Victorian House: The Scullery

I was busy cleaning out my dollhouse when I realized that I have never shown you photos of the scullery before. I wanted a veranda too somewhere on the house and thought that grandma would enjoy shelling peas, etc outside on a nice day.

The outside.

Close-up of the roof showing the drainage system. Somebody forgot the pumpkin on the roof and the mice are having a feast.

Imagine having to make a fire to boil all your whites clean.

The scullery door from the inside.

The scullery will be hinged to the house to give me access to it, the door from the front are too small and you can't see the whole of it either. 

I used moldings to disguise the join as much as possible. 

Glimpse of the scullery from the kitchen. You can read more about the dollhouse here.

Elga 

Wall Brackets and Dining Room

My base coat was finely dry enough for me to put the gold on, this is a lot easier to use than gold leaf, I bought it from Angela Jones about five years ago when she attended what turned out to be her last show in Johannesburg, it is the first time I used it, but I am really glad I bought it back then. The paint is fine gold dust mixed with an oil which I can't remember the name of, the gold settles to the bottom in time but a good stir is all that is needed to get it workable again.

I really like how they have turned out.

The tankards and goblet on the mantel are gold and silver bracelet charms that I bought at antique fairs. The silver coffee set on the table I also bought at an antique fair quite a few years ago, it came with a tray that has an inscription on it I think in Portuguese or Spanish, I have no idea how old it is. The HOM kit furniture will be replaced by hardwood furniture as I get the time to make them, chairs are on my list early in the new year. The two double doors will lead to a conservatory, the two copper pots still needs a plant in each. The curtains were made from silk fabric that I found in the wedding and evening dress fabric department of a huge fabric store close by. I think the chandelier needs a few crystals, what do you think????

The tall clock is the one I made in Castine earlier this year, I just need to put in the pendulum and then add the doors, the clock actually works, I used a normal wrist watch movement and replaced the hands with the ones that I got with the face. Since I am waiting for table saw blades and unable to work on the sewing tables , I think I must try and finish the clock next week before the new year starts. Most of the glass items are from GlassCraft in the UK. This room still needs quite a few pieces of furniture, pictures on the wall, etc at the moment I am treating my house as if each room was a room box and my goal for next year is to make as much of the dining room furniture as I possibly can, a table, six chairs, a sideboard and a small table for under the antique shelf.

Elga

Dining Room Wall Brackets

I decided to take off from working on my furniture commissions this weekend and work a bit on my sadly neglected dollhouse, the Stokesay vases are crying out to be displayed and not languish in a box for who knows how long. As I mentioned the other day my brackets are not deep enough for the vases, so yesterday I cut 2 pieces from 1/8" basswood and glued them with epoxy to the brakets. Before I glued the wood pieces on I drilled two holes in each for nails to go into the walls, I don't always like gluing things permanently and in this case my wallpaper is old real life flocked paper, so I wasn't sure that glue would really hold in the long term. The wood on the bracket on the right has already been shaped with files, knifes etc in this photo.

Next I drilled holes in the wall for the nails, now my nails weren't evenly spaced, so I cut a piece of cardboard to the height I wanted, marked my nail holes on it, drilled through the cardboard, positioned it and then drilled through the holes into the wall.

Looking good so far, I think.

Next I drilled a hole in the top for a dowel for the vase to sit securely on, I will use some blue tack or Press Stick as we call it here as well, don't want these vases to fall :-)

Testing, testing...... I like it so far!!!!!

I am planning on gilding them, so here they are with their first layer of paint, I used enamel, so now I have to wait until it is dry, then I will sand them and fill in any gaps.

Hope you all had a great weekend!!!!
Elga

Victorian Dollhouse Study

I haven't posted about my dollhouse for a while so I thought it was high time that I show you the study and how I did certain things. I prefer things like curtains to be removable for cleaning and wiring for in case anything goes wrong in the future. Here you can see the basic shell of the room, the middle floor plank is loose, the floor has a groove cut in it for the kitchen's light fitting wire, in the back of the wall there are two holes, one for the wire and one for the fireplace light.



On the left wall you can see two screws above the window, the curtain pelmet fits on here. The lamp's wire goes through a hole in the wall to the outside.



Here you can see the holes in the back of the pelmet that fits over the screws in the wall. The lace curtain are sewed to the curtain at the back, the curtain fits on a rod that fits into grooves on each side of the pelmet, this means that I can clean the curtains if a spider or any other creature decide to make this their home and trust me they do on occasion.



