The Den of Slack

When I bought the shadow box from PinkSeagullDesigns, I had an option to get it painted or unpainted. The painted ones looked nice and I would have liked to save myself some time, but none of the colors offered were quite what I had in mind, so I got the unpainted one.

I unscrewed the hinges and clasp, sanded with the mouse sander, and stained it with blue/gray water-based Minwax stain that I’ve had forever.

The grain was very visible initially. I did a few coats, sanding between coats, and then waxed it. I left the front off so I could reach inside more easily.

As a reminder, here’s the fireplace I’m recreating.

I’d started by making the platform and the front of the hearth.

I used more strip wood to form top and sides of the hearth.

The pieces I used for the sides weren’t the same depth, so I put the mismatched edges on the inside.

Before I could build the rest of the fireplace, I needed to know exactly how tall it should be, so my next step was to build a false ceiling and floor to hide the wires. I made both the ceiling and floor out of the same piece of 3/16″ foam core I’ve been using for false walls and ceilings in the Mansard Victorian.

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When I ordered my miniature dogs from Lucy Francis, I sent her reference photos and measurements for Daisy (as best I was able to get them on a wiggly puppy, without Geoff’s help) and some I had for Rosy from when my sister knit her a sweater years ago.

The dogs’ sizes came out good relative to each other, but they seemed a bit bigger than 1:12. Here they are on a 1:12 sofa:

Compared to real life:

And with 1:12 figures:

Compared to me:

I didn’t have any Barbie dolls to check them with, but they seemed closer to 1:6 scale. I mentioned this to Lucy and she actually offered to redo them, but I somehow missed the email until it was too late. But that’s okay! Since I was planning to build the fireplace from scratch, I could fudge the scale.

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