"You Can Leave Your Hat On!" - ballad of a Stove Hood

Inspiration can come from many different sources. 

As I was writing this blog, the theme song from the movie 
The Full Monty 
was looping through my head- hence the blog's title: 
"You Can Leave Your Hat On" 
In a way, it was an appropriate choice 
in that throughout the making of 
the STOVE HOOD, 
I kept putting things ON, 
only to 

                                   strip'em off....

But once again, I am getting way ahead of my story.
so
Let me begin it this way

***
When working on the left side of Villa Leone's kitchen my original muse was a 
MINWORKS blogpost
from several years ago.

 http://minworks.blogspot.ca/search?updated-max=2012-01-     09T10:48:00-08:00&max-results=7  

                                                 My friends

                      Janine and her hubby Bruce,

had produced a Fab Hall Lantern for her 
Award winning
French House, 
by gluing together
 2 night lights from the dollar store 
to form a single hanging fixture.  

Remembering what they had done, had me cruising the aisles of different dollar stores, 

looking more closely at what night lights had to offer.

Last year I stumbled across this one which I thought might one day make a pretty good stove hood. 

 It's shape of it reminded me of a hat.  
  
Funny thing is that what I both Liked and Disliked about the shade, was it's unique hat-like shape, however I didn't  want it to continue looking like a hat once it was installed in the kitchen.

But another reason that I thought the shade might work as a hood, was that the plastic was easy to drill through, and since it was already hollow, adding lights and hiding the wires inside it would be pretty easy. 
I was eager to try it out with my FANTASTIC- NEW-TOTALLY GORGEOUS 8 gas burners, double oven, MOLLY SUE MINIATURES 
ITALIAN STOVE. http://www.mollysueminiatures.com/

 I could see the potential of a beautiful relationship between the two, so I decided to proceed with the hood
 as planned.

  I would need a tiled wall behind the stove, 
so 
I dug through my 
"used- to- be-organized- but- is- now- really- messy" 
stash of building supplies, 
and located some leftover plastic embossed "tin tile" which I would paint and install beneath the hood.
I used an earlier tutorial of mine for painting these particular plastic tiles
"Big Tiles- try- try again"
http://studioeminiatures.blogspot.ca/2015/02/big-tiles-try-try-again.html

To widened the base of the hood I cut a rectangle of foam core board to equal the width of the stove, and glued 2 wooden corbels to the underside for supports. 
These I'd also found in my messy stash. 

 I cut some wood trim to bulk up the base, then tried it out with the doll "cooking" at the stove. 
UGG!
 What I had was a plastic hat with a wooden brim.  Clearly additional work was required. 

To make it look more interesting, I cut up a plastic picture frame to add some carving.  
It was very heavy- looking carving and Naturally, I thought I could "lighten it up" with Even MORE HEAVY CARVING

I kept on adding things: a lion head, a plastic circle,  rhinestones, and metal bits and more wood trim.
hmmm?
"maybe it will look better, once it's painted"  

Base coat on

then 2 finish coats of black acrylic paint.  

Hmmmm?
And although wouldn't admit it out loud,

 I thought it looked like 
a halloween witch hat, 
however,
 I persisted in the belief that I could fix it up
by adding still more to it.

I randomly brushed a gold nail polish over the black paint which gave the hood metallic highlights.

The general idea was to make it appear in harmony with  the brass trims on the Italian stove. 

However, no matter what I did

it still wasn't doing it for me.

This was THE Moment

 my career as 

A Stripper began. 

Off came the top!

to bad for me-
 the crowd WASN'T going wild


Perhaps once it is actually installed in the kitchen?...

*sigh*
so I was back to putting things on again


"BABY TURN ON THE LIGHTS-
ALLLL THE LIGHTS"
(lyrics from the song)

so I drilled two holes into the plastic bottom 
of the night light hood,
 then
I added two gold glass buttons I'd found in my stash.
I threaded the bulbs through the buttons,
 then gathered the wires into the hood, 
which were then fed through the kitchen wall 
and hooked up to the transformer.
At the back of the hood, I covered over the hole with filigree 
right where the shade would have attached to the night light bulb,  

this became the hood's Exhaust Fan. 

I tested the lights before gluing the hood to the wall 

The buttons make the lights HUGE! 

SCORE!
I remembered I had some brass strips and some brass doweling.
I cut the brass trims to fit the hood 
then glued them both in place. 

            The I glued the tiles to the wall, 
             with the hood positioned above.

I couldn't get a crisp a bend at the corners with the brass, but it still looked better than I'd expected. 
I was stoked about both the brass and the tiles. 

The copper fry pan was a Christmas gift from Linda Park! ♥
and since I'd made hooks for utensil bar,
 I was able to hang up her pan right away and 
♥ LOved it! ♥
Linda emailed me, asking about how things in the kitchen were progressing. 
I had been on a roll- 
 I had already done a lot-
and I liked it a lot - well mostly 

BUT I WAS STILL NOT LIKING THE Top of the HOOD!
To me
My dollar store night light still resembled 
a hat-
specifically-
a tall Top Hat wearing a lot of brass!

