Mahogany Chippendale Secretary

Here's a little secretary I finished recently from a kit.

I just love these House of Miniatures kits; they go together so nicely and the end result looks great, I think.

I've been piddling around recently, working on furniture and accessories rather than building Myrtlewood. The truth is, I'm mostly building the Manor to have some place to display my furniture and accessories. But now I'm going to crack the whip on myself and get back to my construction duties. Sigh.

Cellarette Redux

Some months ago, I built a little cellarette from a kit. As I mentioned in my previous post, I wasn't altogether happy with the way it turned out. I spent a little time recently reworking the piece and like it a lot more now.
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First, I added some higher-quality hinges to the lid so it would open and close without binding. Then I added a lock to the front and built and installed a divider in the main compartment, similar to those I've seen in pictures of real-life cellarettes.

I beveled the top ege of the lid for an overall less boxy appearance. This little detail isn't very noticeable from a distance, but I think it makes a big overall impact nonetheless.

I found these adorable little casters (the wheels really turn!) and added them to each leg.

Finally, I lined the drawer with green "leather" (actually, just some scrapbook paper I have in my stash).

I think it looks a lot more realistic now, and that's one of my main goals in my miniature endeavors. What do you think?

Cellarette

I decided to take a break from my endless floor construction and build one of the furniture kits I've been stockpiling. In the 70s and early 80s, when miniatures enjoyed substantially more popularity than they do today, X-acto made these great little furniture kits, miniature replicas of real-life American antique furniture, mostly in the Chippendale, Queen Anne and Hepplewhite styles. Each piece is precision-milled with lots of detail, and they go together pretty easily. Sadly, these are not made anymore; I've been buying most of mine on Ebay and have built up a pretty sizable collection.
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This kit was for a cellarette, a small cabinet used to hold wine or other spirits. I searched online and found a few real-life examples of antique cellarettes:



The kit was pretty easy to make. After reading the instructions, I sanded, pre-conditioned and stained each piece.

I chose to stain each piece first, rather than staining after I had the entire cellarette assembled, because I used regular wood glue to put it together. Any place on the wood you get the glue will no longer take a stain. Some people are just very careful with their gluing. I am also very careful with my gluing, but for some reason always use just a little too much or too little, and don't want to take the chance. So I always stain first.

Here's the final product, finished with a few coats of polyurethane:

I'm not completely satisfied with how this turned out. The hinges that came with the kit are a little flimsy and don't want to close all the way, so I'll probably replace them with some of higher quality. I'm thinking about putting a small lock on the front of the box, like you can see in the pictures of the real-life cellarettes above, and I may add some casters to the legs, too, if I can find some small enough.