Fern Cottage Piano

I've been giving Fern Cottage a light clean today and have repaired the slight damage to the piano in the parlour.

Though it’s simply made, it’s an interesting piano and, never one to resist a rabbit hole, I had to find out more about it.

T’internet tells me that it’s a tall upright cabinet piano of the type popular in the early 19th century. I did recognise it as being similar to the one in the Brontë family parsonage in Haworth, North Yorkshire.

The pleated silk back section is a nice detail. As is the sheet music on it - “Bob and Joan” written for the “Melodeon, Concertina and…” the piano? Probably not, but we won’t dwell on that! 

Obviously, more of my afternoon was frittered away as I learned that ‘Bob and Joan’ is an old traditional folk tune!

I do love how this hobby takes you to unexpected places!

Until next time,

Zoe

Fern Cottage

Work on the Tri-ang DH/7 has stalled awhile as summer has arrived and outdoor jobs and passtimes have taken priority, though I'm sure I'll get back to it soon.

In the meantime, however, I've just become the very happy owner of this little house which I'm calling Fern Cottage.

I know nothing about her other than that she is in completely original condition and came with all of her wonderful original home-made contents.

I would guess that she dates to sometime around the beginning of the last century - 1900-1920 maybe?

The rooms are furnished and decorated in a Victorian style, but whether that was the current style when she was built, or a recreation of a bygone era, I don't know.

However, going by the style of the dolls' house itself, the materials used, the furniture and the patina (or ingrained grime!) I would say that she certainly has some age to her.

This is the parlour containing two very comfy looking armchairs, a piano (with slight damaged sustained in transit but only needing a touch of glue to put it right) and a stand with a pretty display of dried flowers on it. The fireplace and the piano are fixed in place.

I like the way the walls to either side of the central staircase are curved downstairs so that both of the ground floor rooms have access to the hallway - a nice touch!

Everything has been made by hand and I particularly like the fireplace with its large mirror and fringed and beaded green velvet cover. Also the lovely little rag rug, [clippy or proggy mat as they're known here in the North East].

The chairs have been cleverly made and look to be of the inviting squishy variety. The fabrics are a little worn but the neat little trim in contrasting thread makes them still rather smart.

The stand seems to be home-made too, though I think the display of flowers on it may have been added at a later date since the colours are still very vibrant and the plate on which the flowers stand appears to be more modern than the other contents of the house.

We'll call this the dining room, though it doesn't contain a table! I wonder if it might have had one at one time.

There's another lovely fireplace with all manner of hand-made adornments [some requiring a little TLC I think] and another sweet little rag rug.

The fireplaces themselves are very nicely made and look as if they might be made from cast metal - I must to investigate further!

The grates are filled with shredded tissue paper and gold thread to make them twinkle. Each hearth has a cute metal fender too.

I particularly like the large and imposing sideboard which is very typically Victorian, and the knobbly pearlescent vases [fixed] on it intrigue me - what are they made from?

I don't really know why there is a giant cup in a bowl on the sideboard, other than that I didn't know where else to put them!

The two dining chairs are very nicely made and upholstered.

The stairs are located in the centre of the house and the tartan stair carpet is perfect for them. They're quite steep so it's lucky that the thoughtful builder installed a handrail on both sides.

The little piece of velvet used at the foot of the stairs has been well-chosen to look just like a coir mat. 

Incidentally, for the benefit of any dollies entering the house, the floor below the mat has been raised slightly by a piece of wood so that it is level with the [non-opening] front door.

At the top of the stairs, there is a cut-out in the dividing wall between the two bedrooms and neat little L-shaped banisters in each room. Privacy is compromised somewhat but it's nice that access issues have been considered. I'm sensing a very practical builder!

This is the stair access from the other [right-hand] bedroom.

Left-hand bedroom

The bedrooms [above and below] are almost mirror images of each other and each contain a bed, a chair, as chest of drawers and a dressing table.

Right-hand Bedroom

This is a selection of the sweet home-made furniture for the bedrooms.

The handles on the chest of drawers are made from pins - I'm not sure if this photo demonstrates that the furniture was never intended to be played with by children, or just a much more cavalier attitude to child safety in days gone by - judging by some of my own childhood toys, my guess would be the latter!

I'm assuming that these pieces of furniture are dressing tables, though they don't have mirrors. Someone has spent some considerable time making the selection of lovey items which are fixed to the top.

Both dressing tables were originally fixed in place though one is now loose. Again, this one contains a nice selection of hand-made items, including a very elaborate glass object which I assume represents a lamp of some sort? There is also a little hat made of red silk and white lace.

The inhabitants of this house obviously love art and the walls are generously adorned with paintings. They all look to be home-made and, without exception, are absolutely delightful!

And so to the cheery painted red brick exterior where the chimneys are impressively tall, with the flues being 'anatomically' correct for the fireplaces which are only features of the two downstairs rooms.

And the chimneys themselves are very convincing.

It's no surprise that this thoughtful builder electrified the house for the inhabitants too, though the wiring is certainly not in working order these days.

And last but not least are the inhabitants - these three ladies and their little metal dog. They look as if they have a tale or two to tell!

So, that's Fern Cottage and apart from a light clean where practical, I'll be leaving everything just as it is with this little house. I feel that someone enjoyed building her and someone enjoyed furnishing her too, so I'm just going to enjoy the fruits of their labours and creativity.

I hope you've enjoyed looking around this little gem as much as I've enjoyed photographing and writing about it!

Until next time,

Zoe

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