Here you can see the lamp's wire on the outside of the house going through a hole in the corner to the back of my house where all the wires will be hidden behind a chimney breast. The scullery closes against this side of the house so the wire won't be visible. Check under the label Victorian dollhouse if you want to read earlier posts that I wrote about this house.



My husband helped me with the fireplace, the front and back was made from a piece of galvanized steel. In this photo you can see the back of the fireplace, the loose piece of flooring is back in place as well as the hearth stone.



Here you can see the fireplace from the front, the molding around the arch was made from twisted wire.



The animals on top of the bookcase were antique fair purchases and carved from bone, the porcelain horse came from my grandma's sister and the hunting scene was painted by Anet Pearson. The rug was my first petit point rug.



I still need to finish the paint job on the pelmet, but I will do that once I have made the second pelmet for the window on the front of the house. The elephant on top of the High Boy is a Victorian chess piece carved from Ivory that I found at an antique fair. I bought the lamp in a miniature shop (I think it has closed down now) in Bath, England in 2006. A wing chair is on my to do list for the study. The painting above the desk is another one by Anet Pearson, unfortunately it seems as if her website has disappeared.



The floor above the study is still loose, when I start work on the third floor of my house I will complete the ceiling, I find it a lot easier to work on the walls etc. without the floor in place. I hope to get some work done on the parlor over this weekend.
Hope you all have a fun filled weekend!!!!
Elga

Victorian Kitchen

The kitchen was the first room that I built in this house when I was still very new to the hobby. I built the stove from the kit that came with the house but I made a lot of changes to it, the door leading to the hallway is also my own work.



You can get a glimpse of the hallway through the kitchen door. I made the little salt box and the plate is a paper plate with a picture of a real plate glued on top. I crocheted the potholders using a real life pattern.



I made all the furniture in this photo and hand painted the colonial chest.



To the left you can see a bit of the scullery which I will show you in a next post. I made the pie safe as well, making miniature furniture is something that I really enjoy very much.



The dresser is still far from finished, the stain needs to be redone and it still needs some drawers and doors on the bottom half. The little spice drawers in the top part can pull out and they still need knobs, as you can see I love blue and white porcelain, my real kitchen also has quite a collection.



Here you can see the kitchen as it looks today, the table and chairs were also made from the kits that came with the house, I used Houseworks legs for the table. The candle box is also one that I made and painted. The container next to the dresser is an antique fair find and is Dutch.

Until next time.
Elga

Victorian Dollhouse History

I started my blog with a few pictures of my Victorian dollhouse and decided to tell you a bit of it's history. It started out as a Del Prado kit that was available in weekly parts, I quickly realized that it wasn't the best quailty kit out there and that I will have to make a plan to make it better. I lined the bottom with 2 sheets of 12mm thick MDF and the outside walls with 6mm MDF, I also enlarged the right side rooms and added bay windows on that side. Next to the kitchen I added a scullery. The house is quite sturdy now, but I would not recommend a cheap kit for anyone, but well, this one did get me into the hobby :-) This house is still far from finished, I am building it room by room, but at the moment I don't have a lot of time to spend on it, as I am busy with some 1/12 scale furniture commissions and working on a French Knot rug that I want to take to IGMA's Guild School next year in Castine as part of my exhibition, I haven't mentioned this before but I won a scholarship to attend Guild School in 2011 and I am really looking forward to it.



Here you can see the right side of the house, each brick is individually made from woodstrip and painted with DecoArt's sandstones paint. A plaster filler is smeared all over the bricks after they are glued in place, a terrible messy and dare I say boring job, but I love the results.



This is the left side and here you can see the scullery, it swings open from the house so that one can easily get into it, I still need to make a lot of furniture for the porch.



This is a quarter of the French Knot rug that I am busy stitching, it takes me about 2 1/2 hours to make 250 knots, so it is slow going, but I will have it done in time for Guild School. It will go into the bay window of the dining room when it is finished. As soon as I have time, I will post pictures of each room in the house, well the ones that are there in any case.
Till next time, Elga.

Build-in Corner Cupboard

Since space was limited in this corner of my dollhouse parlor, I designed and built this corner cupboard from scratch. I used standard moldings available from dollhouse shops.

Victorian Dollhouse

Outside of scullery

Victorian dollhouse scullery

Victorian dollhouse kitchen

Victorian dollhouse study