Handy husband B. has fulfilled his promise to make me something for my Miniature Houses. I had two thoughts on what I would like for my Christmas gifts last year. The first idea/request was for a replacement stove for the French country kitchen. I showed him pictures of a Lacanche stove and he said "no problem, what colour!"
I documented the process so this post is in the form of a tutorial and as an encouragement for you to think about the possibility that you could do something similar.
Patience is the first requirement - patience to cut carefully, patience to sand, fill and to let the layers of paint cure. Patience to create the illusion of knobs etc. and realize it will not be a quick project.
How to get from here .. to there!
Decide on a style, check the space you have to fill. We printed a picture just to remind us of the "look" and adapted the size of the doors to fit the space.
B visited the Dollar Store to look for bamboo to make the basic box. There were two cutting boards of bamboo - note that the larger one was hollow with two laminated sides. This larger cutting board was difficult to work with so I would recommend the smaller one that was solid. Just buy two so you have enough to make a mistake. I think they were $3 each in Canada.
When we built the fridge for the Swedish House, detailed in a previous post, we found it was easy to get a highly polished look with Rustoleum Enamel spray paints.
Look carefully and you will see that the large top handle will be attached to the stove by two lobster necklace clasps. I cut the moving part out to create hook/hangers for the handle.
Below: Straw cut into sections and painted ... now dry. Make more straw pieces than you need as they can crush easily - these are a section of the decorative ends of the handles.
The manufacturers ID medallion on the centre door is another jewellery finding filled with off-white nail polish. I actually wrote Lacanche on it!
The burners - These are one part of a grommet in a couple of sizes. In the centre of the smaller three is part of a press stud - painted to match ... the ones in the larger grommet parts are just two things that were in my metal collection - also painted. The grill was a challenge - shown is ribbed foam. B. had used this foam on the kitchen doors of the Swedish House to create the look of reeded doors. It was one of many ideas we tried.
In the end I found a section from a lead stove kit to suggest a grill shown in one of the final pics.
You need to be in a Zen frame of mind when you are saving yourself a LOT of money by DIY.
Elizabeth of http://www.studioeminiatures.blogspot.ca offers two stove tutorials - search the archives for Home on the Range 4th April 2014 and Land's End 30th August 2014. Just go there and disappear for a few hours into the wonderful world of Elizabeth's StudioE.