Tudor Apothecary Workshop Tall Chimney

The computer went to the PC Girls today, and they discovered that there was a problem with an old IP address that wasn't randomizing (whatever that means!). Hopefully, I can now upload photos again.

Yes, it worked! The chimney at this point is only attached to the roof gable, the two side pieces have to go on yet, as well as the open end gable. The fit is pretty good, I may have to do a tiny bit of added clay to hide the teeny gap I can see. The back roof, when it is finished, fits flush with the back side of the Apothecary Workshop, while the front roof with the louvers will overhang the lower story. It's nearly impossible to see that the brick courses in the lower chimney are not quite straight, thank goodness.

One of the small problems I didn't think about was covering the join between the lower and second stories; it is quite wide, so I think I may have to do a single extra-wide strip there, rather than two strips. That would create a lip to hold the roof in place - it will continue to be removable for ease of display and moving it.

Next will be the chimney cap, and the installation of the chimney pots. More clay work, also glue, and patience. Waiting for glue and paint to dry is not one of my favourite activities....

Tudor Apothecary Workshop Second Story Chimney

Bless my daughter, she figured out what was wrong with Gmail  and was able to upload the photos, so I can show you another "how I do it". As the top courses of the lower story chimney were very crooked - I marked the brick courses while the clay was flat, rather than on the chimney skeleton - I decided to take off the two top courses and re-do them somewhat more straight. For the chimney skeletons we used a scrap of 2 x 4 wood left over from a Real Life building project.

Scraped version of lower story chimney top.

Newly patched top two courses of lower story chimney top. The brick courses have been marked with a steel ruler edge and a tool made out of an expired credit card, something I came across in a very early article Rik Pierce did for one of the American mini magazines. The courses are then further refined with dental tools I begged from our long-time family dentist. Texturing is done with either a stiff, old toothbrush or a small wire brush of the sort sold for cleaning suede shoes. The clay I use dries to a nice brick colour, as you can see.



The photo of the chimney clad in smooth wet clay got lost somewhere in outer space (where do missing photos go?). This is the whole upper  chimney with all the bricks marked and refined with dental tools. I made the usual mistake by missing one brick course while marking in the verticals, which you can just see on the left side of the chimney.  The clay had begun to dry while I was fixing that, which meant it was not inclined to take the texturing. When the clay is completely dry, I will tidy up the edges (there is a little shrinkage, so I usually leave some extra clay top, bottom and sides). Then the next step is painting in the mortar, followed by light colour washes to differentiate the bricks a little.

I have to bevel the edges of both chimney portions a little in order to mark in the mortar line between the two sections. That could be interesting....

Problems, Problems, Problems

Google won't let me upload any photos. I bricked the upper chimney of the Tudor Apothecary Workshop today, but can't share the pictures because the computer freezes every time I tried to add photos.


Will try again tomorrow. Hopefully things will have sorted themselves out by then.

The Flu Is Finally Over

Both my carpenter-in-chief and I have been dealing with a nasty, coughing flu. My c-in-c had it for more than two weeks, while I managed to get better again in less time. For a while I could have doubled for Rudolph, my poor nose was that red. Wednesday was the first day I went outside for more than a week.


The roof has finally been cut to accommodate the chimney. I hope to have time to work on it this Sunday, and  to post a photo. Assembling the roof section is a painstaking job, and neither of us are 100% as yet, so only a little gets done at a time. Our brains aren't quite working properly, we can't seem to figure out which pieces have to be assembled first, and everything keeps collapsing as clamps aren't much good on slanted surfaces.


In the meantime, I've been tidying up some of my craft supplies. Apparently, I have a whole plastic bin full of pieces of leather, far too much for just minis, so I am hoping to try miniature cobbling, but at 1/4 human scale rather than 1/12 scale.

Tudor Apothecary Shop and Living Quarters

We are currently in the middle of a household flue epidemic, my carpenter-in-chief has been hacking and coughing away for a week now, but insists he is getting better. As the workshop is not heated, and temperatures have hovered below 20 Celsius, I haven't had the heart to ask for the roof to be cut to accommodate the chimney. Yesterday evening, I developed a sore throat and started to cough as well....

