Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Since sun has been a rarity around here lately and yesterday was so cold that it was sunny all day long, I took some pictures of the most recent dollhouse addition. I don’t think we’d ever seen it in the sunlight before.

I’ve been forced to rest for the past couple of days and I spent a fair amount of time looking at dollhouses and dollhouse miniatures. When most miniaturists talk about restoring a dollhouse it usually involves a dollhouse of more recent vintage, such as my first restoration, Hummingbird Cottage. Or something vintage that was mass marketed, like old Lundby or Triang dollhouses. When you get into the area of vintage that is one-of-a-kind, well, you’re in an entirely new category.

The house I found last year right before Christmas is one-of-a-kind. It’s folk art. I haven’t messed with the outside. No painting, no retouching. I want to maintain its integrity. Even inside, with the dark wood interior, I am loathe to paint. So I’m resorting to temporary wallpaper to lighten things up. I feel strongly that folk art should be treated with respect.

So I’ve been wrestling with what to do with this ‘new’ house. Except for replacing some windows, cleaning the exterior, and cleaning the intact windows, I plan to leave the exterior as is. My first view of the exterior is what charmed me and it continues to do so. There’s no way I could do anything as charming as is already there. Nor would I want to.

The inside, however, is another story. Unlike the maker of the white house, who added detail to the room in the form of a built-in fireplace with bookshelves on either side, which I have no desire to change as it’s beautifully finished, this maker added two red fireplaces, and that’s it. Everything else is bare bones. The wood floors are large planks with spaces in between, unfinished. The walls are all painted yellow. There are two long rooms upstairs that could be divided. Everything could and should get a coat of paint.

I’m not a fan of the bright red fireplaces, but I would never paint over them. Instead, I’d fashion a surround, a facade, that could be removed. That way, the integrity of the maker’s original build would still remain.

The whole house is not quite to scale in that the ceilings are very low. So I’d have to choose furniture that was a bit on the smaller side, which, believe me, is entirely possible. Just because a piece is 1:12 scale doesn’t mean there aren’t slight variations out there. There are.

Just some of the ideas and quandaries running around inside my head as I contemplate the work ahead. I had no compunctions about doing whatever I wanted to Hummingbird Cottage, or to Don’s Studio, or to the ongoing restoration of the house I found at the Dump, or the modern dollhouse.

The two folk art houses are another story entirely.

Tricky stuff, this. But they sure generate ideas!

Feeling a bit better, by the way. Not tip-top yet, but less fuzzy.

Happy Friday.