Christmas House

Earlier this week on the Canada Minis group that I belong to, there was some discussion about Christmas themed dollhouses or roomboxes etc.....

Which got me thinking about one of my dollhouses, that is not exactly my favourite.  I sort of gave up on it.  It's the Acorn from the Little Dollhouse Company.  It's a nice house, and it was a gift from my husband (way before he became my husband), so I didn't want to give it away or sell it or let it continue to collect dust.  So, to make a long story short, I have decided to turn it into a Christmas House.  I can bring it out each Christmas for me and my family to enjoy.  

The house itself is in pretty good shape.  All rooms had been wallpapered.  Most of the exterior had been finished, with the exception of the shingles......Next to putting up wallpaper, shingling is my next least favourite thing to do.  So this is what it looked like before starting.  I plan on painting the outside and decorating it to fit the Christmas theme.


Exterior of the house

 

Interior of the house

What I am going to do is turn this into the Claus' house.  Make it a nice little home for Mr. & Mrs. Claus up in the North Pole. 

I decided to keep the middle room on the upper floor as is.  I really like the wallpaper, and feel that it will fit in with the rest of the house.  This will be the Claus' bedroom.  The two side rooms on the upper floor will get redone in a more Christmas theme.  One will be Mrs. Claus' sewing room, where she creates all the elves clothes, and Santa's too.  The other room will be Santa's office.  No toys get made in this house, that happens at the workshop......There might be some toys in his office, you know like prototypes..... OH.....that awful blue carpet will be leaving the building. 

The main level nicely done, but I am going to make a few changes.  The room on the far left will be the kitchen.  I'm going to keep it the same as it is now, but I am going to put Christmas paper in place of the existing paper in the wainscotting. 

Which brings me to the foyer, and the living room.  The foyer right now has a blue colour wallpaper, which I pretty much think needs to go.  So I just need to figure out what is going to go in it's place. 
The living room is what is giving me the most stress.  I love the wallpaper that is in there right now, and I did such a good job of putting it in that I don't want to cover it.  However, it's not Christmasy at all.  It's floral, with little pink and purple flowers.  I'm not sure if I want to leave it and let the rest of the room speak for itself or change it.....maybe you can leave a comment saying what you would do.

If it wasn't for the lovely people in my mini group, I probably would never have decided to go ahead and work on this house.  So if you are a Canadian Miniaturist, and would love to chat with other Canadian Miniaturists......feel free to join us at http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/CanadaMinis/

Stay tuned for more on this house......

Decided to move

I've been working on my Vermont Farmhouse Jr (which will be referred to as the VFJ for the rest of this post) for 5 years now, and I just can't seem to finish it. I love the way it looks on the outside.....but the inside has been bothering me for some time. Here are stock pictures of the exterior and interior.



See, the outside is very nice, but the inside is so boxy. There are no hallways, the stairs only lead to the second floor. The attic has three rooms but they are not full rooms and there are no doors. All things that really do bother me. How am I, (If I were living in this house) suppose to get to the top floor/attic?? I want my houses to have a bit of realism. This is not real to me. This was great as a beginner house, but I think I need something more.



Then a couple of years ago my husband (before he was my husband) got me a lovely house called the Acorn made by the Little Dollhouse Company. Much like the VFJ made by Real Good Toys, this house is a very well made sturdy house......but......again, like my VFJ lacks realism.

I like that it has a hall/foyer from the front door, but it goes all down hill from there. There are no stairs at all in this house.....so the top floor is useless. The rooms on the first floor are a great size, and I love that, but the top floor/attic is horrible. The roof is so low that there is not much usable space up there. So like my first house. This house remains unfinished.

After much thought and lots of research I decided it was time for a move. I need a house that has everything that I am looking for. A nice foyer, stairs throughout the whole house. Great size rooms and no half attic rooms. Rooms that actually have walls and doors. Is that really too much to ask ?? Finding a dollhouse with all these characteristics on an tiny budget is not that easy. I however, don't give up easily......and days of online searching I found the mini house of my dreams....for now anyway. The Lily by Greenleaf.




While the house layout is a dream for me, the wood used in construction, NOT SO MUCH. I think I got splinters just looking at the 17 sheets of raw crappy wood. Not looking forward to all the sanding that I am going to have to do. I'm hoping that the finished product will make it all worth it.

So far, I've opened the box, checked that all the sheets were there, and closed the box. It's very overwhelming. Anyone who has built a dollhouse can vouch for that, but when it's a Greenleaf house.....the stress level rises.....that being said, I go into this knowing full well that the wood is crap, that it's going to take a lot of love and work to make it look as nice as it does on the box. I will suffer many injuries in the way of splinters and I just need to keep in mind that I knew what I was getting myself into.

Construction starts sometime this weekend.....can't wait to see how it goes. Stay tuned !