Side effects

This weekend I was hoping to finish the basement, at least finish the secret room and put lights in it. I am working against time. In two weeks I have my annual pre-Christmas party, and no matter what I will have to move the basement from the dinner table. And from the dining room. The only place I can move it to is my study, which doubles as a guest room, and a prolonged guest season is imminent, which means I cannot put the basement in the middle of the room. It has to go under the main house which takes too much space as it is. At least I have glued the basement so I can move it in one piece, but I hoped it would be finished, or almost finished, because I much prefer working at the dinner table than lying on the floor on my stomach. Once I have moved it and put the main house on top, will I want to dismantle it again?

However, I am afraid that I will not meet my deadline. Firstly, after I had for two weeks been absolutely sure that I would have a chest of drawers and a mirror in the secret corridor I am now back to the idea of a staircase. And making a straircase is more complicated than putting in a mirror. Making a staircase is one of the greatest challenges of dollhouse construction, even if you make it from kit, and I am not doing it. Through the rear door, only a small bit of the stairs will be visible, but from the side window it will be in full view so I need to make it properly. I have made several straircases, and I remember some tricks, but it isn't something you can do in a hurry. I have done some preparations, but it will have to be next weekend. Meanshile I have tested lights.

I may have said already, probably repeatedly, that I am not good at lighting. I had quite a sophisticated light system in the Victorian house which I hope to replicate in the new project, but lights is one thing about dollhouses that I don't enjoy doing. I like the results, when it works, and I am proud of myself when I have solved a problem, but it's simply too much trouble. Therefore, when the first battery dollhouse lights came some years ago I was delighted that my problems would now be solved for ever. Alas! I bought a set of lights and was truly disappointed because they were too dim and didn't look natural, even the "amber" variety. I learned how to soften LED lights when I finished my van Hoogstraaten room box, But I have tried this and that with battery lights in various projects, and I cannot make them work. At least not the way I want.

The other day I bought a set of battery Chrismas lights in a thrift shop. For a pound, I thought, I could experiment. It would be such a relief to have the basement lights without all the drilling and wiring and the tiny plugs and bulbs.

I tested the lights, and I didn't like what I saw:

Even though the picture shows the lights more blue than they are, they still don't look natural, and even though I have five lamps in this one room it looks far too dark. When I have invested so much in this project, I don't want to compromise. I am simply not happy with this solution.

I gave it another chance though. I painted each little lamp yellow, which made the light softer and less artificial. Yet it still looked like Christmas lights (which they are). Victorians wouldn't have such lights anyway. They would have chandeliers, sconces, table lamps. In a modern house perhaps...

And then I realied that I have a modern house, and I have a modern house where standard lighting is impossible, but a set of battery lights might work.

I have so far just fixed it with tape, but I have by serendipity found a solution to a problem that has haunted me for years.

 

Funkis house

A couple of weeks ago I found a very lonely dollhouse at a flea market. Alhtough it had obvioulsy been newly painted on the outside, it looked neglected on the inside. It begged to come to me and be converted into something stunning.

My husband and some of my dollhouse group friends noted that it looked like a prison.  I agree that it does, but I don't feel that prison will be a particularly cheerful project. And in fact on the inside it is not that bad, other than being squalid. The bottom floor has interesting features (although the staircase is out of scale and a bit weird). It is a homemade dollhouse and therefore unique. The rooms on the upper floor are narrow and deep. It does feel a bit crammed.

The first thing I did was of course remove the horrible carpet. You cannot use real carpets in a dollhouse, they are far too coarse. And this is what I discovered under the carpet:

 

I wish I knew something about this person. He put a lot of love and care into this house. I imagine that he made it for his granddaughter who spent many happy hours playing with it. In any case, he cared enough to sign it. 

Now I had to put on my thinking cap. I have a Tudor house, a Georgian house, a Victorian house and a modern/retro house. Tudor and Georgian houses are strictly period-correct. Victorian style is eclectic, and there are lots of details, and the owner of my retro house is a writer and artist and collects all kinds of interesting objects. So the question was what style I should choose for the new house that would allow me to try out new ideas, new techniques. Again, some people in my dollhouse group suggested funkis, functionalism. I must admit that I don't know much about this style although there are some remarkable examples of it in the two big cities where I have lived, Moscow and Stockholm. Here was an excellent opportunity to learn about something new. I spent hours on the internet browsing through images, and I now have a vague idea of what this new project will be. Watch this space.

Magazines

Although you can easily print anything you want (and soon you'll be able to print anything in 3D) I still find it most interesting to recycle. For instance, magazines often have advertisements with covers. For my music room box, I made a set of music magazines.

The same magazine had ads for many other magazines, and I made some - only those within my sphere of interest. You can't open them, but they have nice matching back covers.

My husband subscribes to New York Review of Books, and I have just salvaged an ad he was about to throw away.

There isn't an awful lot of challenge in making this, and it doesn't take more than half an hour, but I think it's fun. These are vintage covers from the past 50 years.

Makeovers

Some time ago I found a toy shop in Germany that had lovely wooden educational toys that I couldn't resist. I knew they were wrong scale and wrong style, but I bought them anyway.

Some things actually fit quite nicely in my modern kitchen. I put the packages into shelves, some as they were, some with new labels, cut from catalogues. I also put labels on bottles to make ketchup and cooking oil.

I put the cutlery in a stand, it doesn't really matter that the scale is wrong. The fruit and vegies are almost ok. I use the red tumblers for flower pots. But it wasn't an essential buy. Most of the things I could make myself.

When I buy things, very often I make them over in some way. This set of bottles came in a larger lot. I am sure anyone who is into miniatures has seen them.

