Triang house: Inspecting the furniture

When I bought the Triang, I hadn't even looked properly at what came with it. The imaginary former owner Lily didn't have much choice of furniture. I suspect that what I found inside was exactly what Lily had to play with, and it was an array of styles and manufacturers.

This is a Kleeware set. I don't like it because of its shiny plastic look.

 

I once repainted a plastic sofa, and thinking back I hope it wasn't a valuable vintage piece (it is in storage so I cannot check). These are undeniably valuable vintage pieces, but I don't think I will ever use them in any project. They are also slightly larger than the rest, so as you see, if I put them in the room, there is almost no space for anything else. I have a lovely Barton three-piece which will fit in nicely.

Most of the other furniture is Barton. I am not tremendously fond of Barton or early Lundby, because they are crude and clumsy, made of far too thick wood, and the finish is not nice. But they are period-correct for 1950s so I will keep them and add details that will make them look prettier. I need to remind myself that both the house and the furniture were once playthings, not collectibles.

Some of the furniture was broken, and I repaired it carefully.

 

The sideboard was easy to mend, although it is still a bit lopsided. I will not repair it further. The dollhouse family probably got their possessions second-hand in the years just after the war. Or it simply got worn out, and the family cannot afford a new one. (The family, I imagine, is the father, a war veteran who makes a living at a toy factory, former ammunition factory; the mother who drove ambulance during the war and is now a homemaker, and two children, a boy and a girl. Oh no, bother, there is no space in the house for children's bedroom).

I don't know yet where the sideboard will be. If I decide to have a dining room, that would be the obvious place. I can make a mirror or a period-correct painting to hang above and put various ornaments on it. See how cleverly I have covered the damaged floor!

The table and chairs are the way the are - valuable cultural artifacts. I have many suitable plastic plates and cups, as well as food. The tall-case clock has no face, but it's easy to glue on. I have upcycled many wooden clocks; perhaps I shouldn't have, but they are not very rare.

There was one drawer missing in the dressing table.

Once again, I haven't got all my supplies so I couldn't make a nice drawer, but at least there is no gaping hole. I will make a better one in due time. Guardians of cultural value probably say I shouldn't. But I am not gluing it in so it's easy to remove.

The dressing table is accompanied by a wardrobe, which has no defects at all. I will make hangers to put on the rack and maybe some shoe boxes and hat boxes. The rug hides the damaged floor, but it is wrong scale, so I will make a better one. I will also make a little bench or stool to put in front of the dressing table. Or maybe I have one somewhere.

The bed had no bedding - I suppose it was lost sometime in the past fifty years.

I made the mattress from a sponge cloth and sheets from fabrics I had at hand. I also made three pillows.

The bed will be in the alcove, only partially visible unless you look closely inside.

The mysterious object by the bed is an electric heater. I had never seen one like this, neither in real life nor in a dollhouse, but a friend who grew up in the UK in the '50s recognised it immediately and said that they were enormous hazard.

I will put some period-correct pictures and photos on the wall, make a bedside lamp, and there is space by the window, for instance, for a sewing table and a chair. They won't be visible at all. In that corner, I will also put an electric tea light. It will create a fantastic effect through the window.

The drawing room, minus two of the three plastic monsters, has a fireplace, a book shelf and a radiogram.

The fireplace had been broken and mended, and at the moment I haven't got supplies to mend it properly, with a filler to cover the cracks.

What Lily's adults didn't bother about and Lily probably didn't notice is that a fireplace needs a back, as a minimum. Ideally, a fireplace needs a chimney breast, and I have seen one in older Triang models, but I won't make one for this room. However, you definitely cannot see the wallpaper through the fireplace, so the first thing I did was glue a piece of black card to the back. I will add some glitter to make the fire more realistic. The fireplace is too small to insert a flickering tealight, as I did in my Victorian house. But I will make a fireguard.

