Derivative Crafts: Cathedral Window

When I was putting together the new office, I had an ambition to do the outside-facing wall as a fake stone wall in more or less this style using painted styrofoam sheets. I ended up not doing so for a number of reasons (time and effort, fragility in a place where I'd be moving in some bulky furniture, etc.), but I still liked the idea. This came up again as I was looking at the end of one of the cabinet sections. The prefab cabinets have nice wood facings, but the sides are particle board.

Ugly, but less expensive if you're lining up a bunch of them. If they're not entirely sandwiched between walls, you can buy a separate facing to put on the one at the exposed end. but we can do better than that, can't we?

My basic idea was to turn that end into an illuminated window with a pointed arch using a strip of LEDs for a light source. I've got them kicking around, so why not? Step one was to get a suitable design for the window proper and get that together with the 3d printer. I sized it sufficiently large (about 15 inches from top to bottom) that I had to print it in two parts, running out of filament half-way through printing part two.

No matter; everything's getting painted anyway.

Step two is getting the basic structure of the wall it's going on set up. I got a suitably sized piece of thin plywood and sketched out where I wanted the window to appear.

Then I started cutting up some sheets of foam to fit. The window frame made a good template to cut through the foam down do the wood.

With the basic shape set up, laying down the strip of LEDs was next, turning back and forth within the window space. The strip actually starts at the bottom corner so that it can be plugged in.

They were bright enough that they shone through the unfinished foam. While it's all getting painted, I covered the section of LEDs from the edge to the window with a strip of foil before gluing it all down with foam glue.

Next came roughing out the pattern of blocks. Like that video linked above suggests, it's a good idea to do that in advance with a little thought rather than freehand it. I also cut out a frame and a few other bits to become "stone."

This is the messy part: cutting grooves. I used a Dremel with a wire brush attachment. Absolutely marvelous for cutting through foam sheets, but incredibly messy.

On to painting. This is after a pass of a light brown base coat, a little sienna on the lower edges of the "blocks," and a little green on the upper edges.

Followed that up with a somewhat diluted light gray and a wash of very dark gray to fill in the cracks. I found, as I often do, that my washes end up everywhere, not just where they're supposed to settle in, and there were several passes of wiping down the elevated parts and doing more passes of lighter colors where the wash bled in too much.

With that out of the way, it's time to mess with the lighting a little. A few sheets of a translucent but not entirely transparent plastic serve to soften the points of LED light.

(I experimented with a stained glass pattern behind the window, printing out a colored design on transparency paper. Unfortunately, the plastic simply refused to keep the ink and despite repeated attempts and overnight dryings, it would smear at the slightest touch.)

One of the nice things about foam is that it's really lightweight. The frame was secured with foam glue and some pins. To get the printed frame on, I glued some heavy-duty staples to the underside and pressed it in.

This fit very snugly against the cabinet end, but it's not done yet. I left the top and bottom edges clear so I could drill through the foam and backing and screw the "stone" wall securely to the underlying cabinet face.