Sunday, December 28, 2014

How Did I End Up With the Westville Dollhouse?


I feel an explanation is in order. I never intended to get myself a second dollhouse. However, while I was shopping Kijiji for a Christmas present for my niece, I came upon an ad from someone not too far from me who was selling a very slightly damaged version of the Greenleaf Harrison dollhouse, an opulent six-room Tudor dollhouse (pictured below), for just $30. I fell in love with it.

I immediately contacted her, and started the process of arranging to pick it up, but apparently someone with a similar name was doing the same thing, unbeknownst to any of us, and the seller let the house go to her without realizing she actually had two buyers.


I was disappointed, and frustrated that I had not been more proactive about getting it. So when another nice, inexpensive dollhouse popped up on Kijiji, mere blocks from my home, I pounced on it at once. The images above and below show what it looked like when I brought it home. Call it my rebound dollhouse.


It's another Greenleaf kit, called the Westville, and it's based on a real home in Westville, New York near the Canadian border. The architectural style is Carpenter Gothic, which was common from 1840 to 1870. The house has four rooms plus an attic; you could subdivide one of the top-floor rooms if you wanted to.


The kit was nicely built, but many of the "extras", like window frames and panes, were apparently left out. Also, there are a few too many patterns of wallpaper for my taste. In short, a fun fix-up. Because I've been working on my niece's house, I haven't spent too much time on this one, but I did build a shelving unit under the stairs and fabricate a cupboard door like the one that would have come with the original kit.


Although most of the furniture that came with this house has ended up in my niece's dollhouse, it seems I already have quite a bit of other furniture, including a stove, dry sink and ice box for the kitchen.


I've done just a little bit of paint touch-up on the outside of the house; here's the front porch. It will be fun to play around with it over time.

1 comment:

  1. This is a lovely house! You will have a great time renovating it to suit your tastes. I do agree that the wallpaper is a bit too much. The gray paint looks much better than the blue.

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