In earnest...

The (re)build has begun in earnest at last. Now that I have the kitchen door and the cupboard surrounding it and the stairs for the back of the shop I could decide precisely what needed to be cut out of the back wall.

My detailed architectural drawing (hollow laughter was heard) conveniently fitted on to an A4 piece of graph paper!  This is know in architectural speak as A4 designs. (I just made that up!)  It is a notch up on back of envelope designs.

When you look at the photo if you imagine the cut out bits stuck back together this would be the left hand side of the back wall as you are looking at it in reality.  To do the woodworking mark-up I needed to remove the 'door' as the paper would have to be flipped over when it got to the back of the building.  The end piece got cut off when I came to mark up the doorway for the other side of the wall as I needed to have a space between the outer wall and the doorway.  Even with all this I managed to mark up two three inch wide doors when the stair doorway is a quarter of an inch narrower.  Spotted it in time thank heavens.

The whole point of this cutting out is to give the illusion of other areas behind the slice of shop frontage that we are looking at in this 'model'.  In the film the stairs going up from the shop on the right are set in a square stair well and turn around on themselves.  The frosted glass door on the left leads to a short flight of stairs down to the kitchen which is in a kind of half basement.  Maybe in our English building it simply leads straight through into the kitchen.  I would love to be able to screen shot (from the movie) a wall of the kitchen and paste it on the 'wall' of the room box behind so that it can be seen vaguely through the glass but I do think that is a wish too far.

We had to buy half inch MDF for the construction as this was the thickness of the base of this property rather than the usual 3/8ths.  This meant it was more expensive, heavier and probably slightly worse to cut.  I can't attest to the latter as I got a man in - husband from the next room.

I am not afraid of power tools and even owned a couple of them in my time but they have long since disappeared and my husband's kit is roughty, toughty man size stuff and pretty unwieldy for me.  So, I am constrained by the kit not the know-how.

Using my trusty plan I marked up the cuts.  This is doorway two where the stairs will be.  Ignore the fact that it has a cupboard drawn to the right of the door; this is the kitchen door/cupboards plan being chopped down and used as a template for the stair doorway.

All three metal rulers have been a godsend at various stages of this hobby.  I really, really recommend you break down and buy these if you plan on any paper crafting or thin woodworking or anything requiring accurate cutting with a knife or saw.  I really gipped at the nine dollars the little right-angled ruler cost and I had to go back a second time to actually get it and part with the money.  I am so pleased that I did.

My faithful chippy cut a circular hole in the wood which was to be removed as near to an edge as possible.  This is the gizmo he used..... do I detect rust on that gizmo?

This was then attacked with this kind of saw - notice all the technical terms coming into play here.  

Yes, I know, these are hand tools and I could have done this but he has muscles and I don't.

He decided this saw was too flexy, so....... 







when he had a good start on the line he switched to this kind of saw.











Two holes and a lot of sanding later - I did do the sanding - it was ready for a dry fit.  So was I - that sanding is thirsty work.

There is a bit of a wobble on the top edge of the stair doorway.  I want to leave it as it is because the shop is supposed to be a fairly bashed about place with just a lick of paint covering a multitude of sins but I am totally useless at doing none pristine buildings/rooms.  Can't do grunge in life or minis... must make a mental note to work on that.  The wiggle is there for now as I was just fed up of sanding and doing that edge would be a major task.

I did actually use my pretend Dremel to do quite a lot of the sanding.  It was less physically wearing than the sandpaper round a block of wood effort and it was a good way of practising using the rotary tool.  Not as easy as you might think.  It works brilliantly when you have got the hang of enough but not too much pressure.  Enough or nothing happens, too much and the tool stops.  Also, in this case, I was sanding MDF so every so often the sanding drum hit a hard bit and skated off all over the place.  As it forgot to give me a ten second warning I usually still had it pressed against a wall somewhere.  There are a few 'carved' patterns here and there.  They are very superficial and will cover easily.  What did I say about grunge - there's an easy way to dint walls.

Ken then went on to make the back box, otherwise known as other rooms.  He used two kinds of electric saws for this.  This one which is clearly labelled as a mitre saw he called a chop saw and said it cut straighter than the circular saw, even if he had to turn the wood around. 

We ended up with another set of flat pack pieces ready for assembly at a later date.  

I don't want them fixed on the back of the shop yet as I need to be able to turn the building every which way when I come to paint and decorate next month.  So, for now all the woodworking part of the job is about getting stuff ready to go when it is needed.  I always think this hobby is a bit like cooking, the job goes along much better if all the 'prep' has been done first.  That is easy to say, harder to do when you just want to crack on with something.  If I could fix in my tiny brain that all the less exciting prepping doesn't make the job take a second longer than doing it as you go along and remember the pleasure of just being able to have everything ready to hand I might manage it more often.

When it comes to be assembled it will look something like this, plus a back piece.

I planned on putting the power centre for the wiring inside this box so it would all be neat and tidy at the back for once but it is an individually switched one which creates access issues.  The top flap can't be hinged because it is a narrow aperture and the stairs will be in the way.  The back flap could be hinged but the house would need to be pulled out miles from the wall to allow it to open so, at this stage, the plan is to screw the back panel on when the lighting in the 'corridor' is finished and have the power centre on top of this added construction.  I can't wait to show you the new (to me) power centre I have for this project, courtesy of Small World Products

Lighting is due for doing in July, meanwhile...............