Today I'm going to show you my dollhouse dollhouse. When I got this, most of the dollhouse sized dollhouses that I could find online were cast resin and didn't open, or the opened but looked very modern and had no dividing walls or floors inside. That's why this one stood out.
This one is by the Dollhouse Emporium. It's made of wood but the image on the front is printed on card that's stuck on. You can't really see ti in the picture, but the sticker is a little loose and creased in the bottom left hand corner. It's actually really sturdy for the size, short of being jumped on, the only part that I could imagine ever breaking is the fine metal rod that hinges the front section.
The inside is completely painted cream and not only are there wall and floor partitions, there are even little doorways cut into the walls, which is definitely the kind of detail that makes me make high pitched noises. The vertical wall panels aren't completely straight, they're set on a very, slight angle, which surprisingly doesn't bother me at all. That's the kind of thing I wouldn't be surprised to see in an actual children's dollhouse, so in my mind it kind of adds to the realism. On the other hand, to my eyes at least, the front opens the wrong way! Which probably bothers me way more than it should. Even more annoying, you can actually see on the right side, where little holes have been drilled to accommodate the pin hinge, which just makes me confused. Why drill the holes there if you're not going to use them? I have, in a particularly OCD moment, considered trying to rehinge it on the other side but I'm pretty sure I would just wreck it, so I talk myself into leaving it.
This little house is based on one of the Dollhouse Emporium's actual dollhouses. The Montgomery Hall. It's a pretty good likeness. It's even divided into the same number of rooms inside. Here's a catalogue picture of the actual Montgomery Hall for comparison.
The biggest differences seem to be that the colours are more washed out in the miniature version, and the big version has two doors on the front, one opening toward each side. The little house would be an amazing dollhouse for inside the big version.
Not including the roof section, the little house is just under seven centimetres high, so about two and three quarter inches, if you prefer inches. And to give you an idea of scale here it is with the child from my dollhouse and a Kelly doll (who I just realised, too late, is having a slight wardrobe malfunction.)
At some point I would like to decorate the interior. Wallpaper it with scraps of paper, carpet it with scraps of fabric or ribbon and furnish it. But it's a daunting concept because it is so tiny and so I always put it off. I've come up with a few ideas to furnish it. One is to download vintage foldable cut-out furniture sheets for paper dolls, shrink them down, and print them on card and have folded card furniture. Or to do the same thing but only roughly cut the images out and glue them to tiny cubes of balsa wood. OR to buy kits for 1:144 scale furniture and make it. . . I've already bought a few kits, but I'm too scared to attempt making them.
They're terrifying. And, realistically, at this point, I'm not even sure they're going to fit well in the house. Since it's supposed to be a kid's toy, I'm not going to be overly fussy about scale (and they're supposed to be the same scale) but if the stuff literally doesn't fit in the rooms it's not going to work. But I guess, until I'm brave enough to had a go, that's a fairly moot point.
But of course to make this the coolest dollhouse dollhouse ever, it is going to need a dollhouse inside it. And for that, I probably will just use a square of balsa wood with a picture of this house glued to the front.
