My 2004 dollhouse

The latest add-on to my dollhouse collection. I finally found a european dollhouse supplier, which lowers the shipping costs for me a lot. But I still order from my other internet suppliers located in the US of course.

They have a great choice of dollhouses and accessoires. The Dollshouse Emporium, one of the world's leading suppliers of dollhouses and miniatures. Located in the UK

http://www.dollshouse.com

When you start to put together your dollhouse, the first thing to think about is the walls and floors. You need to have quite an precise idea of how you will furnish your house later, so that the walls and floors go together with the furniture. Take your time to do this, because it would be a big loss of time and also a lot of work if you'd have to paint and repaint the walls over and over again.

This is my "Italian Villa" when I first saw it. I fell in love with it right away after seing these pictures in the DHE catalogue. But I also had my very own idea of how my house would look like once it will be finished. I just wanted to have it more colorful, outside and inside, with a little more contemporary furniture. But still, I must say this version of the house is very beautiful too. It gives you an idea of all the beautiful things available at the Dolls House Emporium. It's more than worth the "click", believe me.

The Kit is from the Dollhouse Emporium (a link to their Website is in the LINKS Section of course).

I added the conservatory on the side for a little "summer feeling" again. This house has an italian, contemporary style. On this picture here, I hadn't finished the outside completely, I added a little garden touch around the conservatory later.

Here's a look at the finished and lighted house. Only thing missing here are the curtains.

This room is definitely the most colorful of the entire house. The whole idea for this room started with a little red fabric I had left over and a book about easy-to-do dollhouse furniture. I tried to make a chair and a sofa and once it was accomplished and since I liked it so much, I decided it had to go into my new house. All the rest of the furniture as well as the walls, paintings and floor tiles had to go with this red sofa and chair.

I used a special technique for the walls here which is described in detail in the Tips and Tricks Section/Wall Painting.

Most of the furniture you see in this room is made out of scratch. Believe it or not, but take my advise : don't ever through away lefts-overs of wood, fabric or other things. See for yourself what you can do with just a little imagination. The floor has been tiled with real ceramic tiles, glued one by one and I added paintings with the usual technique. And by the way, you may have guessed it already, but ..... my hubby also plays the guitar, not just the piano.

This is the room on the far right on the upper floor. In a more modern house, I thought there should be a laundry room with a washing machine. At the same time, this room gives a little space for all the stuff you just don't know what to do with. This house does not have an attic, so I decided to make this room laundry room and storage room for all those things you just don't want to throw away and need a place to keep them. I think we all know that problem.

It took me a long time to put together this room. First I had the idea of making a typical italian bathroom. The first thing I did was to buy the bathroom furniture kit. Then I decided how the walls would look like. Green marble tiles and a warm light terracotta for the upper part. Then I found a beautiful chair fitting perfectly into that room.

While I was tiling and painting the side walls, I suddenly had the idea of adding this "trompe l'oeil" painting to the wall, above the bath tub. I made a hanging shelf out of scratch, added a palm tree, made from a kit from Hanky Panky Crafts and gave the whole room a few personal finishing touches.

The upper floor hall, when you come up the stairs just has very little space and there wasn't a lot I could do with it. So I just added a beautiful, working, large standing tiffany lamp. But still, it looked so "empty". One day, browsing my favorite Internet Shop, the Dolls House Emporium, look what I found : my dollhouse in 1/144 scale, fitting perfectly in the hall upstairs.

I already spend many vacations in Italy, parts of my family even come from that country and I think italians have a great taste when it comes to interior decoration. And compared to many other european countries, they have a great and varied choice of very colorful furniture.

The complete bedroom set you see in this picture, the bed, the wardrobe and the two side tables had been used previously in another room. Everything was painted in a dark mahagony wood tone. If you want to take a closer look at the changes I made, there is an interesting pic in the Tips and Tricks / D.I.Y. section. The walls are painted in a light blue/green tone and I added a very colorful border. In fact, it is part of a painting which I duplicated until I had enough to print the border for 1 wall. The handles are made of beads as well as the candle holders.

Take a closer look at the right wall in the next picture.

As you may already have noticed, I wanted a colorful house. The decision to make the walls and furniture in this particular room blue was easy. I had some wallpaper left over from another dollhouse project and unfortunately, it wasn't enough to cover the entire walls. So I used the same technique here for the walls as for the living room and bathroom. First you paint the upper part, let it dry and add the wallpaper and then the borders. These borders are cutouts from Jim's Printables page.

I also had the idea, before assembling the walls of the house, to cut out a part of the wall seperating the kitchen from the dining room, allowing a pass-through and giving it a little personal touch. The shelf in the back as well as the table was made from scratch. The chairs are Mini Mundus kits.

For my taste, the kitchen is a little small, but I tried to make the best out of it. All I had to pay attention to was not to overfill it with too much furniture. In this picture, you can't see the porcelaine sink and the red stove. The kitchen dresser is a mini mundus kit, transformed a little bit to fit in this kitchen. The hanging shelf is a very easy D.I.Y. project. I also added this little tiled table and a few details, like the calendar on the wall (cut-out project from one of my miniature magazines). The hanging shelf is filled with little thing one might need in a kitchen, also from Jim's Printables Minis.

This wall is my favorite part of the entire room. I added this fresque and made a frame for it. At Motts Minishop, you can find a lot of resin cast components and trims, like this pair of half wall columns. I just added a little gold paint and the two lions on top of the painting and voilà.