Dollhouse Before

This is going to be a picture heavy post.  And not pretty pictures either but I wanted to document the before, in all it’s glory, before I get too far into the restoration.

First a little background on this house.  Two years ago someone I follow on Instagram for home decor had done pretty much a replica of her own home in dollhouse form and I was just smitten.  So I started researching all things dollhouse and quickly determined that this could be a very expensive and time consuming hobby.  I really wasn’t interested in building a dollhouse, to be honest, I just wanted to decorate one.   Then I read a blog post on Mockingbird Cottage who mentioned that she found an assembled one on Craigslist.

Hmmm.  I immediately hopped on my local Craigslist and as luck would have it there was one listed for sale!  It is a Greenleaf Beacon Hill which normally retails for about $250 (in kit form) and I got the assembled one for $80.

So thank you Claudia for the tip to look on Craigslist!  I don’t think it would have ever occurred to me.  Thank you also for your dollhouse sources page which I have found invaluable.

Here are the listing photos and what it looked like when I purchased it:

Gracious that is lurid.  As you can see from the first photo I have slapped a primer coat on the exterior just so it isn’t so eye searing while I am working on it in my office.

Here is the interior:

The woman who sold it to me had already begun some restoration work then decided she really didn’t have the time nor the space for it.

I decided to modify the layout somewhat.  I wanted a bigger living area so I removed the wall between the foyer (bottom middle) and the living room (bottom right).  After much deliberation I removed the lower staircase as well.  I know some miniaturists are going for realism but I honestly don’t care (or have the talent/patience) if it is completely accurate.  We’ll just pretend the staircase is there, but not visible.

I also removed the walls in the upper most level.  I want that to be a big attic space and not a series of rooms.

The construction of the house is rather slipshod and I ended up removing all the window casings and the acetate windows.  You can buy replacement windows from Greenleaf but I think I’m going to just leave them open.  I can make new casings for the windows fairly easily.

I am going to put wood floors in a herringbone pattern in the living room, upper hallway/stair landing  and bedroom.  I’ve actually already  made the floor for the bedroom but I need to apply a skim coat on all the walls in the house and paint before I install floors.   The attic will have a rough hewn wood plank floor.

I bought flooring for the kitchen and bathroom.  I will need to put an underlayment before installing it so it is level with the adjoining wood flooring.

I think I’ll put a fireplace in the living room but not the bedroom or attic space.  The previous owner had removed all of them in her restoration efforts.  I feel they will take up too much room in the bedroom and will mess with my planned placement of furnishings.  And who needs a fireplace in the attic?

When I see all the work I have to do to get it inhabitable I realize it would have been quicker to just have started with a kit and built it myself.  Ah well.  I’m committed now.

The next step is to get the walls in order.  I am using joint compound for a skim coat because it’s easy to work with and sands really smoothly.  I do have a little patching I need to do in the attic where I removed a wall and opened up a hole to the outside.

I sure have a lot of work to do!  It’s rather daunting.  I have been buying and making the furnishings (mostly making) because that is the fun part and I don’t want to wait until it is completely restored to get to the fun part.  Hopefully the next post in this series will be the finished walls.  Stay tuned.