First thing to talk about is that bookcase that I totally messed up. I wanted it stained dark wood but I forgot the stain and glued it all together and only realised that I had forgotton the stain when it was all done.
Too late to apply the stain? Well, maybe the professionals are all wrong and you actually CAN put stain on after you have glued the wood together...
No...It seems all those warning tales are true - You simply CANNOT use stain after glue, however much you might believe otherwise.
I am a determined person though and I will not be beaten. Chuck this furniture away? Nooooooo. Somewhere it can be used. I need it painted though and the only room (at the moment) that will allow for painted furniture is the nursery in the loft, a nice white painted bookcase will look lovely up there. But, alas, the walls are not tall enough to take the bookcase so drastic measures are needed and I decided to chop the bookcase in half.
Quickly I add on another base to one half and there I have two smaller bookcases.
However they aren't suitable for use in the nursery because they are just slightly too big for the room....But I don't give up and I paint them white and plan to squeeze them in somewhere. Luckily white acrylic paint will always cover a multitude of sins.
So...my furniture making isn't going too well. I make very silly mistakes all because I want it completed as quickly as possible and I don't take the time to think about what I need to do next. Luckily Gil told me about some dolls house furniture items that were on sale at Lidls. Nice and cheap items, some were terrible and not worth any money but some were ideal. I went along and bought a bathroom set. Plain white, not what I had originally planned but then I change my mind about the house all the time. I had already painted the room and the furniture looked fantastic in it....but it needed more. The room was too large to just have the sink, toilet and bath sitting in it. I needed additional furniture...Suddenly ideas began to float into my mind - a nice cabinet based on the kitchen dresser plan, peach marble, wicker basket....I wanted to do it all (quickly of course)
No photos exist of me making the bathroom furniture as it was way too stressful an experience to even think about picking up the camera. I should point out that stressful might seem like a harsh word to use, that it might seem to others reading this that I am explaining that the experience was awful. It was stressful but in an exciting, challenging, difficult, occasionally exasperating, growl inducing way. But it wasn't anything that would make me think that I want to give up on my dolls house dream. Perhaps stress is too negative a word - complicated? difficult? challenging?
I managed to make a sink unit (the sink was very plain and I felt a sink unit would look fantastic) I saw the plan in my mind and made it from stratch with no plans or ideas drawn up. Maybe it is because I was moving on from the safety and reassurance of using designed plans that I just copy, cut and glue, to creating a piece of furniture that I have only seen in my mind - whatever the reason for the pride I feel - I am very proud of this piece of furniture.
I based the unit on the dimensions of the sink. I first planned to have a marble surround surface for around the rim of the sink with drawers placed on top of it either side of the mirror and cupboards underneath (basically the welsh dresser design), but this made it look larger then 1/12th scale. So it now has a marble back with a mantlepiece and drawers at the side.
There was room in the bathroom for another cabinet and I remembered the two white painted bookcases that were sitting all forgotten and lost in the loft, worried that they might never see the light of day again...I got them out and began to think what I could do with them. No one has bookcases in the bathroom (though I think that would be my mother-in-laws idea of heaven) so bookcases they were not to be. Maybe.....maybe ....I can glue them back together?...Stick doors on the base section....Nice cupboard for lotions and potions and bits and bobs and towels and flannels and general bathroom junk.
Well now they aren't lost, forgotten and sad. They are now a lovely bathroom cupboard. A bit empty at the moment but the day will come when I can begin making all those little bits.
So a mistake led to the beautiful bathroom. The tiles on the floor were nicked from a D.I.Y site. I simply found the tile pictures online, saved image to my pictures and then put them in a windows document (once I had done two or three rows in the pattern I wanted I just copied and pasted those few rows over and over again....very quick and simple). Printed on glossy photo paper and I had shiny floor tiles. I had bought also some pale peach carpet for the living room and had changed my mind deciding to use cream carpet so I used this peach carpet for the mats in the bathroom (my mind changed back yet again afterwards of course and the living room now has that same pale peach carpet!!!)The bathroom was the first room to be completely finished (furniture wise) but now I think that the walls are too dark so I want them painted a paler blue - Will I ever be happy with the finished house?
It's a lovely bathrooom! Now why would I want bookshelves in the bathroom I wonder? In the loo perhaps :-)
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