Not My Dollhouse...

...it's my mother's! It was built by Frodingham Dolls Houses (no longer in business) several years ago. It's a front opening house, but there are no hinges. The front walls and roofs fit together using slots and inside beams to hold everything in place. 

The garden to the right is still in progress. Eventually, they will all be "planted" in one flowerbed, so that they can be easily removed to access the house.

 Here's a closer view of the front door. The lantern on the left is the one I made.

 This photo shows the kitchen door and larder. The larder was originally supposed to be a privy, but mom loves miniature kitchen items, so the larder seemed like a better use of space. The basket holds tiny carved clothespins!

 I'll show the inside in a few days!

Painted Table

Lately I've been really enjoying working on furniture. I've posted about the sofa and chair I reupholstered, and the knobs I changed on Pheobe's dresser. This table was just a fun project.

 This kit was a Christmas gift which has been sitting in my kit drawer for the last few months. It was much easier to paint the base colors while the table was unassembled. The apron got a few coats of blue , and the table top and legs were painted off white.

 I assembled the table before I'd figured out what I wanted to do on the top. Measuring those wedges and filling them in with the blue would have been easier while the table was still in pieces, but I managed! The decorative painting is really fun to do- it's like doodling with paint. I actually used a lot of gold on this table, but it didn't photograph well. Those brownish spots along the table edge, for exmple, are really gold!

Another Before and After

In the last post, I showed a sofa and a chair I'd reupholtered. Today I wanted to share the small change I made to the bureau in Pheboe's bedroom. I found this dresser on Ebay several years ago. It's a little chunky, but it doesn't read that way in the room. I also really liked the finish. The only bad thing about it was that it had huge wooden knobs on the larger drawers.

I replaced the knobs with smaller glass beads. I think it makes the piece look much better!

Two Before and After Projects

It's been a while since my last post! I got my laptop back a few days ago, and have been slowly catching up with everything I've missed over the last few weeks.
I thought I'd share two upholtery projects I did recently. The first is the desk chair in the parlor. It's a bespaq chair that was upholstered in a thick green and cream woven fabric. I actually quite liked the fabric of the chair, but it always seemed a bit pale for the room. You can see that fabric and chair below.

Last summer, a local decorating store gave me several old fabric sample books. I found a brown silk in one of them which I used for the chair. There was barely enough fabric to cover it, but I managed!

The second piece was this sofa from the master bedroom. I bought it years ago thinking I'd recover it. I had several problems with the original upholstery: I wasn't fond of the contrast between the dark wood and the light fabric, the white was a bit shopworn, and there was actually a jacquard pattern woven into the fabric which was subtle but very out of scale. It was in the parlor (which is directly below), but it always seemed a bit big in there. As soon as I moved it upstairs, I knew the fabric I wanted to use.

This is one of my favorite fabrics. Though the fabric looks like a pink and cream stripe from a distance, there are also narrow dark brown and pale orange stripes beside the pink stripes which make things a bit more interesting.

By the way, this one isn't quite finished. Only two of the outer side panels are glued in. I still need to cover the one for the back. It will also need to be trimmed with fine cording to hide the bottom edge of the seat cushion. Have you noticed my big mistake yet? I got the orientation of the fabric mixed up at one point. On the seat and right side, the brown stripe is to the right of the pink stripe. On the other two, the brown is to the left! It's been driving me crazy ever since I first noticed!

Salt Cellar

I'm having trouble loading photographs on the temporary computer I am using, so tonight's intended post has been postponed... instead, I'll show this little salt cellar I made out of painted card. This was the third or fourth one I made, after a couple experiments painting them to look like blue and white delft and a rustic cream and brown which I thought might be appropriate for Mom's dollhouse. She ended up liking the delft box best though!

I'm trying to decide what to do with this red one. I'm quite pleased with it, but it doesn't really go in my kitchen. I also have an unfinished country larder in a roombox, which would be the perfect spot for it, except that the roombox has very little wallspace.
I'll try to get more photos up soon!

Checking In

I'm sorry for the unexpected break. I've been having computer trouble for a while, and I finally brought my laptop in for repairs last week. I'll update as I can, but it may be sporadic for a while. In the mean time, I've finished tidying my dollhouse, and changed quite a few things around. One thing that didn't change was the dollhouse in the playroom. It is absolutely enormous, and reminds me a little of the Tate Baby House from the V&A.

A Whole Lot of Pink

I haven't posted anything about my actual dollhouse in ages. That's because it has been an absolute mess! This past weekend, I began tidying it up, though I skimped on the dusting. I've been interested in miniatures since I was five, but really got involved around age eleven. That's when I chose all the wallpapers which are in my dollhouse now. For the most part, I'm still pretty happy with the papers. The master bedroom however has been bothering me for several years. It is very, very pink.

After rearranging some of the furniture, I've made a decision. First of all, the billowing pink silk curtains (made by Mom many years ago) are going to be replaced. Secondly, the very lacy, pink and white bed which was my seven-year-old Christmas present is going to come out. I'm going to replace it with something in an appropriately Victorian dark wood, with minimal bedding. Hopefully, this will make the room look a little less fussy and a little more realistic.

This washstand was one of the pieces I moved around. Before, it was tucked in a dark corner, but now it's closer to the front of the house and much easier to see. I also added a chaise to the window area. It's been hanging out in the parlor downstairs, but I always thought it looked too crowded there. I'd always planned to reupholster it in green silk, but kept putting it off because I didn't love it in the parlor. I'm much happier with it in this room, but now I'm not sure what fabric I should use! I'm leaning towards a much darker shade, but I'm really not sure...

The books are readable ones which I purchased shortly before I began to make my own. The darker one is a book of remedies, and the other is about household management. The pillow is from a scrap of antique petite point.