Restoring a Tri-ang DH/7 Townhouse - Part Eight

At last the balconies are back.

The second floor was the easiest. All I had to do was pop a bit of glue onto each end of the newly painted balustrades and reassemble the railings.

The first floor was trickier as I had to sort out the missing rails first.

The broken rails on the first floor balcony when the house first arrived.

A substantial part of the right-hand rail was still there so I used that as a template to create a completely new rail for that side of the house.

I drew around the existing piece of rail on some plywood of the correct depth to mark out the shape of the new rail and simply extended the long straight edge to the length of the missing piece.

Kind husband then used a jigsaw to cut out the new rail. I will attempt most woodworking jobs but I find plywood is impossible to work with and prefer someone else to make a hash of it instead. Which he didn't, I hasten to add.

Once cut, I used these handy little clamps to clamp the old and new piece together and sanded the new piece until it was nice and smooth and an exact [though longer] replica of the original.

Of course I needed holes in the rail into which the balustrades would be inserted. It was easy to get the right gauge of drill bit by inserting various sizes into the holes in the base of the balcony until the snuggest fit was found.

Kind husband and Chief Driller of Plywood had the excellent idea of lying the new rail on top of the holes in the base of the balcony and marking the the exact centre of the holes by inserting the drill bit through the underside of the balcony base. By pressing on the drill bit, the pointy tip of it indented the wood of the new rail in the exact centre of the hole.

These precise marks allowed him to drill the holes in exactly the right places, ensuring that the balustrades would be nice and straight once refitted.

For the left-hand rail, I just flipped over the rail I'd removed from the right-hand side and used it as a replacement, thought it needed a with a little extension since it wasn't quite long enough.

I cut the rail so that the extension join was above a balustrade to give it support and the photo above was taken before I'd filled, sanded and painted the join which is now pretty much invisible.

And here we have the finished front of the house with the rotting base and missing parts replaced, the paintwork reproduced, the original door unearthed and the balconies reinstated.

Oh and the original sides 'patched up' too. It's really quite a fancy house and does make me smile. 😃

The next step is replacing the glass in the windows. The glass cutter and cutting oil I ordered have arrived and I'm psyching my up for the job! I'll let you know how I get on.

Until next time,

Zoe

Restoring a Tri-ang DH/7 Townhouse - Part Seven

The balconies from my house really needed attention.

When it arrived, the second floor balconies were all intact....

 

....but a significant part of the first floor balcony was missing and would need to be replaced.

Like the rest of the house, the balustrades were caked with several layers of paint and simply overpainting them wasn't an option.

I'd already removed the balconies to make work on the front of the house easier, so the next step was to separate the balustrades from the rails - most of them came out easily but a few required gentle persuasion. 

Then came 'excavation' to find the original turnings beneath all of the paint.

This involved many evenings sitting with a tray on my lap and chipping and sanding away at them.

It was during this process that I discovered that, just like on this DH/5, the centre section of every alternate balustrade was painted red.

The photo above was taken after 'round one'. When they were all at this stage, I started over again with the chipping and sanding until their original profiles were nice and sharp again and they were smooth enough to paint.

I have to admit that I was sick of the sight of them in the end!

Original balustrade (left) with five of the newly turned copies.

I was of course missing some of the balustrades but luckily my friend's nice neighbour (the same man who turned the finial for the house mentioned in Part Four of my blog) turned some excellent copies from one of my 'excavated' originals. 

Once prepped, I painted all of the balustrades with Farrow & Ball 'Off-White No.3' to match the front of the house. The original balcony rails made excellent holders for the balustrades while they dried.

My next post will be about how I tackled the broken/missing section of the first floor balcony.

Until next time,

Zoe

Restoring a Tri-ang DH/7 Townhouse - Part Six

The front of the house was a bit of a blank canvas at the end of my last post and this post is all about adding the detailing.

Adding brick quoining was the first step and this immediately started to bring the house to life.

I used the Tri-ang reproduction brick paper available from Trevor Cain stuck on with a Pritt.

I also used this image from the Dolls' Houses Past and Present Tri-ang database as a guide as to where it should go and how many bricks wide the quoining should be, though it turned out that the size of the gaps around the windows of my house were different and I had to adapt everything to that. This actually made no logical sense in terms of how wide each piece was and in the end, I gave up on logic and went with getting it to look right visually! The bits around the curved pillars on the first floor were the trickiest.

Next came the bit I'd been dreading - the lining. I've done this before for other restorations using gold paint and I know how tricky it is. This would be the first time I'd done red on cream which it seemed to me would show up any mistakes. Big time.

I settled on DecoArt 'Deep Red' acrylic paint as a match for the red detailing I'd found during my explorations to find the original layers of paint. It also tones very well with the red of the roof, brick quoining, and the base of the house and is not too bright.

With this image image of a DH/5 with very similar original detailing, together with my sketch (shown in my last post) of where the lining should go, and a deep breath, I was ready to go.

