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.
I love it!! It looks charming and cozy and I’d like to have tea there.
Thank you, Jenny!
Fabulous! It’s amazing how you make these dollhouses look real inside.
Thank you, Melanie!
I love when you work on your dolls house. It inspires me to work on mine. I have a 1950’s Betsy McCalls doll house made from a pattern sold back then. Have fun working in the A/C.
Yours truly Elaine from Luray Va.
I’ve seen versions of that dollhouse, Elaine. It’s really cool! Good for you!
Gosh, if we ever had previously discussed the Betsy McCall doll house here, I’d forgotten. (OMG, I did SO love the Betsy McCall page in the McCall’s magazine each month; a much-beloved paper doll, we boomer girls of a certain age!) Prompted me to google and find some images of the Betsy McCall house. What a labor of love for some moms and dads of 1955!
More and more, very unusual for me, must be because of childhood, I’m drawn to all-things mid-century modern America. I love to learn of someone my age who held on to their doll house and somehow didn’t lose all the accessories over the many years; what a treasure! I’ve thought ‘if we could just go back’: I’d buy a dollhouse like this (also a Barbie with several outfits) and keep them in show/mint condition, boxed up with care and not touched over the years (collectibles idea) instead of what was the ‘real’ thing, in that our little hands grubbed things up, lost a lot of small parts, etc.; we were kids, and we played, which was the intent of the toys.
I just want to kick myself for unloading a couple of end tables belonging to my parents from the early 60s; they were Lane; I liked them a heckuva lot better than the ones I’ve got right now.
Anyway, Claudia, when I looked at a lot of images of doll houses prompted by your post today (and comments) I’m again struck by the amazing detail and commitment to scale that you’ve shown us in Don’s Studio house and also Hummingbird Cottage. You’ve got a couple of houses yet to go, don’t you – – the Target loft, too. Just can’t wait to see what you do with them. I’ve been gazing at doll houses online that have been noble efforts but the interiors look quite homemade (although there’s charm in that; we’re not wanting a ‘machine’/cooky-cutter look to any of it). The diff with yours is that your houses are really professional (which is why you obviously got published in a magazine!). Just delightful. Keep it up! You’ve got the whole long winter ahead of you; lots of good craft time indoors. (Sorry for my second reference to autumn/winter; I know you’re not ready for the change of seasons yet; let’s not hurry it!)
I’m pretty particular about scale. Some people don’t care about it and that’s fine. But to me, inaccuracies in scale would drive me nuts! I participated in a swap a few years back and when I received my box with swap items, I was largely disappointed. A few pieces, like the painting on the mantel in the antique house, were lovely. But most of them were completely out of scale. Anyway.
When I was a kid I had a metal dollhouse, the kind with curtains and wallpaper stamped on the metal walls. I loved it, but even then, I knew the plastic furniture wasn’t to scale. I wanted a dollhouse sort of like the one I have now. And I finally got it many, many years later. I know there are people out there who have their childhood dollhouses. I’ve read about them.
Yes, it took me a long time to recall it from the deep archives of my brain after a discussion here once but then I did remember my metal doll house with the little plastic baby; this is when I just want to kiss the internet for what it can provide with images because it helped me with the memory. I imagine I had it when I was maybe age 4-6? Long time ago!
I think with the scale thing, you’ve just got the eye, Claudia. Like what they call with artists who have good perspective/visualization; don’t know how to describe it; something innate, like a natural gift for proportion, and you got the gift!
In my own way, I’m sort of like that with color; not saying that I’m any kind of expert, but I have a good eye for color and what-goes-with-what (nature provides many clues; just look at a flower, a sunset, an ocean, etc.). It’s really never failed me, and my teacher brought it to my mom’s attention when I was in the first grade.
(Just don’t ask me to cut a pie straight; I’ve also struggled with wallpaper and even cutting liner paper to fit cupboards and shelves [in a human house, not a doll house!].)
There was a home I rented for ten years and ‘way, ‘way up in the garage rafters was an exquisite doll house, painted white with forest/dark-green shutters; very large, 2-story doll house; I imagine it was a custom build. It was just stuck up there with no cover over it, gathering so much dust; from as much as we could tell, had been there for years before (and I couldn’t help but wonder if other tenants [there’d been MANY] had been tempted to simply take it [since it seemed to be an abandoned thing and why would a landlord/homeowner leave it there and not have it in their care; was just so odd that it was all by its lonesome in that old garage] but, clearly, we all were being respectful [honesty first; obey the law!] to the human home’s long-absentee owner).
By pure coincidence, I’ve had some recent correspondence with this homeowner’s daughter and I’m just about to ask her if that was her doll house and if she currently has it (because the owner, her mother, died, and the human house was sold [my concern being that this daughter is in New England for a good 30 years and the doll house was here in SoCalif, so did the ‘girl’ even know it was here, if indeed it was hers {she’d grown up in the home as a little girl}]).
