This Old House - Vintage Dolls House Rescue

  This is a house that I yearn for but it is massively out of the reach of my tiny budget. I am not sure of the maker but it is an early one and absolutely gorgeous. So, knowing I can never own one, when I saw a little white house of a similar shape come up for sale on Ebay I had the idea of making a near replica or at least something resembling it. The house I bought was made sometime in the 80s or 90s, I'd guess. It is simple, box-backed house with four small rooms and immense charm but you can see the obvious similarities. The first job was to paint it. The camera has made the colours a bit garish but in reality they are quite muted. I used chalk paint and with some careful mixing I came close as possible to the hue on the original. Then I aged it a black wax and instructed my husband to make some window surrounds similar to the old house. I was really pleased with the result. The interior was easy. I copied a technique of wall papering with napkins and  modge podge from Dolls h

  I didn't have to do much to the exterior of this lovely Hobbies Special 186 as I love it just the way it is. It was a  bit a grubby and has obviously been played with  but it was unspoiled. All I had to do was clean it up a bit and disguise some discolouration on the roof and brick work. Inside was another matter but still didn't require a great deal of refurbishment. The paper in the upper rooms was fine but downstairs seemed to be papered with wrapping paper from the 1990s. The floor is also quite stained but the paper intact so I decided to keep that and hide the worst of it with strategically placed rugs. I didnt like the open plan so decided to divide it into two rooms and add stairs. I played around for  quite a while and eventually opted to created stairs in a cupboard like my nan had in her house and not bother with an opening in the upstairs floor, the inhabitants will have to imagine that. The house came with all the lovely 1940s furniture so I thought I'd make

                                                                            Before I've called this one Chippenham House because we bought it from a lovely lady in Chippenham. I have only seen two of these come up for sale in recent years and my sister bought the other one! It had been in the lady's family for several generations and been through many different stages of decoration. Originally the roof would have been brown, the thatched effect dating it to between 1930-32. The windows were always black with lace curtains. As always I wanted to restore it to as near the original as possible, not a simple task due to the layers of gloss paint. It is a pretty house, 16th scale (I think) so smaller than the Stockbroker range and luckily I had a stash of such furniture, plus I might have done a bit of shopping. The first task was to remove the windows, the front opening doors and assess what to do with it and how to go about it. Since this one is so small and the interior quite fid

  I was scrolling through marketplace (as you do) when I saw the ugliest, saddest house I've ever seen but there was something about it that drew my eye and made me look closer. No matter how often or how closely I examined the photographs I couldn't decide if it was a worth while purchase or not. It was £30 and not far from my son's house in Bridgend, so in the end I asked him to collect it for me. When I went to collect it from him I wondered why on earth I had bothered but getting it home, giving it a good clean I began to like it better. It was filthy, the photo is the water after the first wash down of the exterior. The inside, although very grubby, was quite sweet. It had a 1930's feel, nice fireplaces, stylish sliding doors I'd never seen before, and old light fittings. It reminded me of a Lines house but the front windows and balcony with its garish pink columns said 'NO' in no uncertain terms. I stripped the torn roof paper and discovered a nice bla

  This dates from 1951-66 and the poor house was in a terrible way when we got it. It was so bad the lady seller agreed to post it as it couldnt possibly sustain any further damage on its journey. It is a miracle it had so many original features left. Most of the windows, although some were yellowed with age and the door. The worse damage was to the front and the door, some chemical or another had been spilled down the front and gone very brittle. We had such a job cleaning that off. Internally the paper was all intact apart from the floor and it needed a good lick of paint. This one is an unusual shade of blue so we took one of the doors and got it colour matched. Then I worked my charm and painted on the exterior flowers while John laboriously made  some windows. We salvaged those we could and sadly had to abandon the door but he made a replica. The roof was completely missing so we worked out the shape and made a new one, papered it in the same sytle tiled paper that it would have h

This house dates from1924 -33 which I think, makes it my oldest house to date. It was in a  bit of a sorry state when I got it. The interior papers were torn, painted over and the fixtures had all been taken out. Luckily, I am not a purist. I like to restore houses as close to the original as I can get them but I don't mind reproduction replacement parts. We made the dresser, the fireplaces and chimneys ourselves and from a distance you wouldn't know.  I touched up the roof with matching paint. I didnt paste the walls but put the paper onto card and used double sided tape to fix it to the walls. I retained the piece of lino someone had placed in the left hand bedroom and kept the carpet on the stairs which was not original. I painted the hall because it wasn't possible to get my hand in far enough to repaper. I also kept the original floors in the downstairs rooms, the tatty bits don't show once the furniture is in. To tidy it up and give it an old timey feel I used vin