While I was working on the Artist’s Cottage sleeping loft, I came across a MiniEtchers microwave kit that I’d put aside for the cottage years ago. The MiniEtchers site isn’t taking new orders right now, but you can see the microwave kit here.

I can’t remember when I bought this kit, but it must have been sometime after the original microwave I made for the cottage started to fade. I made this before I started spraying my printies with UV protecting sealer, and over the years it had gotten wonky.

I’ve already built this kit once, for the Victorianna. That time I placed a special order for the width I needed. The front piece had the window cut out.

But the kit I’d set aside for the Artist’s Cottage, which was older than the one I bought for the Victorianna, didn’t have the window cut out. I guess the design was refined?

I tried using a utility knife on the score lines to remove the window piece, but it wasn’t working and I didn’t want to break the piece. When a microwave is closed, the window is dark anyway, so I just colored it in with a black Sharpie. (Easier to stay in the lines with a marker than a paintbrush.)

I used my Molotow Liquid Chrome marker to color in the edges. I love this marker because it has a very shiny metallic finish. But it also takes a while to dry and I kept getting fingerprints in the wet ink. Luckily I could color over it to hide the fingerprints, but it would have been better if I’d done just one coat and then left it alone for a few hours.

I couldn’t get the Sharpie into the corners of the panel, so I painted that with black paint, and then I went over the display window with Sharpie and the buttons with the chrome marker.

Next I coated the window and the display with Crystal Clear Gallery Glass to make them shiny. This is what it looks like when it’s wet, but it dries clear.

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The last time I posted about the Spanish Revival Artist’s Cottage, in September 2016, my post ended with “the only thing left to do is the sleeping loft.” That was a true statement! I just didn’t intend for it to take five years.

I bought this one-room 1:24 scale cottage as a $2 gatorboard shell at a flea market. At the time there were a lot of shows on HGTV showing “tiny houses” and creative uses of small spaces, and I got the idea to add a sleeping loft over the couch, since there wasn’t really space for a bed anywhere else.

I made the loft out of 2″ basswood with a piece cut out of the corner for the chimney, and 1/4″ square basswood supports underneath.

I glued another piece of basswood to the bottom.

I painted the loft with the Navajo White paint I used on the stucco.

I got this trim at Heritage Laserworks, which has sadly been down for maintenance for over a year. (I tried emailing to ask if they’ll reopen and never got an answer.) I bought this trim specifically for the sleeping loft because it has a Southwestern flavor, but in the meantime I used some of it on the Blackbird Bar.

The sleeping loft languished at this point because I wasn’t sure what to do for stairs. Building a ladder seemed easy enough, but I couldn’t figure out how to tie it in. I did buy this ladder at a flea market in 2017 thinking it would work, but I didn’t like how much it stuck out into the room.

Recently, looking on eBay for supplies for the Turret House, I came across these 65-degree stairs from Alessio Miniatures. I’d seen these before in 1:12 scale and I’d even gone looking for something like this in 1:24 scale, but I couldn’t remember what I’d wanted them for. I was placing an order anyway so I bought a couple of them to have on hand.

When the stairs got here, I realized they fit perfectly against this wall in the Artist’s Cottage. Maybe the sleeping loft was what I’d wanted them for in the first place.

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