The book shelf is straightforward, although it's tempting to glue on a variety of spines - that would certainly be sacrilege. But I had some books from a different project that are just the right scale. The book shelf neatly conceals the damaged floor.

 

The cuckoo clock is modern, but I think it fits, at least for the time being. The rug is from another project and wrong scale, but the cats are right scale - in my large dollhouse, I pretended they were kittens.

Now, I didn't even know what a radiogram was, but my friend assured me that her family had one exactly like this in the '50s. It was broken, and so far I only added a turntable with a vinyl disc. It is supposed to have a lid, and I will make one in due time.

 

This brings me to the kitchen, which usually is the most interesting feature in a dollhouse. The appliances that came with the house were tin Brimtoy. This is a new brand for me - I have never seen them before.

Both are in poor condition. The sink bowl is missing, and both are bent and falling apart, held together with a fifty-year-old tape. They are part of a set, and other pieces are available on ebay, but I am not sure I am keeping these. I have a lovely Kleeware kitchen set with table and chairs, sink, hob, washing machine and zillions of small stuff so they will all fit in very well. I have another Barton fridge - I bought this one recently at a car boot sale for 30p. It is full of food.

Two details to draw your attention to. I have made huge progress cleaning the floor. When I took the picture it was still wet so hopefully when it dries you almost won't see the marks. I will then use the technique I have read about: chalk pastels - to smooth it over. I am still not sure that a kitchen would have parquet floors, but at least I have more or less restored it to the original state.

The second element is the stair carpet. It is only attached with white tack, and if I decide to keep it I will use glue stick that is easy to remove. The pattern is from the web, and I resized it, replicated, printed out and glued onto a long strip of paper. It's a bit too glossy coming from a laser printer, but I think it looks good. It is not sacrilege because I have seen Triang interiors with stair carpets. If I keep it, I will add carpet rods.

What about the bathroom, you might ask. I will have to choose between a bathroom and a dining room. I could have the dining room table and chairs in the drawing room. Poor maid will have to carry food upstairs. And the room will be crammed. Maybe they were in the 1950s.

I have a lovely Barton bathroom set, much better than this. The toilet seat is missing, and there is no matching sink.

I am still not sure that a bathroom should have wallpaper and parquet floor. I have just seen a picture of Triang 64 on the web with white floor tiles in the bathroom. I need to do more research.

There were also two small plastic bathtubs. Perhaps Lily had twin baby dolls.

I have not shown the garage at all. Here it is.

The brick floor is water-damaged. I have brick paper that I could use to replace, but in a garage it doesn't really bother me. It's spilled oil. The walls are bare. Well, maybe that's appropriate. I don't have a car for this garage and don't want to buy one. So the garage will be used as a shed. These are just some things I happen to have around.They are not right scale.

Anyway, a lot to do and not much I can do now because I need my other furniture to decide exactly which rooms will be used it what way (although except for the bathroom/dining room I think it's pretty clear). Not least, I need to decide what to do with floors and wallpaper, which is a big decision, so I think I will put this project aside for a while and focus on something else. But I will be back soon, I promise!

Pride andPrejudice room box, Part 2

Read the first part of this story.

Once upon a time, Facebook allowed you to choose which picture to show when you shared your blog post. Not any more. So I put the final picture first, to be shown with the link. Close your eyes if you prefer to be surprised.

It took  some time to get there.

First, I tried various wallpaper. Jennifer's printables is a superb site where you can find period wallpaper to suit any taste. I printed a sheet of several patterns and put them in, one at a time and together. I wanted something distinct, and also something I haven't already used in Womble Hall. I have used a Regency paper on the inside fronts of Womble Hall, and I almost decided to used it again when I saw another one, similar, but not quite. I think it is delicate and just right.

For the first time, I used real wallpaper paste, just because I happened to have some. Let me tell you: it made a huge difference. I wish I had done all wallpapering in Womble Hall with paste. Too late now. I didn't bother matching sheets exactly for the pattern (as I did with some wallpaper in Womble Hall) because I don't think it matters with this design.

