Well, yes, there's one here that I haven't shown you yet...
I got this one a couple months ago from a sweet woman named Phyllis. My husband was taking a road trip for work, so I checked out the Craigslistings on his route (I'm shameless, I know!), and found this lovely Keystone dollhouse! He kindly agreed to pick it up for me, amidst much eye-rolling, I assure you...!
It came to me looking like this. A door which I was pretty sure wasn't original (although it is very nice),...
... and newer wallpapers covering the originals, unfortunately. There were also wooden mouldings applied around doorframes and windows, which isn't characteristic of one of these houses.
I promptly took the whole thing apart to begin my restoration. Some of the walls had wallpaper on them, while some had been painted over. I spent many hours trying to remove the newer additions, but didn't have a lot of luck. Above you see my best efforts on the kitchen walls- the design is certainly visible, but a lot of masonite is showing through, and this looked good compared to the other rooms. I finally decided I wasn't going to be able to salvage the original wall coverings, unfortunately.
So my next step was to try and find photos of this style house in its original state, and duplicate the wall coverings as well as I could.
I found photos of Florine's house (above), but as you can see, her roof is a little different than mine, and I could also tell that some of her wallpapers didn't match what I had uncovered in my house. I emailed her to ask her about it, and she referred me to Glennda, whom she knew had another version of the house.
Glennda was a real sweetheart, and sent me bunches of photos of her (then unassembled) house. (If you click over to her blog, she has a photo of her now assembled house, and it is absolutely pristine- so bright and new!)
Between her photos, and what I was able to uncover myself, I chose scrapbook papers that looked closest. Above you can see each piece of scrapbook paper behind the room which will be repapered.
Here was Glennda's bathroom and kitchen.
And above is mine (sorry for the sideways photo- Blogger's having issues today...!)
And here's the finished inside of the house! While I would have much preferred to have the original wall coverings, this is the next best thing, I guess.
Glennda also sent a photo of the original door-isn't it adorable??
If you remember, my original door was white with extra moulding on it. I was able to remove some of the extra moulding, but not the outside pieces. I just decided to paint the door blue and add a pink knob. I think it works fairly well.
And here it is up on a piece of furniture in my front room. Another dollhouse sneaking its way out of my studio because there's no more room! I've already got some real cute furniture to go inside it-I'll give you a tour once it's all complete!
I've also been working on putting together and fixing up the dollhouse I showed you in my last post, so I'll show you the finished product soon!