This particular doll house looked like something I’d expect to see (were it a human house) on a green-rolling-hills horse farm, stately home with white fencing, wide green lawns, and paddocks in the line of sight. I guess you’d call the doll house a colonial ‘country’ house (it SO deserved to not be ‘discarded’ up in the ceiling of that old dirty garage). I guess it could have been left by another tenant but my gut feeling is it belonged to the property owner. I will find out! Makes one wonder about the way of so many of our childhood doll houses and what happened to them over time (like what you found at the recycling center). I guess they did take up space; so, when a young and growing girl’s interest waned…
I could easily see myself collecting abandoned dollhouses and restoring them. I don’t have the room for them, so I can’t. But the impulse is there.
I think the outhouse is a great idea, as well as authentic. We lived with an outhouse with a stained glass window for many years. It faced into the woods. I always appreciated the opportunity to get out of the house for a few minutes and see the stars at night.
Authentic but I suspect I’ll just imagine it and not build it! Our family had a cottage on a lake and for many years we had to use the outhouse. I remember it well!
tiny things are always just enchanting! xo
Thank you, Tammy!
Is this the little blue house you found at the recycling dump? So glad you’re getting the doll house ‘bug’ again!
No, this is the handmade antique dollhouse that I found right before Christmas.
I’m drawing a blank. Can you show a picture of it tomorrow so I can see the exterior, or maybe I should go back in your posts to Dec 2018 to find a photo and re-read the story? I’m interested; it’s an intriguing little house, especially that one little cubby of a room.
I’ll try to remember to post a picture tomorrow, Vicki. It was a steal at $75 – truly one-of-a-kind.
Dollhouses!!! I still have to figure out what to do with the top of mine. It’s like your other dollhouse. You created a potting shed and a garden. I think I might do a yoga room and a patio- terrace.
Go for it, Jane!
This is bringing back fond childhood memories for me. My great-grandparents 1st had a small plot of land in Falmouth, MA (Cape Cod) that they camped on. Water was well water with old fashion pump. My grandmother & then my mothersummered there. Then they built one room & fireplace & outhouse then 2, then 3 rooms with electricity. I remember that. The outhouse was a 2 seater! Then my parents became the owners when I was 11. They brought pump inside & put a bathroom in & another bedroom. Through the years they added another bedroom, hooked up to “town” water & electric heat. Even a washer & dryer! It was still pretty rustic though, filled with hand-me-downs. Eventually they added a 2nd floor & updated the whole place to 4 bedrooms & 3 bathrooms. It went from being known as “the cottage” to now being called “the beach house”…….La tee da! Lots of new furniture & updated kitchen, etc. They eventually sold it for $$$$. To me, it will always be “the cottage”.
This story reminds me of how you describe this house. Enjoy your new house project & its developing story/history!😊
Love all the changes they made to the house! My dad’s family cottage had a pump as well. And of course, every time we went camping we used a pump and outhouses, so it was a fairly routine thing for us when we went away. I remember being very impressed the first time we stayed in a motel with a bathroom IN THE ROOM!
Your dollhouse is lovely! I have an old one I want to restore when I get time—so maybe in about twenty years, ha ha! I love what you’ve done with yours. It looks so cozy, just right for Beatrix Potter’s two bad mice to wander into.
Thank you so much, Dianna!
I love creating the “backstory” for the houses — lived in as a special cottage, a getaway, whatever you decide! It brings it to life!
You have some beautiful pieces there — I can’t wait to see the next parts!
I have to have some sort of backstory, it’s what inspires me and it fuels the decorating. Thanks, Jeanie!
The wallpaper looks lovely – it must have been fiddly to cut and fit though. I recently purchased some printable miniature book covers from an Etsy shop and have had lots of fun making little books while listening to an audiobook. What are the height and depth of the bookshelves in this house?
They look like they’re about 1 1/2 inches high and 1 1/2 inches deep, Barbara. The man (I’m assuming a man) who built this put lovely craftsman detail into those shelves and the fireplace. I love them so! What Etsy shop did you buy the miniature book covers from?
The shop is called Karolija. and I believe it is based in Lithuania. I use textured paper with a commercial grade printer to print the covers. The assembly takes me some time as I tend to obsess about the details, but it is oddly therapeutic.
I’ll check it out, Barbara. Thanks!
that looks lovely … and the description is perfect! good luck squeezing some things into those smaller rooms.
and kudos to everyone who has the patience and skills to make such tiny things so very detailed and sweet!
hope you all are having a great day.
kathy in iowa
It’s an awful lot of fun, Kathy! Thanks so much!
How lovely and inviting.
Marilyn
Thank you, Marilyn!
Hi Claudia, I love what you’re doing with the dollhouse and the idea that it is a little holiday house is perfect! Cant’t wait to see how it progresses. Love the wallpaper, too. By the way, what are tchotchkes?
Beverley
Knick knacks. Little things like vases and books and that sort of thing.