Tudor Apothecary Workroom - Front Arch Is Plastered etc.

Yeay, the front arch has its stone masonry, beams and plaster. The side beams are just taped on at this point, as I need to glue and screw the front in place before applying them. I decided to do a "stone" frame for the arch, to help tone down all the terra-cotta on the structure. The "plaster", made up of paper clay, is still very wet here, so it looks gray rather than white. The ghost of the brick oven on the back wall is where I allowed a depression in the plastering to hold the oven nicely in place.

The stone facing of the arch is also paper-clay, and each stone was shaped individually to fit into the arch's curve. Although it is hard to see in the photo, the stones that meet the wood beams are larger and taller than the other stones; again, this is for variety.

Oh dear, I forgot to marble the edge of the right front bracket! The raw edges of the MDF will have an edging of iron-on veneer tape when the whole structure is complete. There will be another beam across the top, which will go on once the top is screwed and glued on.

I was able to find some nice, simple half-round moulding to trim the front edges of the pawn shop. It is not easy to find 3/8" (approx. 1 cm) wide moulding in regular hardware or building supply stores.
So now it is on to bricking the chimney and window walls. Oh, my back and shoulders ache just thinking of it! As the clay dries fairly rapidly in our heated house (temperatures are reaching below freezing at night), I have to work pretty quickly, and when I concentrate, I tense too many muscles. But it will be so nice to have the walls done!

For some reason, when I publish the blog, one of the paragraphs develops an extra space. And I can't edit it out, because the space is not there in the draft version. Is my computer becoming self-aware?