Danish house, part 5

 Read part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4 of this story. 

Once again, I am renovating this house for a specific purpose, and a true collector would probably be horrified, because many authentic details will be lost. I bought this house extremely cheap, and I won't ever sell it as a vintage item so I can do whatever I want with it. 

And I want a roof that looks like a house roof, not like a dollhouse roof. It's fine when the house is a toy for a child to play with, but a single-sheet roof does not look natural. So it's not just that the roof was damaged - it needed a new look. 

I carefully studied period-correct roofs (there was a very interesting discussion thread, in Swedish, about various options), and I considered using corrugated cardboard for tiles, but finally decided on plain black slates. 

I have done this before, and this time I didn't use cereal boxes, but rather recycled binders from my old students' theses that I had been saving for this purpose. They have just the right colour and texture. 

I marked the tiles with a bone folder - an indispensable tool that I originally acquired for book binding, but that proved extremely versatile. Then cut the sheet into horisontal strips and glued directly onto the roof, shifting every other strip. 

I think this picture very clearly illustrates the difference - and I almost forgot to take it. I turned some of the tiles upward a bit, to make them look more realistic. I may also sand them slightly to age them. 

It took the time it took, but I am very pleased with the result. I will probably paint the ridge black, but will keep the wooden beams. I don't like the look of the chimney but haven't yet decided what to do with it. 

Next, and as a little side project before embarking on floors, I made curtains for the living room. I wanted something unusual, and I remembered that my mother-in-law, who was very much into modern design, had curtains matching wallpaper, and this felt exactly the kind of thing a functionalist designer would do. 

It took some thinking and a few trials-and-errors, but finally I figured out how to do it. 

First, I printed out the Jacobsen wallpaper in very thin, 45-gram paper. Then I cut two bits of corrugated cardboard (the one I had discarded for roof tiles) and glued on the wallpaper to emulate folds. For rod I used a skewer, hung the curtains into jewellery jump rings and attached with eye screws. 

Of course you cannot fully draw these curtains, but they look much more realistic than most dollhouse courtains I have seen, including those in museums. 

Well, now I have no further pretexts to avoid dealing with floors and the ground-floor wallpaper, but it is a serious decision, and I need to think it through. Meanwhile, I will focus in some details, like period-correct ceiling lights. I can also make some kitchen items. Come back soon! 

Danish house, part 4

 Read part 1, part 2 and part 3 of this story. 

As I have mentioned before, the original Hanse houses had a small front gable that the previous owner had removed in favour of the middle partition. The gable has two purposes. It supports the roof when there is no partition. And it will conceal display lights when I come that far. First, I made a template from cardboard. 

For the real thing, I used foam board. 

When it dried, it looked like this: 

I think this is a lovely feature of this old house that makes it so distinct from later models and from Lundby houses. 

My next step was making windows. The original Hanse houses didn't have window frames, and maybe it was fine for children to play with, but it doesn't look natural. I wanted windows in appropriate functionalist style ("funkis"), and they are relatively easy to make from coffee stirrers and recycled folder covers. 

This is what they look like on the outside and inside: 

The ground floor window is ready, but not inserted yet because I haven't decided what I want to do with wallpaper. 

After this hard work I rewarded myself by arranging furniture including the old Brio kitchen which still needs to be designed properly. I don't know what the middle room will be so at the moment there are two "bat" chairs there. Under the stairs I have temporarily arranged a bathroom; the equipment is Renwall rather than Brio, but for the time being it will do. 

 

Next steps include floors and roof. Come back soon. 

Danish house, part 3

 Read the first and second part of this story. 

I was of course eager to go on with the interior, but I knew I would be irritated by the glue blobs so I took a deep breath and started working on them. As already mentioned, a hair dryer didn't help - who knows what kind of glue it was. The only way was to scrape off the glue carefully with a scalpel, moistering and rubbing slightly - my fingertips proved the most useful tool. You can still see that something happened there, but then it can happen in full-size houses too, and I didn't want to damage the surface. 

Then I painted the back wall. It wasn't absolutely necessary, but I don't want to have someone else's graffitti on my house. I painted with white. At some point I may paint in a matching colour. For now, it simply looks fresh. 

Next, I painted ceilings on the ground floor. In the existing pictures of Hanse houses, it is not clear what original ceilings look like, but I would paint them white anyway, in keeping with Jacobsen style. Anyone who has painted inside small rooms knows what a job it is. You need a whole set of brushes to get into all corners. I also painted the upper halves of walls in the middle and right-hand rooms. I am not sure yet whether I will keep the blue tiles, but unpainted walls don't look good. 

