Two Work Days and Counting

We had another virtual mini meeting, using Skype, Wednesday afternoon. I sanded and sawed and glued and so on, and these are the results. These items are all destined for the Klompenmakerij, and include a couple of display shelves for completed wooden shoes (they will also have tools and work gear hanging from them) , a small table with a working drawer to hold the hot plate for making tea, and the front and top of the privy seat; these are the two pieces in my drying block, and will be glued in place between a pair of walls. In front is a long bench, which still needs another coat of varnish as well as some angled braces, that will stand under the longest shelf.



These are the components for four half-round windows and a working Dutch door, also for the klompenmakerij. I had originally stained them, only to realize they should have been painted the traditional green of so many old Dutch houses; my childhood home had a front door, short garden gate and tall garden gate all painted in this traditional colour, in fact, all the houses on our street did. Paint will go a long way to mask the glue smears these pieces underwent during the manufacturing process! The lower frame of the upper Dutch door and the trim for one of the half-round windows were so poorly glued they fell apart when I stroked the paint on them; the Dutch door frame may need to be drilled and pinned to hold it in place....

The green pieces will likely need at least one more coat of green, if not two, with sanding in between, before I can paint on the satin varnish. The traditional paint is enamel, but that is far too shiny for a miniature structure.

After spending hours yesterday morning trying to find a photo of a bagged sapling tree, I finally found one this morning. I've always wanted to try a sapling from a nursery, and I think one would look very good sitting in the barrow in Boutique Pulchinella. So that's another little project to come.

The furnishings for the wooden shoe workshop are all very basic, and all varnished dark oak; I guess that was sort of traditional! The back wall with the windows and door will be plaster over brick, with large, heavy buttresses under the windows. There is a "stairway to nowhere" as the Carpenter-in-Chief likes to say, on the left side wall, with a privy under the stairs and a small sink on the back wall beside it, separated from the workshop proper by a partial wall. The inner roof gives the effect of being thatched; for that, I think the straws from a corn broom will work in scale. That's a long way away, though!