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

The roof of my house had sustained a bit of damage over the years. 

There was an area where the ply had been damaged along one of its edges and part of one of the corners was broken off.

Unfortunately I forgot to take photos as I made my repairs, so I can only describe how I did them, though I do have before and after photos too.

This was the area where the plywood had delaminated on the bottom edge of the roof. To repair it, I used a thin (1 mm) sheet of balsa wood from my stash. 

I could see that the damaged area was three layers of ply deep, so with a craft knife, I cut a small piece of balsa to fit into the deepest part of the damaged area and glued this in place.

Next, I cut another piece of the balsa to fit the second deepest part of the delaminated area and glued this in place too (over the first piece).

Lastly, I cut a piece of balsa to fit the remaining part of the damaged area and glued this in place (over the previous two pieces) bring the surface up to the correct level.

I then used wood filler to fill in the little gaps around the balsa. When the wood filler was dry, I gave the whole area a sand down with a sanding block for a nice flat, smooth finish.

I could have just filled the whole area with filler but because it was on the edge of the roof and was quite deep I felt that wood would give the repair more strength.

Repairing the corner piece was a bit trickier and so is describing how I did it, largely because I was making it up as I went along!

I started with a length of balsa wood about 2 cm deep and perhaps 3 cm wide and cut the length to match the length of the area which needed to be reinstated.

Then, using a craft knife, I basically whittled the underside of the piece to fit the shape of the roof corner it would sit on. The process was: shave a bit off, try the piece in the gap, shave a bit more, try it in the gap, and so on until I had decent fit.

Next I glued the piece in place on the corner of the house. This left me with quite a clunky square corner which I then shaved (with my craft knife) and sanded into the correct shape.

Again, I used wood filler to fill the gaps between the original wood and my repair and sanded it all smooth once the wood filler was dry.

I must admit that I was quite proud of how it worked out! The old "just give it a go" motto never fails. Actually, it really does but we won't go into that. 🙃

Until next time,

Zoe

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

Do you ever get to that stage where there's so much to do that it's all a bit overwhelming?

That's definitely where I'm at just now but I'm trying not to think about it and just plough on. 

So, starting with the front:

This is how it looked when it arrived. A previous owner had obviously made a start on removing the red paint from the front.

I soon discovered that it was water-soluble and came off very easily with a damp cloth.

However, the paint had been applied very thickly, so several buckets of very red water later, it looked like this.

I was going to need to dismantle the balconies to clean behind them properly.

The balcony rails and balustrades came apart fairly easily with a bit of riving and I was able to clean behind them.

Removing them will make all of the work to the front a lot easier.

Unfortunately there were still traces of that pesky red paint in the nooks and crannies which concerned me because it was so water-soluble that it would surely bleed into the cream paint I'd be using on the front of the house.

So my trusty old toothbrush came out and a lot of water, Cif and elbow grease later...

...every last particle has been removed. I hope.

I quite like the soft yellow colour which has been uncovered but it's not how the house was meant to look so it won't be staying.

Next up were the sides:

The sides had been overpainted in white and I initially thought they were a lost cause. However, closer investigation revealed that there were two layers of brick paper underneath the paint.

The paint had obviously adhered to the top layer of paper which flaked off relatively easily to reveal the original brick paper underneath. Bingo!

I could see that the condition of the original paper wasn't brilliant but I thought it was at least worth trying to rescue what was left of it.

This is what I ended up with. I know it's pretty shabby but I was really quite chuffed with it given the starting point.

However even I couldn't live with this level of shabby, so out came my paintbox.

 

I mixed a colour as near to the brick paper as I could get and carefully filled in the gaps. I then rubbed paint into the 'scuffs' in the  paper and wiped the residual off with a just damp cloth to get a more even finish.

This is how it looks close up. The end result was never going to be perfect but I'm pretty pleased with it and at least the original paper is still there to see. 

I'm toying with the idea of finishing off with a layer of clear beeswax but haven't decided about that yet.

Until next time,

Zoe

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

At the end of January this year, I took delivery of a once grand but now down at heel Triang DH/7 "for restoration", as it said in the listing.