Now came the part that I had been looking forward to: putting up the wallpaper. I had this Jacobsen wallpaper, printed from the web, as a backdrop in the shelf with Jacobsen furniture. I think it's stunning. Jacobsen designed many papers, floors and curtains, but this is my favourite (although I am not sure I would have it in my full-size home). 

The job was both easy and hard. Easy because it is a geometrical pattern, matching neatly. Difficult because of the sloping roof and because I had to cut out openings for windows. I made templates from plain paper before I cut the fancy ones. I am very pleased with the result. I have temporarily put in a carpet from an earlier project. I have studied pictures of Jacobsen-style rooms, and they have either wall-to-wall carpets, plank or parquet. I hate wall-to-wall carpets and would never have one in my home (revomed immediately when we bought a house in England), but I feel it will be period-appropriate. I will go to an upholstery shop and beg or buy a sample for the upper floor. I haven't yet decided about the ground floor. 

As usual, I want to test the project with furniture even if it isn't finished. Suddenly the red staircase rail that looked conspicuous in the empty room goes nicely with the red sofa and chairs. I might still paint it later. 

I feel I have come a long way. But there is a lot to be done yet. Come back soon. 

Danish house

 

Last month I went to a miniature fair in Denmark, as an exhibitor. The fair wasn't very successful in terms of sales, not just for me but for everyone - nobody could explain why. I hadn't plan to buy anything, but I kept looking at a house because it looked old and interesting. I don't typically work in 1:18 scale, and I already have one house that needs renovation. However, for the past couple of years I have been collecting Danish dollhouse furniture by Arne Jacobsen that I display in a bookshelf. I have been telling myself that one day I would buy an old 1:18 house exclusively to display my Jacobsen collection. And here was this old house, and ten minutes before the fair closed I bought it at a ridiculously low price. I am still surprised that no one had bought it earlier - maybe because it was in such poor condition. I wonder whether the seller was aware what they was selling. Later I checked the current prices for this type of house so I know it was a bargain. My daughter who was there with me thought I was crazy, but it wasn't big news to her. 

Now, I don't know enough about vintage dollhouses but fortunately there are communities with expertise. I thought it was an early Lundby, but my facebook group immediately recognised it as a Danish Hanse house which certainly makes sense as I found it in Denmark. As I researched it back home, it became apparent. Symmetrical roof - and evebody knows that Lundby houses are not symmetrical. Also several features were conspicuous, such as the stairs. 

I have been busy with all kinds of things recently so it's not until now I have some time to take a closer look. 

To begin with, the partition on the upper floor is a late addition - original Hanse houses didn't have it. At closer look, the partition had a very odd sized door, just 8 cm high. The walls on the ground floor have no doors, but they don't go all the way to the front, so a kind of pretence doors. Another typical Hanse feature. 

The wallpaper on the ground floor seems authentic, but on the upper floor the walls have been painted, and not very carefully. Floors in one room were badly damaged. 

From the pictures I have found on the web, floors are original. I have also been told that the house didn't have window frames and glazing. 

Somebody repaired the wall in a most horrendous manner - just look at the glue!

The bottom was water damaged. Not much I can do about it, maybe just give it a protective coat of paint.

I am not sure what the round things in the corners are. Maybe the house stood on legs. 

I took a deep breath and started. 

The first thing was to remove the partition which was easy because it had also been fixed quite carelessly. With the partition removed, you can see original wallpaper. 

I won't restore the original wallpaper because I intend, as already mentioned, to use the house to display Jacobsen furniture. I will have Jacobsen wallpaper, and I will research what kind of floors and ceilings would go with Jacobsen design. 

Just to cheer myself up, after realising the scope of necessary work, I put some Jacobsen items into the upper-floor room. With the partition, it wouldn't look half as nice. 

I am not sure where to start, but probably I need to make all the major repairs before I can go on. Mend the hole in the floor. Remove the glue. Sand away old paint. I am sure I will discover more faults as I go. I believe this will take me the whole summer, particularly if it rains. I will report regularly so please come back. 

To be continued.  

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!

Triang house: let's step inside!

There was some furniture that came with the Triang, and in my first picture, I simply put it upright so it didn't look like an aftermath of an earthquake.

