Hobbies 793 Regency Dolls house to Longbourn - home of the Bennets in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

 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 it took a lot of courage to strip it all out. I kept a lot of the furniture to upgrade and passed some on to my granddaughter for her house. I never throw anything away.
It was easy to strip one I'd begun and I also decided to do away with the narrow hall and stairs and 'imagine' access to the upper floor was located somewhere out of sight. I needed a larger, more stately space to make the most of the windows. I decorated the interior with regency style paper and furnished it sparsely. it was the exterior that took the most work.

My first attempt to make a flagstone floor wasn't the most successful but it will do. Next time I will make it outside the house and put it in later - lol. we live and learn.



We decided to experiment with render and it is great stuff! It was rather like icing a large cake. When it was almost gone off  my trusty assistant scored marks in the surface to resemble bath stone bricks. This was quite an expensive process so we only used this method on the front, the sides and back are just painted to match - It took a lot of trial and error get the paint shade correct but I had fun with it, adding shades of green and grey to age it.



Trusty sidekick was very clever with the roof. He rolled out clay, gave it texture by rolling it out beneath one of my best tea towels and then replicated the tiles by scoring the clay before it dried. we had no idea if this would prove successful but  (fingers crossed) it is still fine today, a year or so later.


We painted the windows, added a green rim to both age them and disguise the fact that they are plastic. New chimneys were made and I purchased balustrade for the roof and some dinky clay urns that I painted terracotta. Then we made a wooden front door complete with an aged porticoed entrance.


I am sure Mr and Mrs Bennet and their brood of marriageable daughters would love to move in.




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