Life imitating art

To be more accurate this is a case of art imitating art.  In the movie Josephine's drunken husband Serge breaks down the door of the shop to attack Josephine and Vianne.  This is how Roux comes to work for Vianne - replacing the broken glass with wood.

In this world (of minis) rather than just chuck away a perfectly reasonable door - painted so probably not much use for any other project - I decided it was worth a shot at remodelling it.

I cut through the joins at the top and pulled out the offending glass intending to replace it with a wood panel.

I didn't have any wood thin enough.

The search was on.

The material of choice (eventually) was a plastic cover from a spiral bind-it-yourself type book.

You can also see here the other thing I wasn't keen on with this door - there were gaps you could drive a bus through, or an eight knot gale.

I found some trim and added a rebate.

I now had a very unattractive piece of kit.

Paint...????

Green side isn't at all bad - it probably looks like a replacement panel as it doesn't have any moulded shape to it but that's OK, it fits the narrative.

I can't do anything with the strange mark on the bottom right panel - sort of 'knot' in the wood.

This side took four coats and I may go for another one.  I started with the Plasti-kote cream gloss paint whose praises I've sung elsewhere.  It does not plastic coat!

I let the resultant see-through attempt dry and then lobbed a coat of good old fashioned cream emulsion over.  This stuck nicely and gave it (what I thought was) a decent base.

I let this dry and add another Plasti-kote coat.  This was like I had dribbled slightly tinted water over it.

Let this dry and add another coat - mmm?? - it might be OK.

It did occur to me somewhere during all this I could have just left the original perspex (glass) in and painted that rather than demolish the whole thing.  I don't have any handy tips for avoiding'stupid'.

As things stand right now - this will do me for the front door rather than buy another and chuck this.