the sky on a breezy spring day, now bright, now cloudy, always changing.

I know these particular sticks are a bit wide for 1:12 scale -- the package says 3/4" but they are actually about 1/16" less than that, which would be 8 1/4" in real life, on the wider end of the Regency period's "between 18 and 23cm [7-9 in.]" -- but, really, they are so very pretty that I for one certainly will acknowledge any quibbles about scale and then admit that I just couldn't help myself!

The edges aren't trimmed yet, nor that diagonal section for the corner shop, which I will do when the room boxes are closer to final fitting.

The piece of petit point is an experiment -- I wanted it to look as though it were a badly-damaged antique carpet or fragment thereof that has has the damaged bits trimmed off and a new binding put on the trimmed edges -- there is even a jog on one edge where the rows are uneven.  Part of it, as you can see, was stitched with one thread of floss, while the rest is stitched with two, to simulate a worn area.  This is partly successful, I think -- probably the line between worn and less-worn should have been blurred a bit, as it seems just a little too sharp to me.  I also worked it in a hoop instead of a frame, so that it would go ahead and skew if it wanted to!  I'm tempted to age it with a coffee bath, but haven't done that yet.  The original chart is the Kuba no.9 -- converted from Appleton crewel wools to DMC floss, and worked on 28-count Monaco linen -- from Making Miniature Oriental Rugs & Carpets by Meik and Ian McNaughton (in fact, the one at the top on the cover), which is said to be "an early design" from the Kuba region in Azerbaijan, ca.1800.

Comments

[Toffeeapple]

You seem to be a miracle worker - the rug is perfectly done as a fragment and the floors look wonderfully aged.

[jub44]

It works so well ! I like very much the effect. Very good idea, and very good realisation.

[Jeanne]

T, wait until I tell you all about the trouble I'm having with the carpet shop walls! I didn't realize how much I needed the success of these floors -- what a relief!

[Susan D]

Nice work. I love making my own hardwood floors. It truly is worth the effort, but then I don't like to cover them up with rugs. :^0

[Marja]

I think the popsicle sticks work well! I'm doing the same for my scratch build house and I love how inexpensive it is compared to buying wood flooring on a sheet. I am going to paint mine white as I'm doing for a shabby chic effect.