Saturday, June 23, 2018

A Small House for the Doll House - Other Houses Post Summer 2018

Some stagers prefer to put a tiny house into their tiny house, it's a cute finishing touch. The pictures in this post are from vintage foreign train set houses. These were so popular from the 50's through the 70's amongst hobby enthusiasts. I speculate if I was hobbying in that time, I would have been into these. They are about 2-3 inches in size, sometimes smaller, and often meant to go into larger diorama scenes like train sets. I built a few of these as a kid such as a Howard Johnson restaurant and I think a farmhouse. The main manufacturers are Bachmann and Faller.







Then there are these 70's houses that I recently stumbled upon, I am in love!
 They come in small and larger, so check the scale before purchasing, I think the big difference is that the small one is already built and usually still has the box, the lower one pictured here is the larger one, sadly, the seller decided shipping it in a puffy envelope would protect the 40 year old box. It did not. He refunded the purchase price, so I only paid shipping. I still need to build it!


Other homes have the same roof tile, like this modern day example:
This house could have easily gotten its inspiration from our beloved 1979 A Frame DreamHouse for Barbie:

Sunday, June 17, 2018

Disassembly and Repainting Video Tutorial

Not by me, but it gives you a working idea of what to do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctinnMRmmKM


It's an excellent example of refurbishing a pink 1980's Barbie A Frame Play House

Bring back an old garage sale find to it's original sparkle!


One of the things I love the most about these houses is the play of light upon it. It seems to glow in the afternoon sunlight. 

Personally, I use Rustoleum flat white to restore houses, it will take two cans to get a second coat on everything, including post covers.