Someday Came Last Summer

The Lovely Old Dollhouse did eventually come back to me. My nieces had played with it and on it and in it, much the way my siblings and I had done many years before, and in the process had lovingly parted it from some of the frailer pieces. The front door was gone, as were the stairs and the chimney and the hinged half of the roof. I am sure some of the loose pieces were carefully taken off and put aside to protect them from greater harm, and as is the way of things, once separated, they never found their way back together again. I can truly say that this did not matter to me. I knew that "Someday" I would re-build the missing and broken parts, and perhaps even make them better in the long run. I never had been happy with the way the stairs were in the beginning. To have them gone was really a blessing. I would not need to argue with my conscience about destroying them later!

The Lovely Old Dollhouse did come back to me, but that did not mean I had any time to fix it up or do anything with it at all. It, too, sat in my studio, year after year, waiting. Until one gorgeous day early in October when I was packing everything for the big MOVE, and something inspired me to carry the house outside into my garden and take photographs. (I was photographing everything in my world, knowing I was leaving so much behind.) I even brought out some of the bits and pieces of furniture and dolls and set them up and PLAYED with them for the first time in FOREVER! It was a magical afternoon, and my faithful camera recorded much of it for me to share with you. You have already seen some of the photos........but here are some more anyway!

The house all set up!



The parlor, with just a hole where the chimney should be, and furniture hiding the missing wainscoting panel.

The kitchen - with no appliances! A VERY old fashioned place!

The Play session was LOVELY but brief. A thunder shower was threatening. I had to scurry and bring it all back inside. And besides, I had serious packing to do with less than two weeks left to pack up a home I had lived in for twenty years! But you know the dollhouses were ALL coming with me. And after this magical afternoon, I was more sure than ever that SOMEDAY I was going to find the time to fix up the Lovely Old Dollhouse.

So we moved. Me, the cat and all my houses, starting over in a much smaller space! The new house needed my attention. My boys (now out in the world) needed my attention. But gradually, and oh so slowly the dollhouses began to get my attention. It crept up on me, but "Someday" finally came!

Last summer.

The Folly still had only half of its shingles when my older niece came to visit me last June. She had just been visiting with my Father (her Grandfather) and his partner on The Cape and told me of an exhibit at a museum that was full of doll houses. She said it made her think of me! (Imagine that!) I was intrigued. And I decided I HAD to go see that exhibit. So I did. That very next weekend - which happened to be the last weekend of the exhibit.

And I'm SO glad I did! The dollhouses were Wonderful! They were created by a woman (and her husband) who lives on The Cape and runs a small independent school - I think it is called The Storybook School. Her work is full of imagination and artistry and magic. The biggest dollhouse was hand built and painted in the most beautiful vibrant colors and patterns! They had REAL stained glass windows! And flickering fire in the fireplace! And all the rooms were lighted and filled with an amazing assortment of items - not all to scale - but lovingly collected and full of character. And the clincher was that the dollhouse livingroom was inhabited by a family of small teddy bears! It made me realize that there were NO rules when it came to dollhouses. There was really no need to be of a particular period, authentic and precise in every way. I hadn't realized it, but my own timidity in starting on my own dollhouse was in part because I thought it would need to be made "perfect" in a way I couldn't imagine. Silly me! This was freedom! I Knew it was TIME for me to start on the Lovely Old Dollhouse!

So I did. Not the very next day, but the very next week saw me making the list of essential repairs. There would have to be new stairs and a new front door. The roof and chimney would need to be re-built. It would need a base to elevate it off the ground a little bit. And on the inside it would need the missing wainscoting in the hall and parlor replaced. And doors on the upstairs rooms. And the windows all needed glass. And trim. And paint. The list was long. And would have been daunting except that I was just SO EXCITED to be finally working on it!

I built a small base first thing, and attached it to the bottom of the Lovely Old Dollhouse. Then I started on the chimney. I planned to re-build it just the way it had been in my youth. It attached to the outside of the house at the parlor end, and had a small strip of trim at the top edge. It was painted brick red, of course. (We used to drop things down it and pull them out the opening in the parlor!) But something happened as I was building that chimney that was unplanned. I thought about the period and style of house that The Lovely Old Dollhouse was modeled on. In this part of the world they are called Colonial Houses - built during the time of the Colonies - known as Georgian in other areas. And a house of that type, built in the eighteenth century, would have had more than one fireplace. More than one chimney for that matter. There would have been a huge old fireplace in the kitchen as this pre-dated the invention of the cast-iron cookstoves. There probably would have been a fireplace in the best bedroom at the very least. Hmmm. You can see where this is going..... I had to decide HOW MUCH different I was going to make it from what it was in my childhood. Maybe this wasn't going to be so easy after all. But then I remembered that I had always wanted to make it different. I already had made it different by adding doors and wainscoting many years earlier. This was NOT the time to be fainthearted! So it was decided. There would be fireplaces in the kitchen as well as the parlor, and one in each of the bedrooms, because once you add the kitchen chimney it is just silly not to add the upstairs hearth as well.

I pulled out my trusty jig saw and bravely cut holes in the walls of the Lovely Old Dollhouse, upstairs and down. Then I built little firebox inserts for each hearth out of thin plywood, to resemble the brick shape of the fireplace. At this point I remembered to take a few photos of my progress.......

