Flip that Dollhouse!
by brae
This was my childhood dollhouse, and I renovated it so my mom could give it to my young cousin for her birthday. It originally had loud wallpaper throughout, which I had painted over rather sloppily when I was younger. Most of the carpet throughout the house was stained. I found some free printable wallpaper online (I love the internet) and ordered new carpeting from a dollhouse supply place (also online). I had to prime most of the walls in the house since the paint was so dark, and I painted all of the ceilings white to brighten the rooms. All the furniture shown was purchased on eBay.
Entrance
The house had electric originally, but the transformer was long gone and the wiring was old – so we decided to make it a non-electric dollhouse. I removed the stairs and plugged the transformer hole with heavy cardboard (there had been a plain paper patch) before wallpapering and new carpeting was put in. I also used double-sided tape instead of paste to install the wallpaper just in case the family wanted to work on the electric in the future.


Kitchen
Yes, that orange carpet is original. Apparently, I thought adding orange paint was a good idea at the time. Eek!
As I was looking for new carpeting online, I stumbled across something new to me: a sheet of mini tiles. The wallpaper has a design made from tiny ears of corn. I love this hand painted furniture; the pieces have workable drawers and doors.

Bath
Again, with the orange carpet! I don’t know if the gloss pink paint was worse than the orange paint I had used in the kitchen. This room has the only remaining light fixture since it was so firmly affixed to the ceiling; it would have done more damage to remove it.

I used the same tile as in the kitchen. The bathroom set is ceramic.

Bedroom
These walls were in especially poor condition due to tape removal, but none of the damage showed after the walls were primed and wallpapered.

The bed looks huge, but the room is pretty small.

Living Room
The carpet in this room and the adjoining porch was mostly salvageable, mainly because it was dark brown and didn’t show any stains. The wallpaper here was more challenging since there is a change in level toward the porch and the living room connects to the entrance room directly below.

Porch
I opted for brick wallpaper for the porch and used some leftover carpet scraps to cover some bad places in the original brown carpet.


The kitchen wasn’t big enough for all four chairs that came with the table, so I moved two of them to the porch. What a view!


08/17/09 04:51:04 pm, 