Restoring an August Herrmann Room Box - Part One

I treated myself to a German room box in November last year. I knew nothing about it, but I have long had a hankering for one, and it was very reasonably priced.

It has clearly had a bit of a makeover at some point in its life. The interior papers are replacements, and the curtains are relatively modern.

Thankfully the paintwork is all original, including the lovely 'marble' pillars.

The rear of the box reveals that a second window in the larger room has been filled in — probably to provide more wall space for furniture placement inside. The window has been papered over on the inside, removing any doubt (if there were any) that the wallpaper in that room is not original.

A closer look at the doorway between the two rooms reveals that the wallpaper in the smaller room is pasted on top of the replacement paper in the larger room, so it must also be a replacement.

There are no identifying marks on the room box, so of course I scoured my reference books to see if I could come up with the name of the maker.

I was thrilled to find the same model in the Lexikon Der Puppenstuben und Puppenhäuser by Marianne Cieslik/Swantje Köhler (now out of print), where it was featured on a 1904 catalogue page from the German maker Aug. Herrmann Nachf. (catalogue no. 189/5), a wooden toy manufacturer based in Olbernhau/Erzgebirge.

According to the Lexikon, the company was founded in 1891 by Johann Gottfried August Herrmann. The 'Nachf.' part of the company's name is an abbreviation of 'Nachfolger', or successors.

I also found a lovely example of the room box here. 

I think the papers used in the box's makeover were well chosen, and I particularly like those in the smaller room. For that reason, I am hesitant about removing them in case there isn't much left of the originals underneath. However, I just wouldn't be me if I didn't have a little explore to see what I could find!

The floor papers had a couple of loose edges which I carefully lifted — they could easily be stuck down again — and I found that there were several layers of floor paper underneath. I've highlighted what appears to be the original bottom layer in both rooms, in red in the photo above.

The pattern isn't one that I'm familiar with, and I can already see from these explorations that it's not intact, so I will leave well alone. At least for now. 😉

My first job was to reinstate the missing window. This was easily done by carefully slicing through the wallpaper around the aperture with a sharp blade and giving the piece of wood filling it a good tap in the centre to remove it.

When I removed the modern curtains, I discovered that one of the original wooden pelmets was still in place (left above). It was disappointing that the others were missing, but at least I had one to make some copies from.

Then I realised that the moulding above the doorway into the other room was identical. This led me to believe that they had originally featured above each of the three windows and above the internal door on both sides.

Then, lo and behold, I realised that the windowsill in the larger room was also made from one of the original pelmets! I forgot to take a photo before I removed it, but since it was just wedged into the bottom of the window aperture and not glued, it came off without any damage to the wallpaper.

Sadly, it had been adapted to fit into the window.

Nevertheless, this left me with three original pelmets. Another good look at the August Herrmann catalogue page confirmed that this was actually how many the room box had originally — one above each of the three windows and none above the internal door.

Great, I could work with that!

First I removed the pelmet from above the internal door — I did my best to keep damage to the wallpaper to a minimum, but I'll still have to disguise the mark it left at some point. Then it was a fairly simple job to cut, glue and shape some blocks of balsa wood to fill the missing parts of the mutilated pelmet.

I sanded both pelmets down and stained them to match the original oak colour of the untouched one in the larger room. I then reinstated the complete pelmet above the other window in that room and the repaired one in the smaller room, where I think the repair is less obvious. At this point I should have taken a photo of my progress, but I clean forgot. 🙃

I also removed the plain modern mouldings which had been used above the internal door and as a windowsill in the small room, again, limiting damage to the wallpaper as far as possible.

Unfortunately, throughout all of these alterations, I found no traces of any original wallpapers under the replacement ones in either room.

The internal door of the room box illustrated in the August Herrmann catalogue isn't visible, but from what I can see from those that are, I don't think mine is original. Certainly the door handles aren't.

I will leave it for now but at some point I will probably look to remove the handles and think about how to improve it.

Next, with the pelmets refurbished and reinstated, I was able to get to work making some curtains.

I had this lovely old cotton fabric in my stash. It came to me from a friend and fellow dolls' house collector in Germany. I think it works a treat with the wallpaper in this room.

I was struggling to find just the right colour and fabric type for the larger room until I stumbled across the most hideous pair of cotton velvet trousers in a charity shop. Trust me, hideous isn't an exaggeration — they ballooned out, and the ankles had cuffs with buttons for goodness' sake! They look much better as curtains.

So there we have it, progress so far. There is still much to do — namely restoring the window frames and glazing, adding windowsills, and disguising the damage to the wallpaper above the internal door.

Once all that's done, I can start on the fun part of adding furniture and accessories. There was an odd little assortment of furniture with the room box when I bought it, both older and more recent pieces. Certainly some of the older pieces will be reused. Watch this space...

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.