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1980s Honeychurch dolls house to Victorian Villa.

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 I was given this lovely house! All very splendidly done out in 1990 pastel decor. I needed to give it the Arnopp touch. It is a gorgeous house. I think, along with Sid Cooke, these are antiques of the future so I was excited to start work on it. The paper was easily removed, revealing a clean smooth surface so unlike the rough, aged wood I am accustomed to on the Triang houses. When I am doing up an antique house I like to restore it to the original but with a newer house I have a free hand, to do as I please. I love old houses, I love old times so it is unlikely I am ever going to do a modern home. I wanted it to look old so I painted it in two halves. The upper in red brick, the lower half in bath stone bricks. As before, I did the colour mixing and painting while trusty sidekick drew the bricks - freehand. I don't seem to have taken photographs of the process, I must have been too busy enjoying it. Inside I used three ply paper napkins for wall paper. I mod podged it to heavier...
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Hobbies 793 Regency Dolls house to Longbourn - home of the Bennets in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

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 I've had this house for some time. When I got it the previous owners had decorated it as a 1980s house complete with fitted homemade kitchen and bathroom and modern style wall paper. For some reason, it stopped me from seeing the house's potential straight away. But then I read an article in one of the dolls house magazines about a lady who had created LongBourne, the home of the Bennets from Pride and Prejudice and I knew right away I wanted to copy her. This involved a lot of  internet searching for the house they used in filming the Colin Firth Version and close examination of pictures of the house I saw in the dolls house magazine. I am sorry, I have searched everywhere for the name of the lady who created the original but I can't find it. As you can see, it took a huge leap of imagination. The Hobbies 793 is a lovely house, very solidly made with windows all round - lots of plastic windows that were yellowed with age, and nasty plastic doors. Inside, it was tidy and i...
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Triang 62 - with the garden boxes!

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  Triang No. 62 1930-58. Dimensions: 27 inches [68 cm] wide, 11 inches [28 cm] deep and 17 inches [43 cm] high. I was excited to find this one for sale locally. It is the  version I've long been looking for, with the garden walls and the curved gable beams. It was in a sorry old state when I got it, filthy dirty and very rusty after years in someone's attic. There were signs of historic woodworm on the sides and upper floor and the roof had caved in at one end and there were two missing windows. Inside was dirty but the wallpaper wasn't too bad. I was able to keep quite a lot of it and the ones that couldn't be saved were decorated with repro Triang paper (from DollsHouseMan on Ebay). But, undeterred, we cracked on with it. First job was to give it a good hoover - there was even a mummified wasp in one of the gardens.   Once clean, I carefully removed all the windows and got started treating the woodworm (just in case) and filling all the holes - this took a while! Once...
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Lines Dollshouse DH3 another doer upper

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  DH/3, 1924-1933. Dimensions: 31.25 inches [79.5 cm] wide, 18 inches [46 cm] deep and 32.5 inches [83 cm] high. This is another house I had from Kevin Taylor, and I hope it isn't the last. I loved it straight away, instantly seeing its potential. It had no back and the rear part of the roof was missing. Again it had been painted horribly and the roof was papered with horrible stuff from the 1970s. I soon stripped that off and ordered some replica papers from The Dolls House Man on Ebay. Then I painted the ceilings, eaves and interior wood with a antique white paint, The new roof paper looked a bit bright so I darkened it down with black wax - you can see the bit i have treated beside the untreated part in the photo below. Then the fiddly bit with the windows and balustrade which took several weeks with both of us working on it. The railing was daubed with thick paint, it was quite easy to scrape off and then when he repainted it John put them on the end of his drill, slowly turnin...
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Lines DH 12

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DH/12, 1924-1940. Dimensions: 46.5 inches [116.5 cm] wide, 18 inches [45 cm] deep and 42 inches [105 cm] high (until 1927) OR 48 inches [120 cm] wide, 19 inches [48 cm] deep and 41 inches [122.5 cm] high (from 1928). from Dolls houses past and present website  This is how it was when I got it. Huge, abused and very much in need of some love and attention. I bought it from Kevin Taylor who has numerous beautiful houses - it was such fun to be shown around his collection. To say I was green with envy is no understatement. I had so much fun that I returned a while later to collect a DH3 and a DH11. I've added a short video of when I first opened it up, excuse my voice, I sound much more silly than I really am ... I hope. It needed a lot of attention, the roof had been painted a nasty red, the interior was just a shell but the bones were there and the bits that were missing were easily rebuilt. the first job was to treat it for woodworm, they were no longer active but I always do it as...
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