Simply Curious

It'll be a while before I completely finish the oven.  I'm sure I'm going to fuss over the finish for quite some time!  The layers of paint now prevent the burners from fitting down into the indentation.  I still have no idea how to do the controls on the back.  I'll probably just sneak into an appliance showroom and take pictures.

Here's a photo I took earlier and not sure I shared.  You can see my control knobs along the front, one with a pointer experiment.  They are scrapbooking brads and technically supposed to be buttons.  I twisted the backs off, and think I can still use them as the pointers.

Here is my solution for keeping the doors shut.  A magnet!  I took a business card magnet we had gotten in the mail and cut it into thin strips, then glued one side to the door and the other to the oven interior.  It's a VERY weak magnet, but I only need it to keep the door from falling open, and it's not like I'm going to be moving the oven around a lot once it's in place.  I did experiment with one part magnet, one part metal paper clip before I realized the magnet would stick to itself.  It also sort of worked, but not as well as this setup.

It's a bit hard to see my 'hinges,' as I got paint all over them.  I used ribbon! I glued it lengthwise along the very edge of the door, just enough for it to get a firm grip on it, and then along the bottom of the oven interior.  I made sure that it could open and close before allowing it to set.  For the upper door I used two piece of illustration board to separate the two compartments, and just glued the ribbon between the two pieces and clamped tightly.  It's actually quite sturdy, and does not flop around like I feared.  I actually briefly ran into the problem of not being able to open the top door all the way because of the bottom door.  I guess if I had kept it in the traditional design I wouldn't have had that problem!