With the wallpaper, the room looked much more natural. (Compare with the picture in the previous post). But I also wanted panels and rails, so I used more embossed 1:1 wallpaper, for the lower and upper panels and my favourite stripy one for dado rail, picture rail and coving. There were some tricky parts in the corners, but after trial and error, it looked passable. I was glad I had decided against real wooden coving - I would have never managed the mitring. Mitring is not my strong side.

I will add skirting when I have made the floor. I have just ordered a new pack of coffee stirrers, and I will need to find some interesting and period-correct floor pattern that I haven't done before.

More than this, I haven't moved yet, but as always, I put back all the objects, including the fabulous Chippendale mirror that I had made specifically for this room.

  

From the picture - and only from the picture - I see that I need to glue the coving better, to avoid gaps between the walls and the ceiling: it doesn't look neat. 

So the floor next. I most likely won't be able to finish it before I go away on holiday mid-July, but I may add some details, such as a fireguard and perhaps some more pictures and decorations. All the objects are borrowed from Womble Hall so I will have to make new eventually. 

Come back soon.

PS I have re-read Pride and Prejudice looking for descriptions of interiors. There aren't any! Mr Bennet's library is mentioned on many occasions, but it is never described. When Elizabeth visits Pemberley, there are descriptions of views from windows, but not of rooms. Mr Collins' furniture is referred to, but what kind of furniture? So my guesses are as good as anyone else's.

Pride and Prejudice room box

It has been ages since I blogged. Almost half a year. I still have two rooms and the whole basement to show in my tour of Womble Hall, I haven't finished The Borrowers, and I haven't shared the many small things I have been making every now and then. I will do it all in due time.

But right now I have just started on a new project, and as it always happens to me, I become obsessed. I am not even sure where exactly it came from, but I am doing a strictly academic event on Pride and Prejudice in September, and I am doing it together with a friend with whom I also did the Alice in Wonderland event, so as we were planning our workshop, she suddenly asked whether I would be making a room box. I hadn't considered it at all, but the event is for teachers, focused on what they can do with Pride and Prejudice, and of course you can encourage the students to draw, or write a diary, or trace the characters' travels on a map. But why not a room box?

Womble Hall is the right period, but I cannot take Womble Hall to work, and, to be fair, it took me two years to make (and there is still a lot to do), while a schoolteacher may need inspiration for something more manageable. Anyway, here I am, making a Pride and Prejudice room box.

I found a wine box slightly larger than the standard ones. It is not deep enough in relation to breadth and height, but there is not much I can do about it. I have considered and dismissed cardboard boxes. The height is more important because I want it to be a grand-ish room, with a high mantelpiece and a chandelier.

As anyone who has made a room box knows, it needs much more planning than one would imagine. It's not just about putting objects in a box. Environment is crucial. For instance, I need to decide what ceilings and floors I want, how I will decorate walls and so on. And before I can even start, I need to make a chimney breast. I have made several for Womble Hall, but this time I didn't use foam but cardboard. This picture is tremendously boring, but if this is a story of how I made the scene, you need to see it.

 

What you also see is grooves, and they would prove a nuisance.

Here is the next step:

 

I used white lining paper, just pasting it all the way left to right, folding over the cardboard chimney breast. The grooves resulted in creases, and there isn't much I can do about them now except hide them behind rails or wall hangings. I used 1:1 scale embossed wallpaper for ceiling. I also used stripy embossed wallpaper - that I have used for a variety of purposes - to make front mouldings that very neatly hid the uneven edges. I am very happy with this solution.

I made the period fireplace the day before yesterday. It is a House of Miniatures kit, but it so happened that I had a firebox that came with some ebay lot a long time ago and didn't fit any fireplaces. I am glad I remembered it because it is just right here, isn't it?

I guess I could leave the floor as it is, but it doesn't look quite natural, and I want to try yet another floor pattern. (If you haven't seen my magnificent floors, use the tag "floor" on the right). I have a remnant of an old parquet floor that I could recycle, or maybe I will make something entirely new. It isn't a very large area, like in a house, so it can be something really challenging.