Lines Brothers Limited (Tri-ang) DH/7

These houses were amongst the first ever produced by Lines Brothers Limited (Tri-angtois/Tri-ang) when it was formed in June 1919. It's believed that this model was only produced from 1919 to 1921, having never appeared in any of the catalogues or price lists after 1921.*

It's a big old lady at 55" (1.4m) tall, 34"(0.8m) wide and 23½" (0.6m) deep (including the base).

Not only was the house thick with grime and dust when it arrived, but it also had some serious condition problems (which, I have to say, is why I got it for a very reasonable price).

Outside, the lovely turned finial on the top of the roof is missing and I believe there would have been two little chimneys, one on either side of the roof, but they are both missing too. I'm not entirely sure what the roof would have looked like originally, but it has certainly been over-painted.

The railings of the central balcony and a section of the left-hand balcony, both on the first floor, are missing and none of the original glass window-panes have survived.

Though clearly unloved and neglected in more recent years, the evidence points to the house being very much loved throughout most of its one hundred years of existence, with each new generation/owner making it their own. I have found no less than four layers of paint and/or wallpaper on the inside and five layers of paint on the outside!

Only two of the original fireplaces have survived, and the cooking range and dresser are both missing from the kitchen.

Only one internal door remains and quite a few pieces of the trims around them are missing.

Happily, there are odd patches of the original wallpapers to be found (the hexagon wallpaper in the photo above is the original kitchen wallpaper), though these are in varying [mainly dreadful] states of repair - of which, more in a later blog.

Undoubtedly, the worst news was the base. This is what happened when I pressed down on it!

A closer examination of the underside revealed that the plywood top was rotten from both damp and a heavy dose of woodworm. At some point this had spread to the bottom edge of the plywood back of the house too and that was in a similar state of decay.

A few deep breaths were taken - I had never had to tackle anything like this before - but a 'sort of' plan was soon hatched.

Luckily, there was no sign of recent woodworm activity (no fresh-looking holes or frass), nevertheless, the top priority was to remove the base and dispose of the rotten plywood piece.

This proved to be quite a tricky operation because the base was nailed to the sides of the house which have become rather brittle with age in places. Thankfully most of the nails had suffered from damp too and many of them simply snapped, so with some gentle persuasion from a hammer and a pair of pliers, it eventually came off with minimal damage to the body of the house.

I also discovered that the rot and woodworm in the plywood had not spread to the solid wood sides and front of the base (though the rear support had succumbed), so I would be able to re-use them. I have given all of the re-used wood a couple of coats of woodworm treatment - just in case.

Re-using the original front and sides made things considerably easier as I was able to simply reassemble them, cut a new piece of plywood for the top of the base and replace the rear section with solid wood. 

To give the house nice sturdy foundations for years to come, I also took the opportunity to add two cross-braces inside the base. I had only added one when I took the above photo but I subsequently realised that a second one, positioned under the front edge of the internal walls, would make sense too. Lines Brothers really should have done this in the factory but I suppose its priority was to keep production costs down rather than to future-proof against subsidence. 

Everything has been glued and screwed in place - glue simply because it was easier to glue it all in place before screwing it together, and screws rather than nails because I felt they would get a better purchase into the old wood (though pre-drilling holes for the screws was necessary to prevent the wood splitting).

And here is the [sort of] new base reattached to the house - again, glued and screwed - and I have to say that I'm really quite pleased with it!

It's nice to have the original sides as they still have their original oxblood paint - somewhat surprisingly, given the number of makeovers the rest of the house has had - and hopefully I will be able to match it up.

Well, I think that's enough for one post. There has been more progress but I think I need to break it down into reasonably small posts to avoid sending even the most interested of readers to sleep!

Until next time,

Zoe

*Information from The Book of Tri-ang Dolls' Houses 1919 to 1971 by Marion Osborne.

Progress Update on Southsea Villa - Inside

My last post was about the restoration of the outside of my C.E. Turnbull house so this post about the inside.

[You can also see the post I made when I bought the house as a restoration project back in June 2017 here and the progress report I made six months later here.]

So here is the [just about] finished interior. 

I have to say that, having put my heart and soul into decorating and furnishing this, I absolutely love it!

A very useful tips I was given regarding decorating a dolls' house is to constantly keep in mind the view of the whole of the interior which will be seen when the house is opened up, rather than concentrating solely on individual rooms.

