Going door to door

I think that I have more than sorted out the workroom and also the house and attics so I felt that I needed and deserved some mini time. I took advantage of my friends van to go fetch some wood for the base of Ramsay House and some 5mm mdf for inner walls. I found a sturdy 1930's oak desk that was painted white in the Emmaus charity shop for 15 euros complete with 5 lockable drawers on which I can now begin to build the house. I made space in front of one of the three large windows in my workroom and the desk now sits there waiting for the building to begin. I might add wheels to the base of the desk so as to be able to turn it this way and that. My problem before beginning lay in my choice of doors and felt that until I had made a decision I couldn't cut out the spaces for the doors and therefore was stuck! The stairwell has 9 opening for doors and three for windows.

SO.

I decided after looking at our dear Giac's blog to make my own doors rather than buy what I felt were cheap doors that innevitably wood need a lot of work to look good. Just how hard could it be.

I began by searching out real doors on the internet in salvage stores to get an idea of scale. I then drew up as a test this 7.5 x 15 cm one and chose some 3 mm melamine mdf, one side white and the other wood colour. It's the type of wood that lines cheap drawers, usually from IKEA. The fine mdf backing from picture frames is also good for this.

 The wood will form the core of the door and the moldings I decided to make from 350 gram Kraft card, something I've used a lot so far in various projects. Kraft card behaves like really fine MDF and is in fact sold as wood card on AliExpress. The knife here is one of the disposable scalpels that are in fact amazing to use!

 I cut out various widths of card strips to stagger them onto the wood base as you can see below. I then added center panels, again staggered. As this was only a test piece I decided to add thin strips around each panel to give the illusion of depth. It's all more or less square, don't look too hard ! 

 I skipped a few photos but here you can see with four coats of off white paint with light sanding in between. The Kraft card doesn't like too much of that ! I 'dirtied' up the paint and added a finger plate cut from a scrap of fine brass sheeting and scored in a criss cross pattern with two screw holes punched at each end then bashed a bit with a wooden Hammer just for the hell of it and then rubbed it down with fine wire wool to make up for all the bashing I suppose. 

 I decided to make the reverse side in a different style to further the test. This is a more modern door compared to the 'Georgian' side. This was done is more or less the same manner but on the wood side of the panel.

 After seeing Giac's work on wood graining I decided that I would 'have a go' also on this side. I had never considered wood graining in miniature although I have done quite a bit of it in real scale. I worked for a while doing interior decoration, lime based paint effects, wood graining and stone effects. It was fun but it was during a really cold winter and our work days began at 7 am!

 First a coat of yellow ochre acrylic over two coats of off white with some light sanding between all coats. I then made up a mix of burnt umber with a hint of black and sort of scrubbed it all over with a fairly dry brush. I sort of 'grained' it with an old toothbrush but in order to really 'grain' as I would for full scale I could seal the ochre coat and then mix umber glaze to wash over before graining either with a rough brush or fine 'comb' cut from a piece of plastic working on each panel separately. 

 A detail with a lock added for effect. I rushed this test a lot but the point was to see if it was possible and how the end result would hold up. I love doors that look as if they have been painted dozens of times and wood that looks slightly fake like the 'wood graining' it is. I often watch artisans in Paris grain the huge wooden doors that lead to courtyards. 

One day in the area I lived in I noticed one of these huge doors open and saw that there were some trees in the courtyard so curious I went in to look. There was in fact a large gorgeous very French house sitting in it's own park all planted with trees and roses. It was absolutely gorgeous and the sunny day just made it more so. I ventured into the garden to find workmen dragging some marble out of the house and they told me that the house had just been completly redone with high speck kitchen and bathrooms but the new owners didn't like it and decided to rip it all out and start over! So marble bathrooms and kitchen and all the decor was going into skips! Crazy people.