Here are most of the components for the second half of the Apothecary, the shop and the tiny  living quarters above it. While waiting for people to get better, I will begin to do some designing on this, deciding where the bricks, stucco and support beams will go. The two sets of stairs have to be covered in a stone effect, and there are an awful lot of small, narrow pieces that will become the raised floor level, which can hopefully hide some of the electric wiring. I may as well brick the lower half of this piece while bricking the (eventual) chimney. In the meantime, it should be possible to cut, sand and stain the beams, and begin the stone work on the stairs.

All that will have to wait, however, until we are all healthy again. Today, it is pouring rain outside. At least that will reduce the level of the snow pack somewhat.  I am not a fan of winter at all....

Happy New Year 2014

We are recovering somewhat from the incredible amount of snow Mother Nature decided to spoil us with this Christmas. Today, the snow blower arrived that my husband got for Christmas (I'm trying to keep him alive!), which means, in terms of Murphy's Law, that the storm that is supposed to be heading our way will likely bypass us. I won't miss it, as we have had over a meter (3 1/2 feet or so) of snow in the last two weeks.

Santa brought me a mini! My youngest daughter gave me this delightful telescope (an eBay find) and the Tudor era map.

They will go into the apothecary shop setting, old medical professionals used to like being mysterious in order to impress the customers. The map is printed on photo stock, I'd like to try and age it a bit, has anyone tried to age photo-stock images with paints or inks?

Just to prove that I haven't abandoned the Apothecary Workshop, the front opening has been beamed and plastered, and is waiting for its paint; as well, the roof louvers have been painted, aged and applied, ready to be shingled. That can't happen until we do the upper half of the chimney stack, the next part of this project. It's kind of messy to do clay work with a house full of holiday stuff and our visitors, so that has been postponed just a little. Once the chimney is bricked, we can assemble the roof. I am working on it....

We are celebrating New Year's by going to the early, 2D showing of the latest hobbit movie. My daughter is hoping to have some friends in, so we "oldies" will lurk in the family room with the TV, while the youngsters play board games etc. all over the living and dining areas.

A Very Happy New Year to you all. May all your hopes and wishes for the new year come to pass, and may you enjoy the year in health and happiness, with lots of minis!

A Very Merry Christmas 2013

This is the view outside of my bedroom window when I woke up this morning:

We have had very wintery weather the last 10 days, more than 40 cm of snow followed by freezing rain and ice pellets, and yesterday evening some more snow fell. It looks like a Christmas card outside. The sky is pale turquoise blue, and the sun is shining through the ice on every twig.

These photos are for all of you who wished for a White Christmas, but live in places where this just doesn't happen! Now we get to move the new snowfall out of the driveway....

My Christmas room box is having its debut on the blog. It is a design from Janet Brownhill, whose work I really do admire, that appeared in a Dolls House and Miniature Scene magazine several years. ago. This year, with the help of my daughter's friend, it also appeared on the mini Wiki Treasures Advent Calendar. Lots of paper clay work, and some experiments with artificial snow and other things, including some organic materials, have created a little Christmas scene that I am very proud of. It resides in its own box, which has a drawer underneath to hold the battery packs for the lighting, or any other thing one might like to put in a small drawer. The snow was given a little sparkle by a very light dusting of "diamond dust" sparkles on it, which catch the light like real snow sometimes does. The bricked wall slides out for access to the interior of the room.

The chickadee is the official bird of our province, and we see them all winter long on our birdfeeder, which meant I had to add them in miniature, of course! These three were modelled out of scrap Fimo and then painted with the aid of a bird book. The snow out of a jar also adhered very nicely to the logs, the window sill and frame (no glass to avoid reflections), and the little overhanging roof over the door. Good stuff, but once you open the jar, it pretty much dries out and can't be used again.

I wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas, lots of good food and good company.