Not particularly recommended for this particular job!

My husband, a model railway enthusiast, suggested using a modeller's masking tape and I sent for this 4mm tape in a 10m roll, though as you'll see, I wouldn't particularly recommend it.....

I started by carefully masking off a few of the areas I wanted to line and painted them with the Deep Red acrylic. When dry, I could see that they needed a second coat.

Aargh!

Then moment of truth. The masking tape came off and the line had bled terribly!

I was so pleased that I'd given my cream paint a finishing layer of Humbrol Matt Cote because it meant that I could use the folded edge of a very slightly damp tissue to tidy up the edges of the line. It was a bit of a faff but it worked ok.

I did continue to persevere with the lining tape because I felt that the free-hand alternative would be much worse and I did get better at it by painting very carefully within the masking tape, almost trying to paint between the lines, and not having too much paint on my brush.

Wiping away any bleeding with the folded edge of a slightly damp tissue continued to work well. I found that doing this when the second coat of paint was almost but not quite dry worked best. I gave all of the lining two coats of paint before removing the tape.

I find that it's always worth taking a look at examples of houses in original condition at times like this because it's actually quite encouraging to see just imperfect they are too!

A footnote to the masking tape 'adventure'. Lining the front used up the whole of the 10m roll of tape I'd bought and I still had a few areas to do when it ran out. "Oh," says my husband, "I've got some you can use but it's not very good." Not very encouraging I thought, but better than nothing.

The few remaining areas were taped up with this new 6mm Tamiya tape and....

..... it was SO much better than the other one! Nowhere near as much bleeding!!

Tamiya 6mm masking tape - recommended for this job!

Ah well. You live and learn.

So, here is the house all quoined and lined. I'm very pleased with how it's shaping up and my initial misgivings about the red theme have completely turned around and I now love it!

I have yet to replace the balconies which I removed at the beginning of the process to make it easier to work on the the front of the house, but that's for my next post.

Until next time,

Zoe

Restoring a Tri-ang DH/7 Townhouse - Part Five

My next job was to tackle the front and I started with a bit of investigation.

I'd already removed the topmost layer of paint (the bright red one), but a bit more scraping revealed a further three layers of paint on top of the original cream one.

I tried uncovering a patch of the original paint but one of the four layers of paint in particular would not come off with either solvents or scraping and I could see that I was doing more harm than good in trying to remove it. Reluctantly, therefore, I made the decision not to attempt to take the paintwork on the front back to the original.

I experience terrible Restorers' Guilt [constantly questioning if you're doing the right thing and/or a good enough job!] so this decision was not taken lightly.

With restoration of the front ruled out, the plan was to copy the original paintwork as faithfully as possible and to leave what remains of the original paintwork underneath my work for a cleverer restorer to uncover in future (thereby mitigating some of the guilt!)

Two images from the Dolls' Houses Past and Present database of Lines Brothers Tri-ang houses have been fantastic in guiding me with my restoration.

The first is this image of a very nicely restored front.

The owner of that house had stripped a layer of gloss paint off the front to reveal the original paint, brick paper quoining, and gold detailing, all of which are very typical of Tri-ang houses of this period.

Red lining at top of pillar (left) and along front edge of door base (right).

Red lining top moulding (left) and along top of lower window mouldings (right)

I soon found that my house had red detailing on the front and not gold. I must admit that I was a bit disappointed by this as I thought the gold would be nicer, however this image of a DH/5 (the second helpful image from the Dolls' Houses Past and Present database) soon changed my mind as I think that the original red details on it look superb. I also admired the front door and hoped to copy it for mine.

Now I knew what I was aiming at, I started by sanding the bumpy layers of paint to get a flat surface to paint on. This included using a craft knife to remove paint from corners and grooves where it was so thick that the wood profiles were almost obliterated.

The process also revealed exactly where all of the red detailing was on my house and I my made myself this drawing so that I wouldn't forget (apologies, as I always say, I'm no artist!)

The next step was to give the whole of the front two coats of Farrow & Ball 'Off-White No.3' which I think works quite well as an approximation of the original greyish cream finish. I also used this paint to undercoat the top of the base in preparation for painting it to match the oxblood sides.

I finished the front with a thinned-down coat of Humbrol 'Matt Cote' (half and half paint and thinner). I used the Matt Cote to seal in the emulsion paint which will make the lining a bit easier when I get to that stage (less likely to bleed and also 'wipe-offable' if I make a mistake!)

I then gave the top of the base two coats of Farrow & Ball 'Preference Red No.297' estate emulsion which I couldn't be happier with as a match for the original oxblood paint on the sides of the base which I also touched in with it. I finished off the base with a coat of the Humbrol 'Matt Cote'.

It was while I had the house tipped up to paint the front that I notice that the bottom edge of the house's front door was the same ox blood red as the base. 

