I’d been thinking about doing something with the antique dollhouse for about a week. Yesterday, I pulled it down from its perch on top of the china cabinet in the den and moved it to the kitchen table.
I ran up and down the stairs several times, gathering up whatever I had on hand in my stash. That isn’t a whole lot, by the way, because 1) dollhouse furniture can be expensive and 2) I don’t have much storage space.
This little lovingly handmade house has one big room and two tiny rooms. Getting to one of the rooms is almost impossible (but I’ll do it at some point). All the interior walls are made of dark wood. So, it can get really dark in there.
I had an idea to find something I could use as wallpaper on the living room wall that faces me when I look inside the house. But I would only attach it temporarily, as I have qualms about doing anything permanent to the walls. It is, after all, a piece of folk art as well.
Here’s what I came up with:
I purchased the chair and the sofa a while back. The vase was in my stash. Barbara gave me the console table. She might have given me the rugs, as well, but I’m not sure about that.
The wallpaper was a duplicate of some I have on hand for a future project. I forgot I had it in my stash, so that was a wonderful surprise!
The pitcher was a gift from Barbara and the painting was something I received in a swap.
I look forward to getting books for the shelves as well as tchotchkes.
The hooks were in Hummingbird Cottage but they kept falling off the wall. I decided to use them here.
See that room to the left? The only way to get in there is via the doorway and a door that opens into the room from the other even smaller room. I’m planning on that being the bedroom, so I’ll have to find a bed that I can maneuver into the room from the doorway. Yikes.
That other, really tiny room will be a kitchenette. It’s almost all doors and windows, so again – yikes. There’s no room for a bathroom.
My take on this little antique house is that it’s a family getaway – a cottage or a cabin – that’s been in that family for years. Rustic elegance. Smallish kitchen, just enough to refrigerate a few items and/or boil some water. One bedroom. (Maybe the bathroom is in some unseen outbuilding?)
It was awfully fun playing house and I look forward to adding more.
(The server that this blog is on is a wee bit slow this morning – at least for me. If it’s slow for you, hang in there. It will be fixed.)
Happy Tuesday.
