The Mod Pod Build: Finished

After finishing off The Dressmaker's Cottage for my middle daughter, it was time to go back and finish off The Mod Pod for my youngest daughter!  The inspiration for the Mod Pod was the modern shipping containers converted into compact holiday homes which have appeared near beaches and lakes around the world recently.  You'll have to imagine that this Pod has a second Pod nearby containing the bathroom and laundry, ha ha, because this one only has a bedroom, kitchen and lounge!

I abandoned this build after I did a terrible job on putting together the under-bench stainless steel sink from an ELF kit.  It was first attempt at something like this but I was really dismayed at how it turned out - warped and with glue on the aluminium sheet :(  I didn't trust myself to finish off the kitchen then, so I started on another project.

Coming back to it now, I felt a little more confident - and a little less perfectionist about it, LOL.  The ELF kitchen was straight forward to assemble which was great.  I decided that you can't really see the sink anyway, so I left it as is and chalked it up to experience ;-)

After the kitchen, there wasn't much left to do except make a headboard and dress the bed, and attach the "concrete" ledge for the electric fireplace in the lounge.  Oh, and I ordered some 3D printed door handles from Marion Rissek's Shapeways store, for the sliding doors at the front!  It all came together pretty quickly after that.

It's very hard to take pictures of the front doors as the plastic reflects everything terribly!  I rook the doors off for a better view of the inside, but my pics of the whole Pod are not very good because of the reflections. Oh well!

This is the empty Pod before adding the interior.  The "glass" doors slide on each end towards the middle.

And here it is outside with the doors off:

The bedroom

With the sliding door in place:

The boho pillow, plant, Buddha, hanging lights, mirror, cross, surfboard and cane basket came from MiniHomeCoAu on Etsy.  The sign is from My Miniature Emporium ( also Etsy).

I made the bed, headboard and bedding.


The kitchen.

The doll (Chad), is a Heidi Ott doll, dressed in clothes and shoes from Lena Kristapchuk on Etsy.  The kitchen kit is ELF Miniatures, the coffee machine is also ELF, the knife block is Miniature Co, the bowl of yoghurt and fruit is Petite Boulangerie Au and the stools are My Miniature Emporium.

The lounge room.


In the lounge room, the chair and electric fire are from ELF Miniatures.  The rug and plants are from MiniHomeCo.  The side table and laptop are from Minimum World.

Here it is with the door on:

This is the kitchen and lounge together, for a better perspective.

With the lights on!

And the kitchen and bedroom together.

There are LOTS of things I would do differently if I were to do it again, but as my very first from-scratch build, it didn't turn out too badly! :-)

ModPod: The Glazing

It took me quite a while to find the right size and width of perspex I wanted for the doors and windows - I ended up having to order some off the internet, so then I had to wait for it to arrive :-)

There are two A4 sized pieces of  2mm perspex, which fit just nicely into the front of the Pod.

In order to mount the sliding doors, I glued pieces of 5mm wide plastic U-channel (from the local hobby shop), painted black with enamel paint, into the inside of the top and bottom of the front of the Pod.

I then realised that the two sides of the door overlapped right in the middle of the kitchen, which obstructed the view of the future modern kitchen!  Plus, I kinda want to put an island table in front of the doors so that the imaginary occupants can admire the view ;-)

So I resolved that by cutting down the two 2mm pieces of perspex and using a 3mm piece, cut to size, in the middle.  The middle piece will stay in place and the two outer doors will slide across.  All of them can be moved or removed for photographs - the 2mm pieces flex enough when bent to pop them in and out of the U channels.  The 3mm piece is too thick to remove that way, but it can be slid out of the way when the doors are removed :-)

The doors with the protective film in place:

Here I've removed the film from the middle "door" and Ive started framing the sliding doors:

Fro the framing I had to use something very think, or it would make the doors too thick to slide easily in the tracks, so I ended up using strips of thick craft paper, which I painted black and glued on with roller sticky tape!  Tacky glue dried too thick and ran out around the edges of the paper.

I used off cuts from the 2mm perspex to cut the slit windows, and popped them into place.  I'll leave the protective film on until I've finished so they don't get accidentally scratched.

The black box on top of the roof is the battery pack for the ceiling lights.  I'll use some black tubing to cover up the wiring when I mount it to the back wall, where I hope it will look like a power or air conditioner control box!

Ta da! Sliding doors!

I'm still debating what to use for door handles.  I found some pieces in my jewellery findings - they are the T bars from a couple of sets of bar and loop bracelet joiners - which I painted black.  I stuck them on with Blu-Tak to see what they look like:

Hmn, they'll do if I can't find anything else before I finish the Pod, although I don't know how I'll permanently attach them yet. 

Now for the interior!!  I have a few bits and bobs to put in, but the main construction is really the kitchen and I'm waiting for kits to arrive from the UK, from ELF Miniatures, to start.  I'm going to make the cupboards myself from scratch, but I've ordered a fridge, sink and taps and an oven front to insert into the cupboards, plus a few other things.  Exciting!

Mod Pod: The Roof

As I have mentioned in a previous post, I knew I wanted to install ceiling lights in the ModPod, and I figured the easiest way to do that was to create a false roof over the ceiling to hide the wiring.  You can the ceiling as it was, below.

The first thing I did was to find some more foamboard to create the roof.  This time I used thinner, 3mm foam core board from my stash.  I considered just painting it black, but I liked the thought of using something that looks a little more industrial, to go with the converted shipping container feel of the Pod.

I knew I had some A5 sheets of corrugated cardboard in the craft stash, so I painted four of them black to match the Pod.

When they dried, I glued them onto the 3mm pieces of foam board I used for the roof, which sits on top of the wiring.  I now needed a frame to keep the roof on the Pod like a "lid" (so that I can still gain access to the lights if required), to cover up the gap at the front between the ceiling and the roof, and to cover the joins between the pieces of corrugated cardboard.

I covered the joins with strips of 2.5mm x 2.5mm balsa wood, and made the outside frame from "L" shaped angle timber (from the local hobby shop).

Now painted black, it's starting to look more like a roof!

A little bit of balsa wood trim along the front...

 And voila!  Roof done :-) 

Pretty happy with it so far.  I think once I get the glazing on, especially the sliding 'glass' doors I am planning for the front, it will look pretty cool (if I do say so myself, lol).