Great advice, but frustratingly I find it's not quite as easy to follow as it perhaps sounds and often a paper or a floor covering looks like it will be just right, but once in place, it really isn't! So there was a lot of chopping and changing in this house before I was happy with the overall 'picture' I'd created - the top right room got its third and [thankfully] final papering less that two weeks ago!

 

Here is a little reminder of the blank canvas it was when I bought it.

Given that there was literally nothing except the original stairs and doors in the house, I think the interior work would probably be better termed 'refurbishment' than 'restoration'!

Of course the best bit of all is furnishing a dolls' house and this one has certainly filled up over the last few years.

A rustic but homely look developed in the kitchen and I've thoroughly enjoyed gathering together all the little accessories which seem to have taken on a bit of a pewter and bisque theme!

As the dining room has filled up, it's become ever more blousy and bling - the flash does actually make the room look much more bling than it does in natural light, but it's never going to be a room you'd hang around in if you felt a headache coming on!

What the occupants really need is a nice big display cabinet for their growing collection of glassware.

To my mind, this gentleman's study/smoking room really improved when I found the right wallpaper border. I used a strip of a plain white anaglypta for the border itself and the blue and red lines around the bottom of it were cut from a length of striped wallpaper. 

The parlour has acquired a new rug (the latest of many I've trialed in here over the past couple of years), some nice old lithographed furniture and some gilded accessories.

It took me ages to find a wallpaper I was happy with for the bedroom and eventually found this vintage one in Belarus!

This was the most difficult room of all. Having papered all the other rooms, I just couldn't find a paper that looked good with all the others. Thankfully, just a couple of weeks ago, I found this vintage paper in Germany and I'm finally happy.

Oddly, without the decor decided upon, I was finding it impossible to settle on a theme for this room, however, as soon the decorating was done, the furnishings started to come together and it's now well on its way to being a room for serious study - maybe the children of the house will be tutored in here.

The hallway, first floor and second floor landings.

I've made a few repairs to the stair banisters and balustrades and added a narrower border to the wallpaper on the second floor where the ceiling hight is much lower than on the floors below it.

Apart from the elusive 'perfect' paper for the top right room, the last part of the house to be decorated was the opening front.

The gorgeous old wallpaper I used there had been reclaimed and was in many pieces which had to be patched back together - well worth the effort though as I think they look just right.

I used lengths of antique lace as curtains for the smaller windows and gold Dresden paper trim as valances in the absence of anything more suitable, though I might actually leave them as I like they effect (again, the camera flash makes them look a lot more shiny than they actually are!)

I made the curtains for the bay windows from some very fine antique silk trimmed with old lace. A lovely old lace collar was used for the nets.  Fancy antique-look upholstery tacks came in useful to pin some lovely old trim in place as valances and curtain tie-backs.

Only this week, I boxed in the lower part of the bays and installed wooden window sills. Now I'm on a quest to find just the right ornament to place in each window.

I've left the window sills in the bays loose so that there is a little storage area under each one and I've placed the little plastic nameplate that was affixed to the house when it came to me in one of them so it will, hopefully, be kept with the house going forward.

I also plan to add a page of notes detailing the few bits of information I've gleaned about the house and outlining the work I've done to it.

Until next time,

Zoe

Progress Update on Southsea Villa - Outside

I can hardly believe it's almost three years since I posted an update on the restoration of Southsea Villa, my C.E. Turnbull dolls' house from circa 1900.

You can see the post I made when I bought the house as a restoration project back in June 2017 here and the progress report I made six months later here and then nothing for nearly three years!

 

Well no posts that is, the restoration has slowly been progressing.

And my goodness has this restoration been a challenge! The following is the tale of my 'journey'...

The Outside Papers

When I originally bought this house, I wrote in a post:

"The previous owner had made a start removing the paint, which apparently comes off quite easily with acetone, to reveal the original brick and stone papers underneath; brick at the first- and second-floor levels and stone at the ground-floor level."

Well, I soon discovered that while the paint did indeed come off fairly easily from some areas but, for some reason I can't explain, it was much harder to remove on the left-hand section and it was virtually immovable on the middle section.

There were also areas of immovable white gloss around some of the windows and sections of the papers were missing altogether. In addition to this, all of the papers had absorbed the pigment from the dark red over-paint.

So, after a huge amount of time and effort removing paint, this sorry facade is what I ended up with!

