While I’m aiming to recreate certain exterior elements of Pasticceria Penso as authentically as possible, the interior is born entirely of my imagination. The inside of the real bakery is fairly sterile and modern. For my dollhouse, however, I’d like to capture some of the elegance of Trieste’s Viennese-era bakeries and coffee shops, so I’m going with an ornate red and gold wallpaper and wood wainscoting. The baseboards and wainscot panels (shown here) have been stained golden oak.
The inside of the facade has these difficult-to-fit areas below the windows. I found that the wainscot panels fit fairly well sideways, with some strips cut to fit on either side. (I’ll admit it doesn’t look perfect, but this part of the wall won’t be entirely visible once the shop is assembled and furnished.)
After installing the windows, I’ll need to cut a thin strip to fill out the area along the top of the panels.
Before gluing in the baseboards, I assembled and glued together all four walls. The inside walls have been painted with a primer coat of white.
For some reason, the kit came with a 3/8″ strip on the top of the side walls but not the back wall. I thought it would look strange for it not to match, so I also added this strip along the back wall and stained it golden oak to match the rest of the trim.
I had used Tacky Glue on the wainscot panels below the windows but found that the moisture caused the thin panels to warp terribly. I had to peel them off and start over, after first flattening the wood under a heavy stack of books for several hours. The glue did work eventually, but I found myself pressing each piece in place for upwards of a half hour, until I felt confident that it was fully dry. When I got around to gluing the wainscoting to the side and back walls, I used super glue—much quicker and easier! (Though when I had finished, I noticed that one panel was just slightly askew, overlapping the baseboard a bit. Of course, it was too late to fix it. Not a big deal, since that area will be mostly hidden by display cases.)
