A seven-month-long break from miniatures has finally come to an end along this new rustic plate rack. The instructions for a life-size shelf were in a book I own and I had originally planned to build one for our summer cottage next summer.
Inspiration for a miniature version struck rather suddenly and I had to start building it immediately. The easiest part was scaling the measurements down to 1:18 scale. I drew a model picture of the shelf’s front to make sure I got the measurements to fit my dollhouse. The final measurements are the following:
width 6.4cm,
width with the decorative strip on top 7cm
depth 0.8cm and
hight 5.5cm.
Putting the shelf together wasn’t too hard but as a slightly impatient person it appears letting glue dry properly before moving onward is challenging. I must admit, the glue seams may or may not have ripped apart a few times as they weren’t dry enough to be handled.
The only material I used in this project was wood. The frame and shelves I sawed from a wide craft stick. I cut them into a suitable length and narrowed them all to 0,8cm width. I first glued the bottom of each shelf and it’s so-called walls together using a triangle ruler (constellation Triangulum) to make sure the angles were straight. After the glue had dried enough, I glued the shelves to each other and added the round rods that keep the plates in place. Almost done but something was missing…
The decorative strip! As I was working in a craft store, I found some baseboards meant for building dollhouses. The were absolutely perfect for this purpose. Unfortunately, the baseboard strip turned out to be quite a challenging material to work with. The wood used in the strips is not very dense and therefore it was slightly hard to saw it into such small pieces. The strip I used was originally about 1cm wide but I narrowed it to a few millimetres. My two-year-old mitre saw has proved itself very useful many times before, but in this case, it was almost irreplaceable. With the mitre saw I was able to get perfect 45° angles that glued together seamlessly. I put the shelf together in the evening so the glue had the entire night to dry.
The next day was all about painting. I chose to paint the rack with a neutral white colour and painted it entirely with opaque acrylic paint. I’ve noticed that wooden furniture often requires two coats of paint to cover the brown colour of the wood itself. In some cases a slightly see-through coat might look purposeful as well but I wanted a clean solid white colour. After the paint had dried, I slightly sanded the surface to make sure it was even. To match the rustic and old-fashioned look of the rack I sanded some edges until the wood was revealed. This made it look like the shelf had been used for years and had already started to show some signs of aging.
After two days of building the shelf was finally complete. I placed it on the wall with some double-sided tape and placed some plates and cups where they belong. The dishes I own are in 1:16 scale so they are a bit too big for my 1:18 scale rack. The small plates barely fit so they will have a permanent home in the rack. I am very happy with the outcome of this project. The glued seams are clean (for once) and no shelf is longer or shorter than the other. I also believe this miniature version functions as a practice piece for the actual life-size shelf in case I ever have time to make one.
And as always, the material list (more details in brackets)
Wooden sticks (width 2.5cm, thickness 1.5mm)
Glue
White acrylic paint (Amsterdam Titanium white)
Round wooden rods (diameter 3mm)
Decorative baseboard
Sanding paper
Double-sided tape that can be detached from the wall if necessary
Ps. The wallpaper in the kitchen is rather old-fashioned in terms of colour so alternative option suggestions are welcome…
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