Sunday 13 October 2013

Helen Hall

This weekend has been a typical dollhouse weather, and I started my renovation work on the Playmobil house which I have called Helen Hall, after the friend who gave me the ruins.

I wasn't at all sure what exactly I wanted to do, but I knew that painting the ceiling was imperative so that's where I started, dismantling the house and testing one floor/ceiling panel. While it was drying I painted the basement with sand paint to make it less plastic-y and more stony.



And suddenly the plastic wall became totally unbearable. I had thought that I might leave it as it was, since it is sort of right Victorian dirty yellow, but now I knew it wouldn't work. I had considered covering it with brick paper, but it has this nice surface, and I have another house with brick walls. So I put the ceilings aside and started mixing paint. I have in the past five years used the same can of all-purpose white paint, originally bought for some minor 1:1 decoration. I have occasionally mixed it with other paint, including gouache and acrylic. I tried to make an interesting blue colour, but it was too pale and dull. Then I tried bright red hobby paint, and it turned quite interesting.

I peeled off all exterior details and painted each panel separately. (Although here they are re-assembled again).




Then I painted all the cornices, door posts (three) and external windows (ten) white. It is quite clear that the old plastic has grown yellow so I will have to paint all windows and doors as well.


 I painted dormer windows.


All the time I discovered that I had missed a detail; that something I had painted red should be white or the other way round. There were two external windows missing from the kit. I had bought spares from ebay, but failed to notice that the frames were missing as well. There are lots of spares on ebay.


On the whole, I am really pleased with the result. I put the house together for the moment since I won't have time to work on it during the week, and it looks so fine. I will then have to dismantle it again to put in floors and wallpaper, paint the ceilings, skirting and cornices, and I am sure there will be interesting problems to solve.




7 comments:

  1. this is incredibly cool. Loving this project.

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  2. What type of paint did you use on the roof and exterior of the home? Did you mix it with anything? Did you add finishing paint/spray?

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  3. The roof is at it was originally, just plastic. For the walls, I used ordinary all-purpose white paint for indoor decoration, and I mixed it with a bright-red hobby paint until I had the result I was happy with. I had to use two to three coats. The white bits is the same plain white.

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  4. Thank you so much! It is a gorgeous house!

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  5. Also, did the paint take well to the plastic? I bought my girls the Calico Critters Manor for Christmas and I want to paint the exterior to look like lime washed brick (the house itself is in a tan bricked pattern, thought it would look nicer if it was an actual brick red not the generic plastic looking tan) so I was wondering if you sanded the plastic down first for the paint to stick? What brand did you use for the white interior paint?

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  6. Nancy, it was just plain everyday paint, like you would use to paint walls in your kitchen. It stuck fine, two coats. I didn't sand it before. You may also want to see another project of mine, with a plastic house make-over http://dollhouseescapes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/plastic-house-finishing-touches.html

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