Interest in the kitchen, suddenly "bumped and grind"  to to a halt. 
I felt like slinking off stage.  
In my frustration, I was going give up on the kitchen and go to work on the second floor of the villa instead, since nothing I did; helped, and I could no longer pretend to like- 

THE HAT!  
However, working on the second floor of the villa meant working on the second floor staircase- Arrgggh!!!- 
nooooo, I'm not ready for that yet either! 

So, I put on my thinking cap  to try and come up with an viable solution; because having glued the hood to the wall, I had no other choice but to leave the hat on.   

 Then a light switched on!... I had an idea
What if- I lowered the ceiling height to hide the hat? 
i.e.  like a burlesque FAN DANCER, it's still behind there, but you just can't see it
  
I tried out a section of wood across the top of the hood to see if it would work and what it would look like. 

"YES-I think that I could live with this"

           but first I had to pry off that lion medallion

  Sudden Exposure-
(you can see it's undies!)
then
I made second hat 
to cover the first hat

I cut a length of foam insulation to span
the width of the wall, which I then covered with 
wallpapered cardstock on the narrow front face 
as well as on the underside. 
Then the new hat was glued in place 
right over the old black hoodie. 

I added the ceiling beams for a little Venetian character
and permanently affixed the lantern to the ceiling.

To finish off the top of the hood, I cut 2 strips of self-stick gold ribbon, doubled up, and glued them to the top of the hood to form a thick band to cover the gap at the cut out.

I chose to use ribbon because it was flexible and would easily conform to the contours of the hood AND because I had lots of it, therefore, IF I made a mistake, 
which I usually do; 
I could try again. 

This gold lame ribbon has a fuzzy texture like velcro

I applied the first of 2 layers

I used my finger to smear a layer of drywall putty over the surface of the gold ribbon which I had painted black. 

I smoothed drywall putty over the ribbon and let it dry. 

I cleaned off the overage and waited until the putty had set.
When it was dry to the touch, I painted it again with black acrylic paints. 

 then highlighted it with more gold nail polish.

FINALLY!!!! 

                   

               Everything was         

               Looking good and 
The crowd was going wild!!!🎉

Ta Dah!

With the new dropped ceiling over the stove,
 the rest of the kitchen
became fun to play with again.

In the photos above and below,  you can see that
I've placed the sewing box which I won last year as part of a multi- Giveaway from Pepper's
MitchyMoo Miniatures blogspot
https://mitchymoominiatures.blogspot.ca/search?updated-max=2017-04-16T16:47:00%2B02:00&max-results=20&start=12&by-date=false
I'm treating it in the kitchen as a Spice Box. 

Here's a view of both sides of Leone's kitchen

Cannelloni! 

Sauteed mushrooms in butter

Irina Miniatures

                    https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/Irinaminiatures

I LOVE cooking on my new Italian stove

and 
Oh, by the way-
would you like to stay for dinner?

YES?!

 Well then,
"take off your coat" 
but...

                            

 I think You know the rest

and thus ends my brief career as a Stripper.

rated "G" for all audiences 

take it away Tom

► 4:06

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwvJAobeqlA

► 4:06

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwvJAobeqlA

elizabeth

        

Leone gets a FACELIFT

Welcome Back!
Ben tornati!

In my last post, I stated that I would be starting on 
Villa Leone's kitchen.
and I have been.
BUT
It took me a week 
just to empty the entire house of its contents before I actually began. 
Yes, 
there WAS a lot of junk and stuff inside the house, 
but what made me drag my feet 
was because I was reluctant to start on
"the kitchen". 
I was uninspired and the room itself, 
was uninspiring.

Let me preface this post by saying,
 that I'd NEVER  been happy with the designated kitchen space because of the ugly sight-line 
leading from 
the Morning Room 
through the stone arched doorway. 
What you saw was a dark flat window, 
on a useless wall. 
I say "useless" 
because nothing could be placed against the wall 
 under the window,
unless it was moved far back into the corner.  

Added to this gloomy aspect was 
 the darkness of the grilled window alongside the general darkness of the front entry.
mama mia
What was I thinking???

 I liked the wallpaper well enough 
even if
I wasn't thrilled with it, 
and although
I'd considered papering over it, 
deep down I knew that wouldn't really solve anything 
because the problem was still
That Annoying FLAT Window

So with the window staring me in the face, 
I thought I'd tackle that very thing which
I disliked the most

I've always wanted a window ledge,
and so why not try and make one?
 So this is where
Leone's FACELIFT
began.

To make the inside non-opening window 
look more important, 
and to add some interest to a boring outside wall,
I LIFTED OFF THE FRONT FACE PANEL
on the 
 the exterior of the Villa, and then bumped it out 
 a Half Inch. 
I framed in around the inside perimeters of the window opening, then
 around the outside of the frame of the face panel
using lengths of thick balsa wood. 

Then the face panel was re-glued over the exterior opening so that it stood proud from the surface of the  exterior wall. 
 After it the glue had dried, 
the joins and seams were sealed, 
 with some wall putty and paint.

