Doll House Chronicles – Part 1

I’m going to start a new series showing the progress on the doll house.  I’ve been procrastinating because I have a ton of work that needs to be done on the house and I don’t even know where to start.

This series will chronicle my progress, both with the house and with its furnishings.

I’ve actually  made the optimistic step of moving the doll house to my work table so it is easy to access and work on.

Edited to add:  I just realized I’ve never really shown a picture of the doll house on the blog.  It’s in a few background shots of the office but never a close up.  I’ll do that next week so you can see what I’m working with.   I think I have some pictures of when I first bought it off of Craigslist in all it’s Pepto pink and cobalt blue glory.

Last week I spent a couple of days working on fixing up some furniture that was given to me.  My friend gave me a couple of sets of furniture that her mother had in storage.  I have no idea how old they are but the sets were originally $5.99 each and between the two there are about 15 pieces.  Below are some of the wooden pieces.

As you can see the quality is pretty poor but I think I can refurbish a few of them to work in the house.  What is weird is some are 1:12 in scale but there are a number of pieces that are smaller.  Like the vanity above.  It is just a tiny bit higher than the coffee table.

What I worked on was an armoire, a coffee table and a couch.  Let’s take a look at the couch first.

Yikes.  That is bright.  I do like the shape of it though.  I started by taking it completely apart.

I removed the red velvet from all the pieces except for the seat cushion and the backing on the couch.  Those I covered with a thin, light colored felt material to both block the red and add a little additional padding.

I then recovered everything in a flax colored linen material.

One thing I struggle with when it comes to upholstered doll house furniture is the thickness of the fabric can look odd to me.  There was a strange gap between the cushion and the bottom of the couch and the backing pieces.  To disguise it I took a thin scrap of the linen and glued a piece of string down the center of it.  I then folded it over and made sure the material was snug against the string.  I trimmed the excess and had a nice, to scale, length of welting.  I tucked the raw edge into the gap and I think it gives the piece a more finished look.

Here is how it looks.  I also made a wee little throw pillow.

The next thing I worked on was the armoire.

It also has a nice shape but the finish is awful and it needed some smoothing of edges.  As you can see the hardware was already falling off (probably from spending decades in storage).  I removed the rest of the hardware and gave the piece a good sanding.  Then I put on the first coat of chalk paint.  Yikes again.  Look at that bleed through.  That is supposed to be white chalk paint.

I gave it a quick coat of shellac primer which helped on the outside but the inside was still bleeding through so I just went with it.  Let’s pretend I wanted the inside to be a rosy color.

It didn’t come with glass or plastic in the doors so I fashioned some screening (gutter guard actually) in its place.  I gave both the screening and the hardware a light coat of rose gold metallic paste.

I think this will store linens in the upstairs hallway.

The final piece is a coffee table.  I ran into the same problem with bleed through and I actually resorted to coating the piece with clear nail polish (it was late and I’m sick so it was the best I could come up with.  Patience isn’t my strong suit).

I used earring backs and gold beads for the knobs on the drawer.

I’m not sure what other pieces I’ll try to rehab.  Maybe the grandfather clock and the side table.  I can also see using the other cabinet piece in the kitchen.

Stay tuned.