I am considering all kinds of panelling, railing and moulding, and I have already spent some time on the web searching for ideas. Meanwhile, I have made a "sketch", borrowing objects from Womble Hall, just to see what it might look like.

Come back soon.

Borrowers room box, part 3

In my previous post about The Borrowers room box I described how I made the fireplace. It so happened that very soon after that I received a box of rubbish from a friend who was moving house. Being a borrower I had asked her to collect everything she didn't want, even the most outlandish things. The first thing I saw on top of all rubbish was what I really needed for a proper borrowers fireplace. Let's read it again:

"It was a charming fireplace, made by Arrietty's grandfather, with a cogwheel from the stables, part of an old cider-press. The spokes of the cogwheel stood out in starry rays, and the fire itself nested in the centre".

As I explained in the previous post, I didn't have a cogwheel and I had very poor prospects of finding one, but whatever piece of plumbing my friend had put into her gift box, it was just right.

 

This is still not a cogwheel, but a huge improvement. And I wasn't displeased in the first place. Now I just need to bring the funnel lower down. 

Meanwhile, the description also mentions "that useful stand-by - a chest of drawers made of match boxes". 

Didn't I make all kind of furniture of match boxes: chests, writing desks, nightstands. Both when I was a child and when my daughter was small. But it was all once upon a time when match boxes were made of wood and when you actually used them. Where do you get real, authentic Victorian match boxes these days? I tried ebay, but while they had zillions of match-box labels from all eras and countries, apparently you couldn't just get a set of old-fashioned match boxes. I knew I had to do with modern paper ones, but at least I could be a borrower and a recycler so I posted an appeal in a local Facebook group asking for used matchboxes. Somebody thoughtful, who wished to remain anonymous, put a set in my pigeonhole.

I have seen these in craft shops, and I have no idea what crafty people make with them. What I needed to make was - yes, you get it: match boxes. With labels and abrasive sides. And preferably looking old and worn out.

The old and worn out look is usually achieved with tea, but I had to use diluted paint that I also had to wipe off quickly so that the paper didn't get soaked. I honestly don't know what match-box sides are made of, but I used sandpaper that I painted brown.

I don't think you can strike a match on it, and I am not going to try.

I found printable match-box labels on Pinterest.

Only the label on the top drawer will be visible, but for my own sake I made them properly. And just as borrowers would do, I used beads for knobs.

Isn't this a chest of drawers that Pod Clock would be proud of? (Pod Clock is the name of the father. Their last name was Clock because they lived under a big grandfather clock). Now I need to find many tiny objects that the family would have in the drawers.

Borrowers room box, part 2

Read the beginning of this story.

This is how the fireplace in the Borrowers' dwelling is described:

"It was a charming fireplace, made by Arrietty's grandfather, with a cogwheel from the stables, part of an old cider-press. The spokes of the cogwheel stood out in starry rays, and the fire itself nested in the centre. Above there was a chimney-piece made from a small brass funnel, inverted... An arrangement of pipes, from the spout of the funnel, carried the fumes into the kitchen flues above. The fire was laid with match-sticks and fed with assorted slack and, as it burned up, the iron would become hot, and Homily would simmer soup on the spokes in a silver thimble, and Arrietty would broil nuts".

I have no idea how to get hold of a cogwheel from a cider-press. Maybe if I go to car-boot sales or large antique stores. I tried ebay but it only returned steam-punk jewellery. Therefore, so far my Borrowers will have to do with something else.

I don't know what it is, most probably something to hold a water hose. It was semitransparent plastic, and I painted it black with a light coat of copper. The back is just a piece of black card. But there must be something for Homily to put her soup on, and, digging deeper into rubbish under the kitchen sink, I found another object of unknown origin:

 

Funnel next. I have a set of plastic funnels, and the smallest was just the right size. I painted it black, with the same light coat of copper. And used a drinking straw for "an arrangement of pipes".

