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.

My doll

My modern house didn't have any dolls for a long time because I couldn't make up my mind who should live in it. But after the study was finished I realised who would have a study like this: a young, successful female writer or journalist. 

 

I bought three identical porcelain dolls from ebay at some point, without having any particulat project in mind. So far I have only dressed one, but the idea is that she will be in different rooms, in different moments of time. I don't know her name because she hasn't told me yet. I know for sure that she is not me.

Modern study

In the middle of the upper floor there was a square hole, the size of a window. I have no idea what the creator of the house intended it to be. I considered building a winding staircase, but there was already a staircase, and it would take too much of the floor. So I just sealed it. I wanted this corner of the house to be bright green, but I didn't have green paint so instead I papered it with colour printer paper. Remember, there also was a window in the wall which I had sealed (the bedroom is on the other side). This room is a study. I first wanted it to be an artist's studio, but then I remembered that magnificent shelf I had in the cellar of my original house and realised that its time had come. The shelf was twice as large as I needed, so reluctantly after all these years I sawed off a bit. 

 

Then I put some ornaments in the shelf. Some of them immediately looked wrong, as in the left picture. I started filling it with books. I was lucky to find a magazine with a whole page of books. I cut out each square individually and pasted on card with flaps that I could shove into the square in the shelf. I made the mistake of cutting the upper edges straight, but it didn't look natural, so I had to take them out and cut again, with uneven edges.

This is how I made the swinging chair. The base is a plastic door handle, and the lever, a bit of a spray bottle. The seat and back are made of cardboard, lined with padding and covered with fabric.

 I made the writing desk from my famous venetian blind and strong wire. The CD player, speakers, remote, the computer keyboard and mouse are cut from a catalogue, while the computer screen is a lid from a little plastic jewel box. The blind is cut from a placemat. The wastepaper basket is a bottle cap. In this pictire the floor is still bare.

 

Bedroom and bathroom

The whole upper floor with the bedroom. bathroom and a hall in between, with an armchair and coffee table, so after your bath you can cool down with cofee and cake. Through the large opening in the wall, you can see the other room on the upper floor, which I will tell about next.