The parlor fireplace and the master bedroom

Close-up of the parlor firplace

The second best bedroom fireplace - roughed in

And the huge kitchen fireplace opening

Kitchen fireplace with the hearth and the old fashioned beehive oven - before painting

The details of the mantel pieces I decided to vary on each fireplace. I have an old book called "Historic Houses of Vermont" that is filled with beautiful photos of the architecture of the area from the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, and I copied my mantels from ones shown in that book. Because everything was hand built back then, it wasn't unusual to have a lot of variation within one building. Of course, my versions are much cruder than the real ones. I decided I was going to allow myself to approximate the originals, not going for perfection as much as trying to capture a resemblance, in keeping with the somewhat rough work I had already added in my teen years.

Here we have the parlor mantel with the beginnings of the new design.

And the second best bedroom mantel

And the master bedroom mantel - plainer because it was built first

And the kitchen hearth - just waiting for the fire!

Did someone say fire?

Could it be that instead of just one flickering fire in the fireplace we will now need FOUR? I guess it is time for a daring trip to the miniatures shop for some supplies! For now that I have started re-building the Lovely Old Dollhouse, there is no stopping me!

So you see,

"Someday" came last summer, after all!

A Tale of Two Houses

After the Big MOVE (empty nester down-sizing) the old dollhouse stayed on the shelf, or WAS the shelf for the longest time. Somehow, projects that are labeled "someday" in our minds almost never make it to "Today"! Sometimes baby steps are required to sneak up on those BIG projects and make them believable. So it happened that one cold winter night the empty nester was browsing old magazines and came upon an image of a beautifully crafted dollhouse made in England and it included a web address! Well! That was perhaps worth a look up on the amazing internet. Of course, the beautiful miniature dollhouses lovingly crafted in Tudor style with half timbers and worn brick and thatching for roofs was just too yummy for words. The long buried dream was jiggled awake. And suddenly, in the way the mind has of making connections that seem SO OBVIOUS after we think of them, the empty-nester/dreamer remembered a doll house kit she had purchased at least a decade before, on impulse (gotta love those impulses!) but put aside and never built because it was going to require more than a half a day of concentration (a commodity hard to come by while raising two boys) to build it. So there it was, just waiting for her when the desire really hit to build a dollhouse! But, as anyone who has built a kit house knows, it is a bit daunting to open the box to find sheets of wood with punched-out pieces ready to pull apart and a Looooong list of instructions which must be carefully followed if success is desired.

So began the long process of punching out small carefully numbered pieces, sanding them, priming them, painting them ......oh my, painting them! Before they are even glued together? Well, that means knowing what colors you want them BEFORE the house is even assembled! This was a very novel approach for me, used to the idea of decorating a room or house that was already complete and had a character or a "vibe" that you could feel and connect with. Hmmmm. Colors. I LOVE colors! I have a lot of colors of paint left over from various previous and on-going decorating projects in my 1:1 scale house. It was really just a matter of trying to get enough colors worked into the scheme without it being too outrageous. The picture on the box was mildly helpful in that where they put cream I put orange (well a lovely peachy orange) and where they put green on the trim I put some dark royal blue and some light sky blue, and where they put brown I got to put a lovely deep raspberry purple (that I had just been using on my little sitting room walls)! This was really exciting! But the best was yet to come! Because I very soon realized that I was going to have to paint the floors, and the ceilings, as well as the walls on the INSIDE of the house before I assembled any of it! This required planning! And ideas. And inspiration! The real inspiration struck when I came to the ceiling of the main room. I have always loved those baroque painted ceilings with clouds and cupids cavorting overhead.... so WHY NOT have a ceiling like that in my tiny little very Victorian dollhouse? Well? Why not! The whole house could be a lovely little Romantic Folly, or a Hunting Lodge where the owner goes to escape ....a trysting spot.... a Poet's Retreat.......an Artist's Playhouse.....well, I'm sure you get the idea! The possibilities are lovely! So I got going right away on the ceiling and even came across some scrap-booking embellishments that would stand in for sculptural plaster! Of course, up to this point it had not occurred to me to take any photos of the project, but luckily my photo urge kicked in when it came to the painted ceiling. And, of course it just took me about 2 hours of searching all my old files to FIND the photos because it was a while ago and I take a LOT of photos! But here they are......

The idea was (Is?) that eventually a light fixture would be suspended from the circle that the cherubs are holding up. The detail is not very refined in the painting, but I consoled myself with the thought that not many people would notice!

Here are the colors I mentioned above, beginning to show off the decorative details on the front.

Come on in! I had to work at it, but I made the door hinged to actually open! (The doorknob is still in the works, so you'll have to pry with your fingernails to open it.)

And the whole house as seen from the back. Did I mention that I love color? The Chinese red parlor is just begging for a fireplace and gilded mirror.

And yellow kitchens are so classic and cheery. I can't wait to get a stove in there!

And of course, if you get down on your knees and look up, you can see the ceiling quite nicely! I love the way the morning sun pours in the big bay window. Where did I put that old easy chair...

The Folly's trim is nearly finished. Now all it needs is the shingles! Ah, the shingles you say.....ALL it needs is the shingles. Well, that is going to have to be another story!





And the big old dollhouse still sleeps.

The Beginning

Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a faraway land there was a dollhouse. Much beloved and rather the worse for wear, it was a real fixer-upper just waiting for the right visionary to take on the job of re-building.

It was love at first sight and she simply could NOT resist the lovely old house!


With just a "little" work it would be almost as good as new!

While it would be several years and a move before the real renovations could begin, the dream was born and would ripen in time.

But for now, there was at least time for tea and cake in the parlor!