 

I appropriately "borrowed" a flickering tea light from my large Victorian house, piled some matches, found a thimble and a nut.





I think Arrietty's grandfather would have approved of it.


To be continued.

Step by step: dining room

This will be a long story. The reception room, music room and drawing room were relatively easy. But the dining room has some advanced features - one of many that make this house so interesting - that not only demanded careful planning, but also led to a number of major mistakes. Hopefully this will be all the more exciting to follow.

The main idea of the dining room goes back to my Georgian house, which was made to display the Chippendale furniture. So the centerpiece of the room was the Hepplewhite dining table:

 

In the early picture of Womble Hall, you can see the future dining room to the right on the middle floor.

You can also see that the room has a back corridor. According to the instructions, there should be a staircase in this corridor, but no matter how I tried, the staircase wasn't visible if you put in the partition, whether with the door on the right or on the left. I have seen a version of this house with no partition and the staircase against the back wall. But I liked the corridor so much that I sacrificed the stairs in favour of the corridor. By this, I also chose to make my life difficult. But this would be a long time in the future.

If you have read my previous posts you would not be surprised to know that I started the room with a chimney breast. It was the first chimney breast I made from scratch, and I was and still am very pleased with it. I used low-resolution printed wallpaper just to test it, and I also placed some objects in the room to see what it might look like.

In this picture from September 2014, I had inserted the partition, but there is no back wall behind it. The door is a plastic door from another project, just to test. And the floor is paper, the same as in the old Georgian house.

I did some work on other rooms before the basement arrived, and then I spent many weeks on the basement. So it wasn't until late December that I returned to the dining room and then had to start planning carefully. For instance, at this stage I had to decorate the rear corridor. And of course I had to use proper wallpaper, and although the initial trial was only temporary, I actually liked it. So the result was this:

The doors aren't properly inserted yet, but I had to fix the rear door pretty soon since it had to be finished before I put the partition in place. Which wouldn't happen for a while. But just to make it look nice, I white-tacked wallpaper on the right-hand wall and added some objects.

In this picture, you can see that I have a chest in the rear corridor, and there is a light there (battery LED light). The floor is temporarily borrowed from another room. You may ask why I kept moving floors from room to room, but it was to see the effect. Compare this picture with the previous one, with bare floors. You cannot really judge whether the decoration works.

Note that the shell is not assembled yet. It means that the wallpaper is not glued in the corners, and generally everything is shaky.

In the picture of the half-assembled shell, in March 2015, you can see how I had hung wallpaper with flaps that would later go on the back partition. And you can see the wallpapered back wall of which only a little bit will be visible through the door in the partition.

Next I had to insert the floor partitions, so I wanted to decorate ceilings on flat surfaces. This was the ceiling for the dining room. Two months later, it fell down.



This picture, from May 2015, shows the partition without the chimney breast. I would soon attach it permanently to the partition. The rear corridor is sealed off and can only be reached through the door, which turned out to be a problem. I believe this was the most difficult room in the whole house, where I also made the most mistakes. But the happy ending was this:

The partition in place, the rear door in place, wallpaper in place, ceiling successfully repaired. Time to make the floor!



It all sounds very easy, but remember, there are hours and hours of work between the pictures. This floor took a very long time to make.

But after that, I didn't do much on this room, apart from adding some more furniture, until we did the lights, and I have a nice picture taken through the side window:

 Then I made a new ceiling, as I did with all other rooms:

I added skirting boards (proper) and coving, made from 1:1 wallpaper.

We are now in December 2015. New Year dinner is served. You can also see new curtains on the window.



Since then I have mostly added new Chippendale furniture. For instance, I replaced all chairs and the side table, made a cellarette, a dumb waiter, a serving table, and another serving table. I had to put the side table elsewhere, and it still looks crowded.

