A Few Dollhouse Improvements

My brother, who has always had an interest in miniature modelling, gave me some suggestions for the dollhouse. And of course, every sister listens to her brother! Therefore, I've added some pale green paint  to the decorative spindles on the gingerbread trim, and pasted some free printable brick-pattern wallpaper to the foundation wall. You can see this better in the image below.

I do intend to do some more work on the green paint on the front of the house. I over-antiqued it when I was repainting the band of trim at the top of the brick section.

The welcome mat came from a collection of furniture I recently bought via Craiglist (or was it Kijiji?) from a very nice woman who lives only a few blocks away from me. The furniture belonged to her mother, who built a 1967 dollhouse. You can see more of it below.

Here is a rather impressive stove that my brother kindly assembled for me out of a kit. He was very good at putting together model airplanes as a child, and has successfully transferred that skill to the world of dollhouse miniatures. In particular, he did a great job with a decal of black curlicues that had to be applied to the chrome-coloured base.

The door of that stove opens, and I can fit the cookie tray that you see on the table inside. So the dolls are all kitted out for baking. (If you know me, you will not be surprised I see this as a priority.) You may note that the stovepipe vents to an imaginary chimney.

When my young niece saw the stove in place, her comment was "That looks great!!!"

Among the other new furnishings are the cheese grater, the toaster (with working lever!), the knife and the nice little German pots on the stove and hanging on the wall, which are metal. You may not be able to see it, but on the stove top there's a little spatula and a sweet frying pan that contains two eggs, sunnyside up.

In the front room, you'll easily spot the new china cabinet, a fine table with four chairs, a fireplace and a tiny ceramic pitcher on top of it, plus a Sterling silver tea tray (really!) There's also a bowl of flowers on the corner table, as well as a few other oddments in the cabinet that you probably can't identify.

The wooden furniture is made by a company called Shackman, and may have been bought at the great Manhattan toy mecca F.A.O. Schwartz in the 1960s. My friend Susan with the big dollhouse collection tells me the fireplace is Petite Princess, which was also sold at F.A.O. Schwartz. She has lots and lots of it, including the very same fireplace.

There were lots more treats in the little collection I bought, including an entire bathroom suite and a small doll family, but I'll wait until another time to write about them.