I’m back. Making lemons out of lemonade, I now have time to work on something I love due to the Coronavirus. Social isolation has Andy working from home at the dining room table and I have retreated to the basement to return to my miniature world.

It’s amazing how much I have to re-think and re-learn due to my hiatus. What was my plan? Why did I do “this” and not “that”? What was supposed to come next?

Finally, I just “bit the bullet” and painted the cabinet. It’s not well-built, so I chose to paint it in a distressed style with layers and chips of color. I used chalk paint and experimented with an overall blue but with yellow and red in the corners and the obvious stress points near the edges, handles and lock. I finished with a light wash of dark brown/black and a final coat of brown wax rubbed into the entire piece.

I think I’m happy with the way it turned out. I debated colors for two years (for weeks I thought it would be green with orange coming through the distressed areas) but blue won as frankly, I hate green.

I am now making the lights for every room. These lights must be wired and installed now so I can feed the wires through holes I’ve drilled in the back of the cabinet as I slide and glue the room boxes on the shelves. I want to make sure the electrical system works before I do anything else. I’ll post tomorrow with, hopefully, some bright, burning bulbs in the photographs!