Anyone who has ever attempted this sort of restoration themselves will recognise this stage in the process where you pretty much loose heart and wonder if your efforts have been completely in vain since overpainting or papering seem to be the only sensible options.

Luckily, I didn't do either since I actually couldn't face doing anything more with it at all! So I simply put the front of the house in a cupboard and tried to forget it existed for a while as I got on with the far more rewarding job of restoring and furnishing the interior.

The Missing Bay Windows

Over a year later, I dragged the disheartening facade back out of the cupboard and still couldn't see a way forward. So I decided to turn my efforts to replacing the missing bay windows instead.

All I had to go by were some photos of two other similar C.E.Turnbull houses with bays.  Since I had no measurements and no knowledge of how to build such things, I did what I always do in these situations, I cobbled something together the best I could.

I started by drawing myself a very basic diagram of what I was aiming for, with measurements based on the size of the window apertures and guesstimates of the depth and angles of the bays made by scrutinising the photos of the other Turnbull houses.

It was clear that there were two horizontal sections missing from the bottom of the facade, upon which the bays would sit. So my first task was to make those sections by simply drawing the footprint of the bays onto wood of the appropriate thickness and to the size outlined in my diagram, and cutting them out with my mini handsaw.

Next I measured and cut out wood to form the bases of the bays and glued those in place on the horizontal sections I'd made. I had to acknowledge the limits of my meagre wood-working skills and not worry too much about angles and their joins, deciding that I would simply fill in any gaps with wood filler once I'd finished!

Next I cut out and glued wood for the tops of the bays, in the double-layered style I could see had been used on other Turnbull houses.

Then I realised it would be useful to add a third piece of wood to the underside of the tops so that the upright parts of the bay could be attached to it and add stability to the whole bay both before and after it was attached to the dolls' house frontage.

 

Next I made some upright pieces to join the bases of the bays and the tops together and, as the two photos above show, I constructed the whole bay and glued it all to dolls' house facades all at the same time as it was too tricky to construct the bay without bracing it up against the facade.

This whole process was completely improvised, with much of the contents of one of my kitchen cupboards being employed to achieve the placement I wanted while the glue dried!

 

After constructing the bays, I added little triangular pieces to the insides of the top corners of the windows to get the same angled effect I'd seen in my reference photos. 

The final step was to cut out and glue on a window ledge around the lower part of the bays.  I then filled all of the gaps in my dodgy woodwork, sanded down the whole piece to get rid of any new-looking sharp edges and did a bit of wood-bashing with various heavy objects to age it further (not too hard or the whole thing might have dropped to bits!)

I have to admit to being really quite chuffed with the final result, since I have never attempted to make anything as complicated (to an amateur like me at least) as this before and, whilst the symmetry and standard of construction certainly doesn't bear close scrutiny, it's good enough for me!

Restoring the Front Door

Before and after photos above. At some point, the original front door had been replaced by a very plain one, cut with a curve at the top to fit the original aperture. The new door I made is as near to the reference photos as I can manage.

As you can see, I've added a piece of wood at the centre top of the door arch. There was a mark in the paint where something had been attached and I found a photo of a Turnbull house with a piece of wood there, unfortunately it was a very poor photo and I couldn't quite make out exactly what it was, so this is my best guess. I'm thinking it's supposed to represent a lamp above the door, or maybe just an architectural feature. One day I hope to find a better photo and be able to reproduce it more accurately.

I also replaced two missing 'supports' below the little door canopy.

Eventually, I will add a new 'Southsea Villa' nameplate and place the home-made modern-ish one that came with it it in a hiding place in the house that I'll show you in my next blog post.

 

Inside view of front door. It was clear from my reference photos and the visible evidence of where the original hinges had been, that the original door would have been a larger rectangular one which sat behind the arched aperture (visible from the front) rather than in it, so that's where my new door sits.

The door is simply made from a fairly thick rectangular piece of wood with two thin panels glued on the top half and one on the bottom, with a further elongated diamond shape glued to the bottom panel per my reference photos.

In the absence of original door furniture, I've used a very small antique-style drawer handle or jewellery box handle as a door knocker (I think the original one would have been a lion head with ring through it's mouth similar to those found on Lines and Triang houses), and an old earring as the central door knob. The reverse side of the door is left plain.

Sadly, all the while I was building and replacing the bays and front door,  the awful spectre of the dreaded facade papers was hovering and still to be tackled...