I will probably add some pictures on the walls, possibly sconces on both sides of the mirror, but there is not much else I can squeeze in this room. I will make more food. I also need to repair the male Dutch doll to keep his female friend company.

Step by step: drawing room

Unlike the reception room and the music room, the drawing room at Womble Hall inherited many features from the original Victorian house, where the drawing room was combined with the study. When planning Womble Hall I knew I wanted a room where the ladies would enjoy their perpetual tea. In this early picture, one of the first weeks after I started, the general idea of the drawing room is clear. It's left side, middle floor.

There is a tea table, two dolls, and a sofa in the background. I didn't know what wallpaper or floors I wanted in this room. As with the other rooms, I started with the chimney breast. I used the front that I had bought a long time before, when I didn't yet know I could make fireplaces myself, but since it was there it would be silly not to use it. I knew I didn't have enough wallpaper, but at that point I was just testing things.

I made herringbone parquet floor for this room from self-adhesive shelf lining because I hadn't yet realised that all floors in this house would have to be hardwood. Proper floors. But as a test it looked ok.

In this picture, from October 2014, the shell is not glued yet, the wallpaper is temporary and only covers one and a half walls, the doors and windows are not properly inserted. At this stage, I had a very vague idea what this room would be like. Both tables are upside-down wooden candlesticks, from my very, very first forage into a flee market.

After that, I didn't do anything on this room for a very long time. You might think that I would work on one room at a time and finish it before moving on, but that's not how it happened. In this case, I didn't return to this room at all until I had glued the shell and was decorating ceilings before inserting floor dividers. For this room, I made a pink ceiling with white ornaments. I had doubts from start about this ceiling. It looked fine on its own, but somehow it didn't quite fit in with the room. But I let it be for a while. We are now in March 2015, and by then I had put in wallpaper, made wall panels, and it started looking like a room.

The wallpaper is a free printie, and I made the panels from a 1:1 wallpaper sample. The window is probably inserted, but not the door.

This room was, as I realise now, the easiest and most straightforward, and therefore, again, it took some time before I returned to it. Meanwhile the tea party just went on. But in May I decided to move the floor from the grand entrance to this room.

Once you have started having hardwood floors in your house, paper floors are unsatisfactory.

After that, there was another long break with this room. I guess, again, it's because it looked almost finished, and I was busy with rooms that didn't. So the next step, in October, was when I started working on the mouldings: skirting and  coving.  First, I had to add a few centimetres to the floor that came from another room. Then I used my ingenious, if I may say so myself, technique of coving with the same 1:1 wallpaper that I had used for panels. I am not good with coving, and I have avoided it as much as possible. It's soooooo much easier to work with paper, and I think it looks acceptable. Maybe even good.

There are small differences between the pictures, but each time the room looks tidier and more complete. The only major work to do with this room was to insert the door, but to do this I had to finish the adjacent room, and it took some time. Although I did make a curtain rod for this room.

However, the most revolutionary step in the whole project was lighting, which happened in November. I don't have a separate picture of the drawing room illuminated, but here is a picture of the whole house.

But as you see, the doors are still not inserted. Moreover, at approximately the same time I discovered Adam paper which implied a series of ceiling renovations all over the house. In January 2016 I made a ceiling for the drawing room, replacing, without much regret, the old pink ceiling.  This is what it looked like:

After I had finished the ceilings and the mouldings, the main project was officially completed, if there is such a thing. After that, I mostly focused on Chippendale furniture, among other things replacing the old faithful plastic coffee table with a Queen Anne tea table. The room was by then rather crowded, as Victorian rooms are. The serpentine chest by the right wall is also a Chippendale piece.


And this takes me to the present, September 2016, two years after I started.

You can say that not much has changed, and that's true. This room has given me least headache of all, and there is probably not a lot I am going to add. I may replace the table and chairs with Chippendale pieces when I have made them. I might add more paintings and other ornaments. Of course I can replace the sofa, but it has such warm sentimental memories that I think I will leave it as it is.