Shoji doors
Ever do something on a house and when you're finished, you just sit and giggle and play with it for half an hour? That's kind of the way it went when I finished the sliding rice paper doors for the inside of the house.
I used basswood strips and stained them to match the interior woodwork, then laid them out in a grid. I was planning on making the smaller panels on the doors, but in this scale, it looked too fussy and busy in a small space. So I reminded myself that japanese design is focused around "shibui", a simple elegance. I've had to remind myself of that several times while building this house. In the smaller scale, it's even more important to pay attention to not overwhelming the space with too much of a good thing.
Once the frame was laid out and glued together, I cut a piece of "rice paper" to size and glued it to the back side of the frame. The "rice paper" is actually a transparent sheet of scrapbook paper that turned out to be just perfect.
The next step was to glue the other side of the frame on. It was more efficient to glue it on piece by piece to make sure all pieces matched exactly than to try to build it and glue it on in one piece. Here's the end result.
I weighted the door with heavy books and while the glue dried, I made the top bracket for the door to slide in. It's two pieces of basswood, cut to the length of the room and then glued together to make an L shape. The short side of the L faces downward to hold the door in the track when it slides.
After all the glue dried, I glued the track onto the wall and it was ready to have the door slide in.
This is the part where I played with it for half an hour. The door slides back and covers the front door and then closes back to separate the living area from the tokonoma (formal guest room).
And here's the part where I sat back and looked it and went, "Yep, I like it".
Deb
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