Total renovation

It took me many weeks to renovate the house because it was in such a sorry state, but mine was love's labour, and I felt very good bringing it back to life. It really hurts to look at these old pictures, and I am looking forward to sharing my progress on this project. To begin with, I removed the carpet. You cannot have a 1:1 carpet in a dollhouse, it doesn't look natural, and I hate carpets anyway. Then I removed the wallpaper. It had apparently been glued on with ordinary glue so I had to wash it away with a sponge. (The red circle in the background is not the rising sun, but my Pilates ball).



 
I decided that I wanted painted walls rather than wallpaper. I decided, after having made a Victorian house and a Tudor house, that I wanted something modern and ecleclic, with bright colours and unusual features. But first I needed to do some planning. I had four rooms - what would they be? Kitchen was the easiest to make up my mind about, and I painted it light yellow.

I then decided to have a classic black-and-white chequered floor, which I cut, square by square, from a glossy shopping bag and an old essay cover.

I very deliberately show all the stages of this renovation because normally you see the results and have no idea how much time and effort it takes. Here you also see what a huge difference it makes. The fridge, by the way, is a tin tea box. 

 

Saving a ruin

I am now embarking on the story of my modern dollhouse which will take many posts and I suppose provoke many reflections. About two years ago I was doing my usual round of thrift shops on the street where I have my hairdresser. Most times I find something: either a tiny ornament that goes directly into one of my houses or room boxes or something I, with my dollhouse eyeglasses, see can be converted into something else. This time I saw a Very Sad Dollhouse. I saw it was in a terrible shape, but it was potentially magnificent, and I took it home with me. In the shop, I didn't realise that I could take it apart, and you should have seen me carrying this huge thing from the shop to the parking structure. Nobody stared, but nobody offered to help either.

When I came home and looked closer I saw it was in still poorer shape than I had thought.

 

 

It had remnants of wallpaper, and it had this hideous 1:1 scale carpet, and somebody had started to paint it here and there and then forgot. Another case for the Royal Society for Preventing Cruelty to Dollhouses. 

I spent hours on internet trying to find out what kind of house it was, how old, where it came from, with no results. I consulted my dollhouse discussion group. It is a very clever dollhouse, double-sided, with removable side walls so it is easy to get at any bit and corner of it. But I could find it anywhere, and on studying it carefully I realised that is had been built by someone. A parent or grandparent who built this wonderful house, who put a lot of love and effort in it, but never had time to finish it. This made me sad. Dozens of sad stories of the unfinihed dollhouse. What happened to the creator? What happened to the child for whom it was built? How many years had it been in somebody's attic before it was given away to charity?

But some sad stories have happy endings, and now the house was in good hands and would get another chance.

Shoe shop

I have a friend who is a shoe fetishist. When I wanted to make a room box for her birthday it was quite natural to decide on a show shop. And it was quite natural to make a miniature shoe shop in a shoe box. I also came up with a good idea for a shelf: it is an old lamp shade.

 

But how do you fill such a shelf with shoes? And of course they had to be fancy designer shoes. I looked up shoes in online catalogues and was horrified by the prices. Then I looked on ebay and found a pack of fifty pairs of Barbie shoes for three pounds including postage (from Hong Kong). They were unimaginably ugly. 

I went on the internet and studied sites for designer shoes. I learned more about shoes in those few weeks than in my whole life. (I only wear sensible shoes myself). I started cautiously with just a few decorations.

But then I realised that I actually could do it. It was a lot of work. I used shiny acryllic paint, and I had to let the shoe dry on the outside before I could paint the inside, and then dry again before I could paint the soles.

I also learned how to make shoe boxes. It wasn't as straightforward as you may think, but there are some helpful sites with patterns and instructions. Styles is my friend's last name.

 

This is what it added up to. It isn't possible to see all the details in the overview picture so I also show some close-ups below.

 

Art gallery, yellow room

The ground floor of my art gallery has a yellow room that opens into a long row of rooms, which is a trompe d'oeil.

 

I explained in the previous post now I made the frames. But the really interesting feature of this room is the floor. 

 

I made it from pieces of cheese boxes, half stained, half varnished. I used the pattern from a paper floor I had. If you think it was a lot of work you are absolutely right. But isn't the result worth it?

This is what the two-storey art gallery looks like. I got the statues from a Greek student.

 It was fun to make, but there isn't much to add or develop.

More frames

Here are some of the many ways I have made picture frames, apart from those I have shown before and those in the previous post.

 

These frames, except the little one on the right, are made with lace. The two top frames are made with several layers of plastic lace to create depth, then painted gold. The two frames below are made with real lace which creates an effect of a delicate carved frame. The dark wooden frame is stained lolly sticks. 

All these frames are made with different techniques. Upper row, left: lolly sticks. Middle: cut from a cork placemat which creates a nice, uneven surface. Right: an unidentifiable piece of twisted metal rod (most likely a Christmas decoration) that I bent into a square and glued onto a piece of cardboard. Bottom left: a ribbon. Next: lolly sticks and grill sticks, but an ordinary yellow paint rather than gold. Next: metal foil folded around the edges of the picture. Right: a ribbon.

These are fake: just cut from a catalogue.

Art gallery

The mantelpiece I described in the previous post gave me the idea of an art gallery. I had a rather shallow wine box where I couldn't make anything that demanded depth, but lots of pictures on the walls would be just right.

I made wallpaper from ordinary coloured printer paper and used self-adhesive paper border for cornice. The floor was temporary when I made it over a year ago, but it is still there. I made the mirror frame from grill sticks to match the decoration on the mantelpiece. The angels on the mantelpiece come from Christmas crackers; they were a hideous blue-green colour so I painted them gold. The angels over the mirror come from a hobby shop. The two oval picture frames are also from a hobby shop, but generally the point of having an art gallery was to try various ways of making picture frames. The one above the oval frames is made by placing the picture (cut from a magazine and glued onto card) on a piece of tin foil and folding it over the edges. It creates an effect of a heavy gilded frame. The round frame on the left is cut from a very special Russian candy box: I have another frame like this in my Victorian house, but I will probably never find this candy again.

 

Candy boxes are excellent material for all kinds of things. Here is another one, perfect for a picture frame. 

 

Otherwise, using lolly sticks is the easiest way to make simple frames.

That said, who wants a simple frame if the point of the box room is to make as many different frames as possible? I'll show some more in the next post.

 

Mantelpiece

I had a fireplace front left after I had made an inglenook for my Tudor house. It broke when I removed it, and for a while I had it stored away (because I never throw anything away). 

 One day I decided I would try to do something with it, and I started by decorating it with grill sticks.

Then I painted them gold and added a back. I am always amazed to see, looking at these step-by-step pictures, what an enormous difference even small details can make. 

But the full effect only comes when you place your miniature in a suitable environment.