I recognise some of the furniture, most of which is Barton - not my favourite; I find it rather crude, but then it reflects the time when it was manufactured, and if it is true, as the antique dealer claimed, that the house has only had one owner, that's what this little girl in the '50s - I'd like to imagine her name was Lily - would be getting for Christmas and her birthdays. There are a couple of other brands, and I will return to furniture in due time. Some is in need of repair.

But first, let's inspect the walls and floors.

When I first opened it and before looking carefully, I was disappointed: how unimaginative, same floors and wallpaper in every room. Then of course I noticed that it wasn't the same wallpaper, even though similar, but floors were indeed the same.

Shall we start in the bottom left room - this is where the front door leads (how very English: no entrance hall). The floor, which is a nice herringbone parquet, has been damaged by a young barbarian who scribbled on it with a purple crayon.

 

This will be very hard to clean. I have tried very, VERY carefully with nail polish remover, and it does get slightly better and will probably take me weeks. (On the other hand, as I always say, I am not in a hurry).

I have several other options. I can cover it with a rug. I can try to mend it by scanning the pattern, printing it out and very, very carefully patching the damaged parts. Or even copy and paste and make one whole new sheet (I have found several amazing people on the web who do this). I can also replace it. Logically, and from what I have seen on the web, this room should be a kitchen. Would a 1950s kitchen have wooden parquet floor? I doubt it. It would have lino. Or tiles. Either will be easy to reproduce.

The wallpaper is totally damaged. I can put some furniture against the wall to conceal the damage. I can probably get a sheet of replicated wallpaper from a site I have discovered. But again, would a kitchen have wallpaper rather than paint? I need to do more research and also consult people who remember the 1950s. The right-hand wall, with a door, has no wallpaper. I can see why - it's a h-ll of a job to cut and hang wallpaper on a wall with a door and a staircase. But it doesn't look neat. And there is wallpaper on the other side of the wall, although admittedly there is no staircase there.

Let us climb the stairs - very typical British stairs, steep and narrow. Painted in the same pale yellow as the exterior walls. How plausible is it? If the railing is solid at least it would have a wooden top rail. And maybe a carpet? Or actually proper wooden steps... oh no, that's sacrilege. Ruining a cultural artifact.

The top left room's floor is damaged, but here I can definitely conceal it by a piece of furniture and/or a rug.

The wallpaper is torn, water-damaged and faded in some places, but again, I can put some furniture in front of it. Logically, this will be a living room. The right-hand wall has no wallpaper. Just as in web pictures. Why? Were manufacturers lazy? Such a minor detail makes a huge difference. So in this case I will probably try to scan the wallpaper and make a sheet. This will be a challenge. It took me five attempts just to take a decent picture. I wonder how people scan inside a dollhouse. Maybe they take it apart first, but I am not doing it.

The two rooms on the right had a 1:1 scale carpet.

Now, if anything is barbarian in miniature-making, this is the worst, and I have seen it before. It doesn't look natural, and the doors don't open! So these hideous things went straight to the garbage bin. They didn't even conceal the damaged floors.

In the bottom right room, the wallpaper is damaged to the left of the door, and the floor is torn and water-damaged.

Logically, and in the houses I have seen on the web, this should be a bathroom. Why on earth would a bathroom have parquet floors? Not to mention wallpaper. And it's far too large for a bathroom. A '50s family would not have a huge bathroom like this. I am considering not having a bathroom at all, instead using this room as a dining room - naturally, off the kitchen. But it will depend on how I arrange the other rooms. If I decide to keep the parquet I may try to mend it by scanning the pattern. I may try to patch the wallpaper in the same way. It feels unnecessary to buy an A3 sheet of wallpaper for three square centimeters of wall.

Top right room is an interesting one because it has an alcove which is largely invisible. If I put a light in there, it will create a fantastic effect through the window.

The floor - the same parquet I am by now really fed up with -  is torn in several strategic places and also water-damaged. The wallpaper is whole and very pretty. This will be a bedroom, with the bed in the alcove.

The door between the two upstairs rooms had no knobs. The knobs in the door downstairs are lovely, rusty nails, and I am sure I will be able to find something suitable.

The insides of the fronts are bare, painted with the same paint as the exterior. I could so far not find any images showing the front insides, but I know that most people just leave them bare, which is a shame. There are also these lovely bay windows where interesting things can be done. Flowerpots, ornaments, a bird cage, a few cats.

So here we are. Some serious decisions to make, and after that, a lot of exciting work.

But before that, I will also have an inspection of the current furniture, so come back soon.

By the way, I did find the site that had the spare hook. You can see that the hook is sold. That's because I bought it.