The Bakery - Stage Two - Part One

With all the chores of the Christmas season out of the way, I started work on Stage Two of the Bakery on Boxing Day. My first task was to make a firm decision on the layout of the house. Way back when I started the basement block (stage one) the plan was to have the oven on the side and the trapdoor access to the surface on the back wall, but somewhere along the way I changed the plan and swapped the position of the oven and trapdoor. This means that the chimney carrying the smoke from the oven in the basement had to run up the back wall of the house, not the side as I originally planned. I also originally planned to have the trapdoor emerging inside the ground floor shop, but no matter how I drew it, having the shop positioned over the trapdoor just didn't work, so in the end I left it outdoors. The trapdoor now emerges under the outside steps up to the first floor. This is probably a little inconvenient for the bakers, but the structure of the steps gives me somehting to attach the pulleys to so that the bakers can lift their bread out of the basement via a 'dumb waiter' type of system. So, with a new layout plan decided, I started work on the house. First came the 'framework'. I cut six posts (at 7" high) from 1/2" square stick of spruce wood to form the outline of the ground floor and to hold up the first floor. I drilled a hole in the top and bottom of each post and a hole in the 'ground' (the top of the basement block) where each post would go and used a piece of toothpick as a 'dowel' to help hold the posts in place. (The holes in the tops of the posts also hold toothpicks that pass through the beams above and into the first floor posts, but that comes later.) Next came the horizontal beams that connected the tops of the posts. These were made from balsa wood strips that I had 'stained' with a mix of watered down paint to look something like oak. I started with the two side beams which were - carefully - pushed over the toothpicks jutting up from the posts until the toothpicks emerged from the top. The remaining beams were then fitted and glued in place. This was the result: This photo is taken from the back left corner. The space between the back left post, the centre left post, the centre right post and the back right post is the space where the bakers shop will be. The next step was to make and fit the stairs to the first floor. These are again made from balsa wood. Normally when I make stairs like this I use lils (craft pins) to hold everything together. This works well, but leaves a metal 'nail head' showing along the side for each step. As I wanted my steps to be metal free, I used toothpicks again. The toothpicks are glued to the uderside of each step and then each end of the toothpick is poked through the side piece - which I think is what should be called the 'stringer'. The ends of the toothpick were then cut off. This makes the toothpick almost invisible, unless you happen to lie under the staircase and look up. With the stairs made, I positioned two more posts and used beams to tie them into the existing structure and fixed the stairs to the beams. As you can see in the photo, my current test dummy Naked Neville took a stroll about to see what he thought while the glue was drying. Before moving on to the next floor, I cut pieces of foamboard to act as the 'walls' and this next photo shows how effective adding walls can be! I'll add another post soon with the details of the first floor construction!

The Bakery - Week Five

I'm still concentraiting on finishing the staircases for MB's, so progress on the Bakery is going slowly at the moment. The photo below pretty much tells the story for the week - the oven is (mostly) finished and installed and the access ladder has been made and installed. Not shown in the picture is the sewer section, which I have made look a little 'dirtier' and added 'water' to the central channel.

The Bakery - Week Four

Inbetween futsing about with staircases for MB's, I started work on the bakery oven. It is made in two parts, the base and the top. The base is made out of foamboard, is rectangular with two arched openings in the front and is where the fire that heats the oven will be located. The upper section is made of airdrying clay. I started creating a 'form' out of alfoil and bits of cardboard and foam that was about the right size and shape as I wanted the finished oven to be. Then I rolled the clay out to a few mm thick and draped it over the form and cut the clay to fit. Next I removed the clay from the form and lay it flat again. I cut out the arched opening in the front (so that the bakers can get the bread in and out of the oven)and used a toothpick to make grooves to give the impression of bricks. The clay was then put back over the form do that it dried to shape.

The Bakery - Week Three

After what seems like an endless eternity of stenciling, the brickwork on the inside and outside of the bakery's basement block is finished! That means it's time to say the same thing I always say after using a stencil to create brick or stone work - I am never doing that again! This time I might actually be forced to keep my word on that as neither of the craft shops in town seem to be keeping the ingredients for my 'stone/brick paste' anymore. Something else I'll have to buy online perhaps. Ater finishing with the stenciling and allowing the last lot of brickwork to dry, it was time to 'wash' the bricks. I do this to all the brick and stone finishes I have created with stencils and the texure paste mix as it has several effects. First, it evens out the colour where I've had to mix another batch of paste and the colour inevitably comes out a little different. Second, and yes I know this is a bit of a contradicition, it creates variations in the colour of the brick/stone by making the wash heavier in some places than others. The wash itself is made from a little extra of the brick 'paste', extra stone effect paint and acrylic paints all mixed in a pot of water so that the final mix is only fractionally less viscous than plain water. The 'raw' bricks were a little to sickly in colour for my taste so I added plenty of extra red and black paint to the wash I put over them to darken them up - and they ended up pink! Deciding to settle for pink brick I then highlighted random bricks with chalk paint in shades of brown and applied a couple of coats of sealer and finally, the bricks were finished!

Two for One . . .

It was kind of inevitable wasn't it? After all, I couldn't decide whether to do the Dragon's Maiden or the Magician's Lookout first, so I did both together. So this time 'round when I had trouble choosing between two ideas I suppose I always knew I'd end up giving up on choosing and doing both together. And so I have. Form now on I am officially working on both a medieval/tudor bakery and a victorian gothic house. At this point the projects are simple called "The Bakery" and the "Victorian Gothic". Hopefully they will attract more inspired titles as they develop. As I've mentioned in earlier blog posts, both projects will make use of cheap flat-packed shelf units. The Victorian Gothic will be built into two shelving units, a three shelf and a two shelf. Here's a pic of each unit assembled as per the instructions: They will be side by side with doors and stairwells cut in at appropriate places. They create space for five rooms which at the moment will be: a bedroom, a lounge-come-study, an entrance hall with feature staircase, a "seance" room where the house's resident psychic conducts business and a kitchen, perhaps with an additional partition wall to create space for a scullery behind. The Bakery will start with the basement which will be built into this box: Yes, I do know that subterranean bakeries are not exactly common, historically or now, but when did I ever say I was trying for historical accuracy? Besides, having the bakery on a different level to the 'shop' means that I can give each area more space and thus more detail. As the next photo shows, I have started work on the basement by cutting boards for a 'fake' floor and front facade. The main chamber is the bakery, accessed by a ladder leading to a hatch onto the 'street' level. Of the two smaller chambers at the bottom, one is for storage (of flour sacks etc) while the other is for a sewer. I think that someone associated with the bakery is engaged in smuggling and uses the access between the storage space and the sewer to come and go unseen. Perhaps the mill where the flour comes from is close to a gem mine and gems are being smuggled into the city in the flour sacks? I haven't quite decided what the story is here, but something nefarious is definitely going on.