I think it was about 14 years ago I got my first grown up dollshouse. At the time I couldn’t afford much but still wanted as many rooms as possible. So I really went for quantity over quality.
I was a total novice, I was pretty much skint and terribly impatient to get started. I wish I had waited and done things more slowly and with more care but hindsight is a wonderful thing! In my rush to get going, I didn’t even think about lighting, skirting, cornices or even painting the interior! Instead I used off-cuts of full sized wallpaper, the cheapest dollshouse carpet I could find and made some frankly horrific curtains from scrap material my Mum had.
The exterior faired slightly better but none of the work was done with the care and attention it deserved and, as a result, over a decade later, the decor is looking pretty poor! On top of that, the interior walls are falling down, the glue I used has yellowed and the whole structure is in a fairly sad state.
However, as time went on I became a little more able to buy bits and pieces and have amassed quite a collection of accessories and furniture. I also have some lovely dolls. These came from various places including a couple made by my Mum (I’ll talk about my Mum’s first steps into 12th scale dolls in another post!), and one beautiful one which was a gift, but now of the wrong era! Lots of the furniture is budget and mass produced or bought on ebay but most of it looks pretty good in situ.
About 8 years ago I got seriously into watching re-runs of Upstairs, Downstairs (I even have the box set!) and finally had more of a vision and new enthusiasm for my dollshouse project. Sadly, most of the damage was done and trying to create 165 Eaton Place out of the proverbial sow’s ear was going to be a mammoth task. I also had a real mishmash of periods going on with the furniture.
4 or 5 years ago I added a basement. I took a little more care over the basement rooms (pantry/scullery and a maid’s bedroom – which to my annoyance should really be in the roof!). I’m fairly happy with them but I can’t get away from the errors and issues with the rest of the house!
So despite being a 14 year old project, I have so much work to do and I’m weighing up my options.
I’ve narrowed it down to either ripping the whole lot out and starting again or saving up for a better quality house and letting Munch start her own little miniature adventures with the old one.
I’m leaning towards option 2. I’ve already identified a few possible candidates! I’ll keep you posted! 🙂
Minis, Munch and Me 