The Outside Papers Continued

The state of the papers on the facade was still making me want to weep. So I made a decision to have a go at trying to make them look better, on the basis that anything I did could eventually be covered up if necessary. My reasoning was that at least I would know that I'd tried my best to keep what remained of the original papers on display, even if I failed, which I fully expected to do!

My first task was to tackle the various patches where the paper had been lost. I've seen other restorers simply paint in these sections to good effect. However, after attempting to do this myself,  I decided that the bald patches on my facade were too big and I wasn't going to achieve a good enough result.

I decided that the patches needed to be filled somehow to level up the surface, reasoning the at I could then paint and blend them with the paper around them better.

 

So I created a templates of the bald patches by rubbing over them on a sheet of paper with a pencil and tearing around the edges of the shape produced - always tear rather than cut paper when patching as the edges blend in better (I was given this tip by a fellow collector who has restored his own dolls' houses beautifully).

I was very pleased with how well the shapes fit and blended in the holes in the original papers. I was then able to mix some paint and blend in the patches with the paint around it - a burnt sienna acrylic was very close and only needed a little mixing to blend in well.

As I'd been unable to remove the dark red paint from the narrow central section of the facade, I replaced the entire section with new paper and painted the whole of it.

Since one side of the house facade still looked much lighter that the other side, I gave the lighter side a thin wash of colour to even it up a little.  This also served to blend in the areas around some of the windows where I'd been unable to remove the white gloss paint without removing the surface of the 'brick' paper.

I then repeated this whole process on the lower, 'stone' section of paper.

The last step was to continue the black 'brick' and 'stone' lining over the patched sections and this really did help to blend the patches in and create a more coherent facade.

So this is how it eventually ended up and, overall, I am a lot happier with the facade than I was and I'm certainly glad that I didn't paint or paper over it in the end. I'm not one for restoring old houses to 'factory fresh' condition, as I've heard it termed. In my eyes at least, this house is now better to look at than when I bought it but it also retains much of its history, including its battle scars.

Disappointingly, I had a bit of a disaster with the lining on the lower 'stone' paper when I decided that it was too dark - I decided to try to wipe it off and ended up making a mess which you can seen on the righthand side of the photo above. I will get around to rectifying this one day...

The Exterior Woodwork

As the exterior woodwork had been painted over in white gloss, I sanded it all down and repainted it using Farrow & Ball's 'Lime White' Estate Emulsion. I then gave it a very thin, messy wash of burnt sienna to age it - the camera flash makes it look whiter than it does in natural light.

One of the notable characteristics of Turnbull dolls' houses is that some of the edges of the exterior woodwork are highlighted in a pale blue colour, so I added those touches in the appropriate places.

Still To Do

Yes, there is still work to do!

I have yet to repaint the roof, chimneys and the base of the house. I don't think I'll change the colour of the these much as they seem to match the photos of other Turnbull houses I'm using for reference, but I will use matt paint instead of gloss.

And finally, there are the sides of the house. This has been another problematic area. As you can see from the photo above, I have been carefully removing several layers of white gloss paint from the sides and revealing the original bright orange paint underneath.  I've been doing this chip by chip of gloss paint using only a scalpel as the original paint is very chalky and is, I feel, likely to be damaged if I use a paint stripper.

However, since I've only recently re-attached the front of the house, it has only just dawned on me that even if I persevere with this painstaking work, the original colour I'm revealing no longer blends harmoniously with the rest of the house.

The photo above shows where I removed a piece of the wood on the facade and the colour of the original brick paper has been revealed. The brick colour was originally a bright orange (much like houses commonly associated with Silber and Fleming). This would have blended very nicely with the orange paint I'm revealing on the sides of the house. However, the facade has been discoloured by pigment from the dark red paint I've removed and it doesn't look at all well with the orang sides.

So, I've recently taken the decision to stop removing the gloss on the sides and to cover them over with a paper which can be painted to match the front. The paper will be easily removed by any future restorer who wants to continue to restore the original paint. I must admit that I'm not a bit sorry to have found this brilliant excuse to stop the mind-numbingly slow paint removal!

So, that's how I got on and were I'm at with the outside. My next blog post will be a progress report on the inside of the house which, whilst not without its own challenges, was much easier and far more fun to restore, decorate and furnish.

Until next time,

Zoe