It is now securely re-affixed into place.

I'm sorry that I didn't take any pictures of the process, 
but this is how the front face panel looks now that it is 
 almost finished.
The front looks the same head on
but the profile is better.

This looks far more interesting on the outside 
and 
 it's providing me with an inside window ledge;
Hip Hip Hooray! 

The window and the window ledge 
are still unfinished,
however, 
it was right after I had re-adjusted the window, 
that everything else about this room 
began changing -

rapidly! 

I decided to switch the kitchen door from the left side of the wall to the Right

This new door placement was good on several counts:

1)  It would give me a straight view into the Main Entry from the patio

2) The foot traffic from the garden did not have to pass through the kitchen to get to the rest of the house

3) The kitchen itself would be self contained 

and would look more 

"Old World".

  This was the set-up I decided upon for 
the kitchen interior. 
  I felt happier with this particular arrangement.

However,

 after I'd examined the photo above, 
the thought came to mind that perhaps I should differentiate 
the floor of the corridor 
from that of the kitchen: 

 So I laid down a scrap piece
of tile paper to see how the two floors looked together, 

and I decided I'd go for it

I'll be honest,
I had to do
 then re-do the tile floor  
TWICE. 
☹
The first time I laid the paper down
 crooked.
It was just a fraction off but it.  
 REALLY BUGGED ME 
>< 
I was all out of the original scrapbook tile paper,
 so 
I had to use a photocopy of it 
for the second attempt. 
The photocopy tile was SuperWHITE  with 
a wishy- washy Black.  
So then I had to try and match the tile color with those in the Main Entry... 
ARRRGGH !
><
Well, it is what it is
which is not great, 
so don't look too close,
 okay? 

The tiles look better from a distance
and the view from the staircase window 
Is Much More Interesting
now that there is actually 
Something 
Worth Seeing! 

A 

(rather dark)

side by side shot of
The Morning Room and Main Entry on the left,
 with the passage and small kitchen on the right.

Not sure what to cover the kitchen walls with yet..

The FOLLOWING PHOTOS ARE MOCKUPS OF THE KITCHEN

please keep in mind that

everything may ( and probably will) change again tomorrow

PLAY TIME! 

Veggie Basket
was made by Janine
back in the 90's
FINALLY, it will get Pride of Place!

For the tiles behind the stove,
I am thinking to use a photocopy of a
French Rug.
The Baroque pattern and pretty colors are just what I am looking for.
I'm still not certain about if I should have a stove hood or not.
I have an inspiration picture of one which I might try
 anyway,
just so that I can see what it will look like with everything else before I finalize my decision.

The Elizabeth Causeret covered casserole was a gift from Linda when she and Janine were at the
2017 SIMP SHOW
:D
the Roma Tomatoes 
are plastic berries from a
Christmas Wreath

Morrel Mushrooms
were made by Irina Timoshkevich 

of 

Irina Miniatures

https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/Irinaminiatures

 TheBlackPainted wooden box
 will eventually become 
the fridge and the wine jug on top was a gift which Fats
made me for my birthday last year.  

The fab pottery pieces are more gifts from both Linda Park and
from Fatima

This will give you the general feeling of how the kitchen is developing.
After I build the permanent walls and install the arch,
I shall be adding, cupboards and shelves and perhaps, over head beams as well.
I'll need some additional counter space on either side of the Red Range, 
and 
More Herbs 
for the window sill.

I am using this large"iron" urn as a temporary sink
however the more I look at it, the more I like it.
May have to rethink
The Sink

Next to the sink,
is my new chopping block by
Weston Miniatures

https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/WestonMiniature
It's PERFECT!
Thanks Matthew! 

                   Erzebet of Hungarian Miniatures 

                        made the Parmesan cheese and the grater.

https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/hungarianminiatures?ref=listing-shop2-all-items-count#items

                        Jar of Tomato preserves by

                               Irina Timoshkevich

                                                    Irina miniatures

                     https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/Irinaminiatures

Additional Items displayed on the chopping block include:
 pepper grinder, bottle of Chianti, bowl of eggs, the garlic and the whisk made by me.

Janine bought me
the Elizabeth Causeret country style dish
also from the 2017 SIMP show;
I tell you,
I have some of the BEST-EST Best Friends!
:D

The onion and garlic braids were also made by Fats!
:D

The above photo lets you see the temporary set up in the kitchen and how it relates to the Morning Room.
It will all change again,
 when the walls are papered, the shelves go up 
and the light fixture are put in place.

In conclusion:
It was FUN to be able to play with some of these kitchen accessories again, 

especially after all of 
the re-thinking and re-construction.

And even though I'm not finished yet,
I got a good bit done this past week
even if most of it consisted of
 Painting... Painting... and more Painting

miles left to go

but I feel I'm actually making some progress

because to me -

It's looks like someone lives here!
☺

Thank you so much for coming to visit 

I'll see you to your gondola

 goodbye, 
goodbye

until we meet again

♥♥ ♥

elizabeth