Sometime ago I found an image of a window pie cooler posted by The Farm Chicks. I loved the idea and filed it in the “things I need to build” part of my brain.
Cool, huh? I love it and the staging possibilities are unlimited.
I’ve been focusing my time on the first floor staircase I designed for my San Franciscan and had some glue drying. So, I pulled out the kitchen window from my Houseworks window stash and jumped right in building my own window pie cooler. I found some molding for the outside frame, a bit more decorative than the photo since this is a Victorian. Then decided on 3/4” bass strip wood for the body and single shelf. I carefully measured the area inside the exterior frame of the window. This is a two window double hung unit. Because of this, the top, bottom, and shelf pieces needed to be notched to fit snuggly around the window framing.
Once the pieces were cut, I marked the shelf placement, and glued the side pieces together to form the box and set it to the side to dry. I use Gorilla glue on my life size building projects and my minis. Next, I cut the miters for the frame that the screening would be glued to. I had ordered fine screening from Julie Warren’s Etsy shop along with the hand miter cutter she sells. I love it much better than my previous cutter. I glued the frame together, cleaned any excess glue, and put a small piece of low tack masking tape on each corner. My final glueing for the day was placing the shelf in position and placing 1/4 round molding strips under each side to add to the realistic aspect of shelf support. I also decided to add a bit of gingerbread to the upper inside corners of the frame. I ordered 1:24 scale Victorian corner brackets from Vintage Victorian Dollhouse Woodwork. The are perfect!
The next time I visited my pie cooler, I sanded and painted all of the pieces. I used very thin coats of ivory craft paint. Once the pieces dried, I sanded them again with very fine sand paper and repainted.
When the paint had dried over night, I went over the painted sections with paper from a brown paper bag. I forget who I learned that from but it works great to give a really smooth finish.
Now to add the screening! I took Julie Warren’s advise and used Gorilla Super Glue, just running a fine line where the end of the screen would be attached. The screening was carefully placed and I actually didn’t glue my fingers to it! That dried overnight and the frame was finally able to be glued to the sides. I cut and glued 1/4 round molding to cover the raw edges of the screen, touched up paint, and woohoo!, I was finished. Aging and any other color changes will be completed when the pie cooler is installed and the rest of the exterior of my house is aged.
I couldn’t be happier with the results! Until the next time, take care.
Karen
