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It is a big step to be “done” with the design of the stained glass window but now starts the real work of fabrication! And it is going to be a lot of hard work. Full size templating, cutting the glass, bending the glass, banding, assembling, soldering, etc… each done one piece at a time!
McElf got the delivery of all the glass and materials this weekend and ordered the radiused template that she will build on.
She also ordered the outer layer of curved glass that will eventually protect the window from the outside and give a little more thermal performance.
Of course design is never done until things are actually built (we are still tweaking the text), but overall we are really happy with where we ended up. It is a true collaborative piece that is of the house!
As you may know, we incorporated the seashells from our living room fireplace mantel into the new stain glass window design. So as an extra challenge we are going to cast a mold of the actual tile to help McElf cast new shells in glass for the window!
So first we taped off the areas we did not want to get covered in plaster and made a little dam out of clay right below the tile. Before the plaster is applied, we will also apply a mold release solution of liquid soap and water to help in the later removal.
For the mold we used hydrocal plaster because it sets up fast, is harder than plaster of paris, and I had some leftover in the basement from when I used to do sculpture (back when we had time for such things).
Molding on a vertical surface is more challenging. I had to wait for it to begin to set up otherwise it would fall right off but that limited the working time once it began to set up. The work of applying it was done mostly down by hand with a little help from a spackle knife.
So here it is being applied and beginning to dry.
After letting the plaster set up for about an hour it was time to pop them off!
And now we have a negative mold of shells! The plaster picks up all the details exactly as they are in the old Victorian tiles.
So here they are all done.
Right after this we carefully packed them up, took them to the post office and shipped them to Buffalo NY to McElf’ studio. Can’t wait to see the glass shells that are to be made from these!
Getting even closer on the stained glass window! We did another ‘net meeting tonight to review the latest updates.
Here is the latest version printed full size in place.
There has been a lot of massaging to get the relationships, proportions, and composition just right. We have a few more adjustments to go but we are really close.
And of course we also reviewed the colors and all the glass types. It’s going to be great!
Tonight we had a productive, high tech, computer screen sharing, design review video conference call with McElf! Here’s a screen view (on our conference room at work) showing the color palette, renderings and the patient McElf:
We reviewed some details, got to see Maddie the dog, and settled in on a schedule.
When we got home we had some belated bday cake, served in our fancy, new to us, cake dome with flair. It used to be my grandparents, and I officially love it.
I’d like to say I got the cake at Termini Bros or DiBruno’s or some other fancy Philly bakery, but no…. I made it myself Monday night but we’re just now digging in.
This is a nice pic of Rob enjoying his cake… But also a good view of the layered cake:
Once the sugar rush hit, we got to work sorting and selecting oak trim for the various living room locations. It makes a difference because it’s all going to be stained with clear finish so we want similar pieces together. (Also we’re selective, deliberate, and have high standards, and these things are important to us.)
We also visited our basement wood stack! My, how it’s dwindled:
So that was our Wednesday!
This window is going to be a long & time intensive undertaking so we really need to lock down the design ASAP…
So tonight I played with the color a little more and we should have another version from McElf tomorrow.
Hopefully it will be production ready by the end of the week… The ultimate goal is to have it installed by mid-June!
We are getting closer on the window design!
McElf sent us an updated drawing and we are now finalizing the design:
Here is also McElf’s first pass at applying colors in the computer:
And lastly we did existing dimension drawings so we make sure everything fits nicely.
So McElf Studio has started putting the free hand sketches for our living window into the computer which is always a difficult step… to put ideas into hard line…
So here is the first draft plotted full scale. There is some finessing to be done but we are getting close!
We didn’t stop at design, we also spent quite a bit of time developing a color palette with the boxes of glass samples Megan brought:
As you can see, the bay windows were great for examining lots of textures and colors, and setting samples against.
We also developed color with prismacolor, on photocopies of the design:
Here’s a piece of the window glass we found in the wall, that was left there from when the window was removed. We figured out a way to incorporate these pieces into the design:
We took the samples to the living room and kitchen, taking other colors in the space into account:
After a lot of design decisions: a palette is created! Obviously we probably won’t end up using ALL ~25 of these, but it’s a good place to start:
Precarious:
We’re excited because it’s going to incorporate some really fantastic and unique sculptural elements & colors. Can’t wait!
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