Ann's Dollhouse Dreams

 The kitchen cabinets are beginning to take shape. Currently I have planned 5 large pieces for the kitchen:

• the lower cabinet where the cooktop is located with plenty of drawers
• The upper cabinet has two cupboards with "glass" doors on each side of the exhaust hood
• A center island that will house the sink and dishwasher
• A tall column cabinet that holds the microwave and the oven
• A cabinet that will be the coffee bar

None of the pieces are finished yet. I still have to finalize gluing various pieces in place, do some sanding, add the final touches, find affordable drawer pulls, and paint. I also have to construct the center island and finish the coffee bar. 

This counter has six working drawers, but non-working cabinet doors. It is cut from 1/16 inch basswood.

Once I glue on the countertop,  the gaps won't be so extreme. I'll do some more sanding to even out the high places. 

I ordered the refrigerator from Elf Miniatures in the UK. I tried to make my own refrigerator, but I just couldn't get it to turn out. The inside of this refrigerator will hold all kinds of good food. The cook top is really special. It is hand made, actually 3-D printed by Jodi at My Miniature Madness. 

I've followed Jodi for a some time now and learn so much from her well written tutorials. She introduced her gas cook top that she created using her 3-D printer for a kitchen that she is making for her daughter. At the end of the post she offers her cooktop for sale with two choices:  a kit that you can assemble or a completed appliance that she will assemble. I chose to have her assemble my cook top because by the time I purchased the glue and the paints to to finish it, I'd spend that much in supplies, but mostly because I feared that I would mess it up if I built it. In just a little over a week, I had this fabulous little stove top in my little house. 

The cooktop will be the focal point of kitchen, won't it! I've already starting accessorizing. I ordered the blue serving bowls just this week from Factory Direct Craft, an all purpose craft supply site with an amazing miniatures section. I borrowed the red teakettle and the mixer from the Pink Farmhouse, but I have a mixer and teakettle on order.

The upper cabinet with the exhaust hood has been particularly troublesome. I had thoughts of remaking it, I think I'll be remaking but decided that I put too much work into this one to scrap it. I've decided to re-cut it because I'm not totally happy with the design the more I think about it. 

Instead of making the cupboards individually, I attached all the pieces to one back board, which caused problems getting all the pieces to fit together nicely. I had thought about  doors that didn't open, but I also wanted to display pretty dishes. I thought about a plate rack to display white dinner plates, but the building the racks turned into a nightmare and looked unfinished, so I decided to add doors with glass (plexiglass) and glass shelves. I hinged the doors using straight pins, a bit tricky, but I managed to get the pins located where I wanted them. I used 3/32 inch bass wood for the doors to give a wider edge to locate the hinge pin.

(The problem with this exhaust hood is that it is too tall, so I'll shorten it up. In all the examples that I see, the hood housing does not reach to the bottom of the cabinets, I'm definitely remaking it.)

I designed the upper in the Cricut Design space. I am so pleased with myself as I am getting better and learning how to measure more accurately. My designs are still pretty simple, but simple works for me.

Once cut out, the pieces  fit together nicely but I realized that I needed to make adjustments and add reinforcement pieces for a sturdier piece. I also need figure out how of if I want to add a light inside.

With the upper cabinet ready to paint, I move on to the column cabinet that will house the oven and microwave. It was a tricky piece to fashion, and I was determined to have working doors, so I used this process to hinge the doors for both the upper cabinets and the doors on this cabinet.

Using seamstress straight pins can work very nicely to create hinged doors, but this little project can also go badly very quickly because basswood tends to split easily.  With the help of my Cricut Maker and taking careful measurements to get the doors the right size, the doors fit nicely. For the cabinet bodies, I use 1/16" basswood, but for the doors, I use 3/32" thick to give a wider edge to center the hole for the pin hinge, reducing--not eliminating--the tendency for the wood to split.

Before I attempted to drill the holes for the pins, I rounded the hinge side of the door by dragging the edge on both sides across sand paper to round the edge so that door would open then I positioned the door in place and used an 1/32 drill bit to begin drilling the pin whole in the top of the cabinet.

Once I can see the drill bit had gone through the top of the cabinet and  begin to penetrate the door, I remove the bit and then remove to the door and finish the hole to make sure that it is centered on the edge of the door. I start the hole then use pliers to push the pin into the unfinished drilled hole for a tight fit.

At this the point, the door can easily be ruined if you don't have the pin hole centered. If the pin is off centered, likely the wood will split.

Once I have the pin hole in place, I remove the pin, put the door in place, insert the pin, and then cut the excess away. Repeat the process for the bottom hinge.

The bottom hinge does pose a challenge because it is hard to get a straight angle to drill the hole. 

Jeweler's pliers are helpful in positioning the pins. Once you have the hinge pin inserted, you can cut the excess away, leaving enough to reinstall the door and then trimming away the rest of the pin so that it is flush with the surface of the cabinet.

Yes, my worst fear, the pin didn't go in straight and the wood split, but I'll add so glue to secure it and the plexiglass window will add support--it's not like this little door will get a lot of heavy use.

And there you have it: Hinged cupboard doors--looking good even upside down.

I ordered the assembled microwave and oven kit from Elf Miniatures. They are nonworking--that is the doors don't open and they are supposed to look built-in for a clean, modern kitchen. I wasn't sure how to mount the appliances, so I cut a piece to back the front of the cabinet so that I would have something to adhere the appliances to keep them in place. Cutting to cut-outs for  the front of the cabinet was so easy in Design space.

I still am mulling over a working drawer or a faux drawer front beneath the oven. 

And that's how I have spent my week, obsessively working on the cabinets for the kitchen, ignoring real house chores like doing the laundry and beginning the spring clean-up in the yard--it's been too cold and windy anyway to get any work done outside. 

I end with a special thank you to Jodi for creating a great cooktop and then sharing her talents with those of us who for one reason or another don't take our miniature obsession to another level. 

Thanks for joining me today. If nothing else, I hope I have given you courage to build your own pieces for your miniature project. I am learning a lot, mostly as I go along and making a lot of mistakes along the way, too, and always learning. I am especially excited about the gas cooktop, hoping that I do justice to Jodi's amazing workmanship as she masters her 3-D printing skills, and so willing shares her talents.