I was soon chipping away furiously at the white gloss on the door and this lovely door emerged almost in tact. Almost the same door I had so admired on the house in the DHP&P database - I can't tell you how happy this made me. 😁

With a little bit of touching in with the Preference Red, I think it looks great! It does look a bit skew-whiff  but a slight adjustment of one of the hinges will sort that out - though being completely honest, I don't like messing with hinges so it will probably stay like this.

So, this is how the house looks with the front and base painted and the front door restored.

One last thing before I finish this post, I mentioned in Part Two of my blog that I was toying with the idea of finishing off the sides of the house with a layer of clear beeswax and I should mention for completeness that I did do so and I'm very pleased with the result. 

With clear Briwax applied and polished up to a light sheen, my repairs look much less obvious than they did and the wax gives the paper a protective layer too. I haven't added a photo as the difference doesn't really show up.

Until next time,

Zoe

Restoring a Tri-ang DH/7 Townhouse - Part Four

It's been over a month since I last posted about my DH/7 but I have made quite a lot of progress in the meantime.

Last time I showed how I made various repairs to the roof and it was while I was sanding down one of those repairs that I discovered how the roof would have looked originally.

As the surface layer of paint came off, the original tile paper was revealed. I was ridiculously overjoyed to see this as I'd been dithering about what to do with the roof.

I had seen Tri-angs of this age with this tile paper on the roof but I wasn't sure if mine would have had it originally - question answered!

 

Reproduction Paper next to the Original

Next I wondered if I would be able to uncover all of the original paper but as I experimented with this I realised that there were areas where it was in awful condition and removing the layer of paint on top wasn't consistently successful either.

And of course this particular roof paper is available as a reproduction, so I decided to go with that and simply paste it on top of what was there. It's a big roof, so SIX sheets of paper later....

... here it is! I've also painted the wooden parts of the roof.

I used Farrow and Ball 'Off-White No.3' which I intend to use of the front of the house too. I like the finish provided by using the F&B 'Estate Emulsion finished off with a coat of Humbrol 'Matt Cote'.

So that's the roof almost finished but not quite.

My earlier sanding activities also revealed that the bottom edge of the roof originally had an edging strip on it. You can see its brick pattern in the photo above and also just make out the little dots below the bricks.

I'm familiar with this edging strip from my Tri-ang No. 37 which has it along the front edge of the downstairs floor paper. Unfortunately, I'm not aware that it's available to buy as a reproduction so I'll probably have to think of a way to reproduce it myself. Another job for a rainy day!

The other thing missing from the roof was the finial.

I'm enormously lucky that my friend Claire has a DH/7 with its original finial AND she has a neighbour who is very handy with his lathe who has kindly turned me an exact copy.

I'm so pleased to have this perfect crowing glory for my house!

So, that's it for today. There is a lot more progress to report but I'm sticking to short and sweet.

Until next time,

Zoe

The Irresistible Peg Doll

I saw this little Queen Victoria peg doll when she was listed on eBay a while back and felt an immediate pull.

I resisted for a time but when she didn't sell and was re-listed a few weeks later I took it as a sign, made an offer and she became mine.

There was something about the attention to detail in her costume which lured me. It very much reminds me of the sort of detailing seen on Grecon dolls: my favourite type of dolls' house doll.

She's every bit the old Queen Victoria and couldn't possibly be anyone else. I know Queen Victoria wasn't often seen to smile but I have read that she actually had a good sense of humour so we'll let that pass.

Just as the real life Queen Victoria frequently did, peg doll Victoria displays her Order of the Garter blue riband and star, worn correctly over the left shoulder too.

And look at all that bling! I thought perhaps this aspect of her outfit had been overdone since Victoria was well known for being in permanent mourning following Prince Albert's death...

Photo by Gunn & Stuart, July 1896 (Wikimedia Commons)

...but no, as this photo of the Queen at age seventy-seven shows, it's all quite accurate - the sunray fringe tiara, the earrings, the necklace and the bracelets.

And of course peg doll Victoria is also wearing a widow's cap, with the long lace streamer at the back which her real life counterpart favoured.

The fabric of her dress is very reminiscent of the traditional black plisse mourning silk worn in Victorian times and is trimmed with a heavy fringe which skims the ground perfectly.

Beneath her dress she has not one but two underskirts. 

The first is a stiff, sheer black pleated fabric.

The second is a white nylon fabric with a silver zig-zag border and a pleated trim - not very Victorian but maybe it's what makes peg doll Victoria smile.

And finally - excuse me Ma'am - she is wearing full-length white broderie anglaise bloomers!

Oh and she has very nicely moulded black shoes made from what looks to be some sort of modelling clay.

The shoes have been neatly attached to the ends of her pink-painted peg legs.

I'm so impressed by the skilful sewing and styling of the outfit. The back is just as neat as the front and there is barely a stitch visible let alone out of place.

Note the excellent hair bun too! 

I would guess that she is homemade but how I wish I knew who made her.

I know she's just a wee peg doll, and I'm probably eulogising far too much, but I am so taken with her that I just had to!

Until next time,

Zoe