An Exciting Day!

Well what a busy and exciting day it's been on the dolls' house front today!

Starting with the busy bit, I spent the whole morning examining, comparing, measuring and photographing Grecon feet until I was almost cross-eyed!  I'm still working on the 'About Grecon Dolls' page of my Grecondale blog site and the section on feet is proving to be never-ending.

My aim is to identify and document all of the different foot shapes in my collection and then to attempt to date them as accurately I can, based on any and all information I can lay my hands on.  So far I've identified seven different adult foot shapes and I still have the children and toddlers to go. I'll get there eventually, I'm sure.

And now for the exciting bit...

This is my new Triang DH/C which arrived in the post today!

This model, with the stucco front downstairs and the brick-paper upstairs is dated to between 1921-23 by Marion Osborne (The Book of Tri-ang Dolls' Houses 1919 to 1971). 

The inside is all original. It is missing its range in the downstairs room but I have a replacement one winging (or more likely chugging) its way to me as we speak.

It did have glass in the windows but the upstairs pane didn't survive the journey, despite very careful packaging by the seller.  My local picture framer will cut me a new piece and charge next to nothing so it's not a problem. In the meantime, I've removed the downstairs panes too, until I can get them all in and secured at the same time.

As is so often the case, the outside had had a couple of makeovers in its time, but the seller I bought it from has carefully and sympathetically restored it back to as near original condition as possible.

I'm very impressed by the way the missing patches of roof-paper have simply been painted lightly with a matching colour which blends in extremely well. 

It's the same with the brick paper which had been painted over in gloss at some point. The paint has been carefully stripped off and only the paper on the front of the the house, which was beyond salvaging, has been replaced with a piece of reproduction paper.

It's lovely to have both of the original chimneys as they so often go missing.

The front door and the base have been painted with a specially-mixed Triang green and the stucco and woodwork have been painted with a blackened-white so that it doesn't look too new.  

The door has it's original letter box and knob with a replacement lion-head door knocker.

It came with a selection of furniture, including a home-made range based on the later Triang one and curtains and blinds for all of the windows.  There is also an interesting Fakon (fake Grecon) inhabitant - more of her another day!

And houses are a bit like buses aren't they?  None for ages and then...  But I won't say anything more for fear of jinxing things, but watch this space..!

Until next time,

Zoe