Summertime

Summer is still in progress and back home after ten days in Scotland I am back posting some of the build from July. As much as I love my birth country of Scotland I do love being comfortable at home here with my dogs and my workroom, not to mention my own bed!

At the back of the drawing room which is my current build, there is a dining end with a dresser. I wanted the back window to be removable so to allow me to decorate the dining table or make adjustements from behind. I had thought this would take a few days but it took forever in reality.

I began by making a dummy wall on which to work comfortably before installing it into the real wall.

I needed a way to hide the fact that the window is removable so I made a pair of fake 'fixed' shutters using the same technique as the doors, a fine wood base and layers kraft card, some spackle filler and paint. I add here again that if you use this technique it is way best to paint the card before spackling/filling as this stops the sanding stage damaging the card. You can paint two layers of gesso/matt white paint before sanding then filling, it's a long process but Worth it in my eyes.

The shutters made in the usual way.

For the window I used real glass as I knew that there was going to be a lot of scraping off paint and plexi/acrylic doesn't like scraping whereas glass can take a lot. I used fine wood the same thickness as the glass then installed card over the edges on both sides to cover the join glass-wood. I then glued a fine strip of card around each pane to deepen the molding effect. It is important to scrape off the excess paint between each stage and not let it build up, again a LONG process but this is a test for ALL the other windows.

A quick installation test with some back lighting. This is still on the foam card dummy wall.

A dry fit into the real wall to test the praticality of the system. I set in a strip of molding under the window sill. Here you can see I glued strips of kraft card to immitate cross bars which will be spackled and painted.

The side panels will stabalise the window once in place. The gazing bars here have been painted, scraped, spackled, scraped, then painted twice with scraping then patinated and varnished with matt acrylic varnish and scraped again before cleaning.  At this point I realised that if I had to make another 32 windows in this style I would go crazy !

The window finally set in place. I glued a strip of wood along the ceiling line above the window as the wallpaper I ordered from Alison Davies is 8 inches high. You can see that I also heightened the base board. Sharp eyes can see how short my door is, it has since been added to, things like this happen.

This is the back of the build so far. Lots of electric wires all labelled. I used four clips from the back of an old picture frame to hold it in place for the moment.

You can see that the back of the window is less detailed than the front side.

I ordered some antique adhesive lead strip tape to use for the glazing bars in future windows. I have already used this product on real life windows and it was easy and effective and will stop me pulling my hair out if it works well in miniature scale.

When all the back walls are built I will encase the electrics and make it all ' nice and neat'. I wish then to build a back plexi unit on which I will paint greenery to be seen outside the back windows.