Funkis kitchen cabinet

I wanted to make a cabinet for the funkis kitchen, because it would look more natural, and also to display some utensils. I had various ideas how to make the cabinet, including close or open, real or fake doors, and I finally decided on a compromise. I had some styrene sheets that I had bought long time ago in a hobby shop, for undefined purposes, possibly for furniture making, so it came handy. I used a candy box of a suitable size as a base and glued the white plastic sheet on it, which I think gave a nice effect. The handles are plastic beads.

The cabinet is very light, and I though it could be easily fixed with sticky dots, but it wouldn't cooperate. I tried double-sided tape, I tried this and that, and finally I made brackets from paper clips. You cannot even see them unless you look closely.

This is the new kitchen. By the way, I also have a new cooker that matched the rest better:

Funkis bedroom

Long before I put in new wallpaper in what was supposed to be the bedroom in the funkis house, I tested the size of the future bed by placing the bed from my retro house in it. This was a fatal mistake because it was exactly the right style.

Actually, my retro house has many features that would fit in a funkis house, but this bed was too good a match, so reluctantly I decided that it would have to move. Thereafter I decorated the room to match the bed. 

The curtains and the rug had to follow, as did the two bed stands. I made another window with a view over a funkis landscape. The table comes from the IKEA set and is completely wrong scale, but I don't think it matters. The colour is right. The Matisse picture is from the web.

Now of course you wonder what I made to replace the bed in the retro house. I will tell you soon.

Funkis shop

The renovation of the ground floor in the funkis house was undramatic. The before and after pictures show a clear improvement:

The shop itself was easily moved into its new quarters:

Since I first made the shop a year ago, I have added quite a few things, such as the Udd sofa, and a set of art deco table and chairs. It has become very eclectic as compared to its original, but I like it this way.

Funkis front wall

The person who built my funkis dollhouse never bothered about the front panel, the "fourth wall" that you take away to look inside the house. It wasn't painted or wallpapered, and it didn't look neat. Of course you never look at it from the inside, but I was irritated.

I didn't have the same wallpaper I used inside the house, and it wouldn't have looked right anyway.  I didn't have to think whether it matched the rooms since nobody would ever see it when the panel is closed. I simply took more sheets from the wonderful pad I had bought at the hobby shop and papered the ground and upper floor with different patterns. It instantly looked much better, but still unfinished. 

I cut window and door frames from plain white paper, and I used the striped paper to make a border. The mirror frame came with the IKEA furniture; I painted it gold and put in a piece of tin foil. The metal strip over the door holds the panel against a magnet, so I cannot do anything about it.

I will have curtains on the upper floor, but the ground floor is a shop so I will need to figure out how to make a shop display without making the panel too heavy. I may also paint the door in a more cheerful colour.

Funkis drawing room

The drawing room, which is the middle room in the funkis house, was easy to decorate since it has no complicated surfaces or corners. It took me a long time to choose wallpaper because I wanted something bright, but not too conspicuous. It is interesting that in a miniature environment conspicuous background can kill the details. Here is the before and after:

The furniture in this room is eclectic. Last summer, IKEA launched a set of miniatures that all dollhouse people eagerly bought, just to discover that it was a bizarre scale, not 1:12, not 1:10, not 1:6 either, but something in between, impossible to intergrate in any existing project.

But it is nice furniture, although not quite funkis. At least the shelf and the rug went well with my room:

The red sofa and armchair are the famous Arne Jacobsen miniatures. I have written about how I acquired the Egg chair, and soon afterwards I bought the Swan sofa from Swedish ebay for a third of the price, postage to the UK included. Never mind.

I made the tables wholly from imagination, but inspired by the pictures of funkis furniture.

I don't remember where the blue lid comes from, but the yellow and orange lids are from playdough jars.

The red lamp is a cracker. Perhaps some pictures on the walls, and it's all done.