What I did was merely change labels: again, I cut them from a wine catalogue. It makes a huge difference. And they are guaranteed unique.

Painting wooden furniture

I bought this wooden set in my favourite antique shop in Ely. There was no label, and I have no idea where it comes from. I very much like the furniture, but I hate the pink colour. For some time I could not decide where I might want the set so I kept it in my antique shop. Then it occurred to me that I could have it in my modern house, in the upstairs sitting room. Surely you can have two slightly different sets in the same room. The pink didn't fit with the other set, and I hated it anyway so I needed to make it over. I considered covering it with fabric, but thought it would be a pity because it was such a fine wooden surface. I tried to paint it red, but it was wrong red. I then tried to stain it, and it was a disaster. I was so upset that I put the miserable armchair away and didn't look at it for a long while. But I felt bad every time I saw the lonely pink sofa. So eventually I simply had to do it. It took ages to sand-paper away the failed stain, but I felt it was my duty to do it properly. I mixed some green gouach with off-white hobby paint, with this result

And this is how nicely they fit together with the other furniture.

 

Ongoing project

 

This concludes, for the time being, the story of my modern dollhouse. It is far from finished. I have "repaired" the facade with new bricks and painted the door, but it probably needs door posts. I have made a lantern from a bit of a perfume spray bottle.

The interior decoration is an ongoing project, and I will share all the improvements and details.

Windows

As you may have noticed from the pictures, I put in windows in the modern house. When I bought is, it had no windows, although the window openings were nicely painted in various colours. Still, there was something unfinished about the house, even with curtains.

As you can clearly see, there are nineteen windows. Because the dollhouse is home-made, the openings do not match the standard 1:12 windows, and it took me a long time to find a solution. I bought a 4-pack when I was visiting a dollhouse shop; unpainted and unglazed. At least I would do something myself. When I was sure I could use them, I ordered the rest from ebay.

Obviously, I began by painting them, which was quite a job. Then I cut panes from transparent file holder and glued them on the inside of the window frame

 

I started with the removable walls because they were easier to handle First, I fixed the frame on the outside. It covered the opening neatly, but on the inside, the opening was about half a centimeter too small.

 

I had to saw off half a centimeter of each inner frame bit. In such situations, you bless the inventor of the mitre box.

 

Just see what a difference it makes! 

 

On the inside, I added window sills for flowers and decorations.

The gable-wall windows were much more difficult to put in, but by then I was a considerably better miniature carpenter and glazier so eventually I managed all the nineteen. 

Modern drawing room details

I bought this piano in a shop on Portobello Road in London. It might fit into a certain kind of dollhouse, but it would stand out too much in mine so I decided to repaint it.

 

I painted it black and glued gold paper inside, scratched to imitate strings. I also added candle holders, made from ear rings, and for once, I printed sheet music from the web.

 

Full view of the drawing room. Under the stairs, there is some sports equipment, all key rings.

I haven't done much on the outer wall. It was broken when I bought the house, so I had to fix it with a bit of wood.

 

 View through the kitchen door.

Modern drawing room

The remaining room in my modern house is the ground-floor drawing room. The front door of the house opens into it, which is not uncommon in English houses, and there is not much I can do about it. I didn't want the door to open into the kitchen.

 

This is a very early stage, as you can see the empty kitchen through the opening. I painted the walls yellow, but the floor is still covered with paper. The heater is made from a candy box. I made the sofa from cardboard, covered with fabric. The coffee table is the lid of a souvenir box made from California readwood - the souvenir shop swore that no tree was injured. 

The standard lamp is made from bits of an old fridge shelf, with eyedrop containers for lampshades. The base comes from some old toy. The Penguin books come from a party game; a friend gave me the leftovers after Christmas. The self-adhessive covers are wrapped over a piece of cardboard. I only chose titles that I liked. The picture on the wall is cut from a magazine, and the frame is made of grill sticks.



Although I don't like fitted carpets in my own home I got a bit of furniture fabric from a friend, which made a nice carpet for this room. I put in a mirror because mirrors always create an interesting effect in a dollhouse. The tiffany lamp in front of the mirror came with a lot from ebay, and I don't even remember where the table and chair come from. Some further features of this room include a coffee table, which is another upside-down carndlestick, and a television set, made from a plastic jewellery box, in the same manner I made the computer screen. The remote is cut from a catalogue.

Red wall

This is the view of the study and the adjacent sitting area, with the front wall removed. The wall is painted red, like the wall in the sitting area. Since it is a removable wall I cannot put any heavy objects on it, but I made several semi-flat pieces. 

First, I made a fake bookcase.  It is just a flat piece of wood with rows of books cut from a magazine and "sideboards" of lolly sticks, which produce a sense of depth.

Then I made a sewing table, also flat, with a flat sewing machine and some other funny flat things I bought in a hobby shop - they must be for scrapbooking. Since the tablecloth and the rug match the furniture they create a sense of additional space.

 This is the whole wall, removed from the house.

Upstairs sitting room

After I have made the study, there was still half of the room on that side of the house. I had a rather ugly sofa and armchair from a flea market, and I thought that if I refirbished them I could have a sitting area adjacent to the study, for the writer to relax with a cup of coffee or talk to her publisher.

 

When I put the furniture into the house I realised the area was hazardous, a stairwell without railing.

 

 I made railing with grill sticks and a bit of squate dowel. It felt much better.
 

This is what it looks like today, with yet another sofa, a rug, some coffee tables (one made from a transparent paperweight and a plastic box lid), curtains, ornaments, knitting and a tea tray. Across the hall you can see the bathroom behind the CD box and the opposite blue wall. The bedroom is behind the partition with the bookshelf.