{"id":17072,"date":"2021-05-20T23:38:17","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T06:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/?p=17072"},"modified":"2022-04-23T23:17:30","modified_gmt":"2022-04-24T06:17:30","slug":"a-new-microwave-for-the-artists-cottage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/?p=17072","title":{"rendered":"A new microwave for the Artist’s Cottage"},"content":{"rendered":"

While I was working on the Artist’s Cottage sleeping loft<\/a>, 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

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

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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?<\/p>\n

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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.)<\/p>\n

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I used my Molotow Liquid Chrome marker<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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In addition to the window not being punched out, the top and bottom pieces were not the same size, and the handle that’s referenced in the instructions wasn’t included. I can’t really fault the kit because the design has clearly changed since then, and it was easy enough to swap the too-short side piece with a scrap of basswood.<\/p>\n

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I also made a new side piece so the visible side of the microwave wouldn’t have seams at the top and bottom, and I added a piece of wood to the inside of the box for an additional surface to glue the front piece to.<\/p>\n

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Here’s how it looks assembled. The Gallery Glass paint bulges a little, which adds to the illusion of this being a window. On the bottom edge of the microwave you can see a smudge from my finger. I covered this up later.<\/p>\n

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The microwave is slightly wider than the cabinet.<\/p>\n

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I sanded the left side with the disc sander until it fit exactly under the cabinet. <\/p>\n

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The front piece was warped, but I think this only happened after I “painted” it with the markers. When I glued it down, I used super glue on the center piece but not on the corners because I didn’t want it to seep out. Turns out I should have used it on the corners.<\/p>\n

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This side of the microwave is right in your face when you look into the house, so I couldn’t leave it this way. But because I didn’t want to smudge the ink any more, I was hesitant to slip glue under the corner and clamp it. (This is one of those cases where my impatience made everything more complicated than it needed to be…)<\/p>\n

I ended up adding a side piece to the cabinet, to hide the messy side of the microwave.<\/p>\n

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The finish looks rougher in the picture than it is, because it’s so reflective. Although, I admit, the finish would be better if I hadn’t smudged it and had to touch it up.<\/p>\n

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Here’s how it looks in place.<\/p>\n

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Originally I had an Acme magnet fridge in here, but it didn’t end up in the bin with the rest of the cottage’s furniture when I moved last year. I might have moved it into a different house at some point. While I was looking for it, I found this Horace Jones fridge in my stash, a pre-pandemic flea market purchase.<\/p>\n

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And here’s a gratuitous wide shot of the room. A lot in this house is handmade and imperfect, but it doesn’t bother me like it would in a different house. A hippie artist lives here, after all.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Speaking of which, now that she has a decent microwave to cook with, her studio could use some attention…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[19,48],"class_list":["post-17072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dollhouses","tag-half-scale","tag-spanish-revival-artists-cottage","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17072"}],"version-history":[{"count":42,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18030,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17072\/revisions\/18030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}