Triang number 63 - Chippenham House

                                                                            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 fiddly, we also carefully removed the back to provide access.


My worthy assistant got to work removing the layers of paint while I cleaned it up and repapered the inside. We were delighted to discover the floral decoration still intact beneath the paint, all I needed to do was repaint the cream walls and touch the flower garden up a little bit. Then I painted the roof closer to the colour it would have been originally.



I reused some of the paper from the house's later decoration but most was already removed. I sorted through my stash of wall papers for suitable replica Triang patterns and it went on quite well, only a little wrinkling in one of the rooms. I painted the walls that wouldn't be seen either mushroom or cream. We sanded and repainted the interior doors (only one is missing) and cleaned up and repainted the windows, a few of which were missing or no longer opening. A couple of window openings had been previously replaced with cute little matchstick frames and I kept these as a  nod to the house's history. John made new wooden beams for the gables to replace those that had been painted on. This is an upgrade from the original but we think an improvement.



Once it was all done and ready to have the front opening doors screwed back on my not-so-trusty assistant informed me that we had run out of the correct sized screws. So frustrating! I couldn't wait to photograph and upload to the blog so in the final picture the doors are just propped and we also need to fit the refurbished front door.


All in all, this was a fabulous house to work on and I am so pleased with how it looks now. It will have pride of place in my collection!





Remember: If you have granny's old dolls house stashed away in the attic and would like to give it a new lease of life we accept commissions.

Comments

  1. Lauren Gilbert17/04/2023, 08:38

    Nicely done! I love the flower-painted front and the beams. So nice that you had furniture to fit. I love it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Judith Arnopp12/06/2023, 08:53

      Thank you! I am usually working on a dolls house of some sort but these Triangs are so charming, they give a special sense of satisfaction. It's fit for another hundred years now.

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