Funkis kitchen

It took me a very long time to start working on the funkis house because I needed to do some research on functionalism. As I said before, I don't know much about this style, which is the challenge of the project. For instance, I had no idea what kind of floors or wallpaper would go with it. I googled funkis + wallpaper and found zillions of wonderful images, but when I started searching for dollhouse printies, I could not find anything even remotedly suitable. I then downloaded images of 1:1 wallpaper, resized and printed out, but it didn't work because the ceilings in this house are quite high, and it was impossible to get the patterns right. In short, it looked untidy. I knew I wouldn't be happy with it. So, reluctantly, I turned to dollhouse shops to see whether I could buy anything there. The two largest online dollhouse shops offer a selection of 300 wallpapers, none close to funkis. I am sure that if I were better at photoshop I would be able to design my own funkis wallpaper, but as it is, I am not.

Then I had an idea. Surely there must be wrapping paper with a funkis-like design. I even found some great stuff on amazon, but you could only buy it as a bonus if you made other purchases, and at the moment I have no urgent needs that amazon can satisfy. I checked Staples, and I checked ebay. Then I gave up and went to a hobby shop. A real-life one. A dangerous place where I tend to spend too much money on items I may possibly need sometimes for something. But I was good and only bought a pad of wonderful craft paper (wrapping paper was no good) and some small stuff.

So I finally started redecorating the rooms. I now had three sheets each of sixteen different patterns, and guess how long it took me to decide? I put the sheets into the rooms only to state that it didn't work, that the pattern was too large or too shiny or wrong nuance to match the furniture. Actually, I didn't have any furniture except some loose pieces, and I wasn't even sure which room would be which. So I moved the sheets around and got more and more frustrated. By itself, each pattern was gorgeous. Inside the rooms, I wasn't sure.

I have this bad habit of browsing ebay for job lots, and I bought one recently without any particular project in mind, just because it was good value for money (most of it is actually Louis Marx from the '60s).

And suddenly I saw that this mint green set would fit perfectly in my non-existent kitchen. And it decided the choice of wallpaper. Just to give you an idea of the condition of the room prior to renovation:

It is a deep and narrow room, not easy to wallpaper. Fortunately, the three sheets were just enough. Here is the result:

I need to explain the window. This house only has windows on the front so I decided to add a fake window to create a sense of space. I took the same shape and size as the front windows, printed out an image of a funkis house and made a frame from two layers of white card:

I made a narrow window sill, just to add depth. 

The next day I made a lamp out of an empty tape roll. 

I am very pleased with this room. I would never ever want to live in it, but that's not the point. It has bright period-correct colours, and I have managed to put it some details that make this room unique. I could even use the old iron cooker that I bought some years ago at Portobello Road in London. 

I will add some shelves and utensils, but this ebay bargain really made it work.

Window improvements

Here is an example of how even a very small detail makes a difference. I have studied images of architectural features of functionalism such as the shape of windows. Plain square windows don't look natural (I realised it when I put in windows in my modern house). Remarkably, it was just enough to put in a partition.

Funkis bathroom

For some reason, I started the renovation of the funkis house with the bathroom. In fact, the ground floor of the house will be a shop. The yarn shop. It will fit in perfectly. And the little space by the stairs will be a bathroom, for the customers and the shop owner. It could be a pentry or a storeroom, but I just felt it had to be a bathroom, and after all, it's my project, and I can do whatever I want.

I chose tile wallpaper from my favourite printie site, and I photocopied black-and-white chequered floor that I had used for Helen Hall that is now gone, so it's ok to use the same pattern. After Helen Hall where I could easily dismantle the walls and put in wallpaper before I assembled them again, here I had to work in awkward spaces. But I am very pleased with the result. The toilet and the washbasin are from ebay (cheap, for the toilet seat and one tap are missing), and the mirror is from a Barbie house and had been used elsewhere all this time.

Of course I must put in a wall and a door (with a sign), and of course there will be more details: a towel rack, a shelf, a potted plant. So please come back soon.

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.