The house
began life as a kit made mainly of birch ply. The lovely little architectural details were what drew me to it...
I loved the front facade and the fact that it had side windows! Not many dollshouses have side windows! The beautiful, detailed wrought iron raillings around the basement and on the steps leading to the front door are another period detail I love. Sid Cooke certainly knew how to make authentic replica period dolls house kits.
After quite alot of research I thought about how I wanted to decorate the outside.
I decided on using pressed fibreglass brickwork
sheets which are surprisingly realistic. Being quite a novice I felt applying
bricks one by one was being just a little ambitious for me at this stage of my
dollshouse hobby but at the same time I wanted an authentic look and not the
flat look and feel of brick wallpaper. This seemed a good option and I wasn't
disappointed. It's as easy as putting on a sheet of wallpaper. Using pva glue
and as long as it's carefully applied and weighted down to dry it gives a very
pleasing finish.
I applied it before I put in the windows and once it was
thoroughly dry I cut out the window holes using a very sharp craft knife. Once
that was done I stuck on all the detail trims.
When it came to the roof, again I didn't feel competent enough to use real slate or to glue on anything in an individual manner so I used the mdf tiling strips. Now these strips look so uninteresting before they're painted but all the detail is there. They come in about 18" x 3" pieces which you glue on; where they joined together I used the sawdust to mask the joins. After a little time and effort they painted up well with emulsion paint and look quite convincing . The most difficult part was cutting all the pieces to fit the small shaped roof at the front. I used lots of different shades of grey to get the effect I wanted.
The upper area is painted using a textured paint. Again I did this before any other details or windows were added.
