Painting the Georgian Dollhouse

 When I was little, my aunt had an old radio that she had turned into a dollhouse. I was so fascinated with this dollhouse that I still remember it all these years later. So, two years ago I got a Hobby Lobby gift card for my birthday and decided to buy an inexpensive dollhouse, the Orchid by Greenleaf Dollhouses. 

It sat on a shelf for two years because dollhouse building takes up a lot of room and I wanted to make sure that when I started I could walk away without feeling like I needed to put anything away. 

Our youngest graduated from high school and left for Basic Training, so I took over his room and made it into a craft room (for those of you feeling bad that I took over his room, please note that he now lives in our basement, which is more like a studio apartment).

Thank goodness I waited until I had the space to build the Orchid, it took up even more room than I anticipated. Because this was my first dollhouse, I read lots of blogs regarding tips, ideas, and in some cases Youtube for tutorials for directions that were confusing (the directions were all written, very few pictures).

One of the blogs I read said that if you build one and are thinking about what you'd do differently on your next one, you are hooked. If you are thinking, "what the heck did I get myself into" - dollhouses probably aren't for you.

Well, my Orchid is built, but not fully furnished and I got the itch again. 

The Orchid

So...This weekend when I got an alert that a dollhouse "needing work" was for sale at $25, I jumped. The dollhouse is solid wood (thank goodness my son is home so he could haul it in for me), but "needs work" couldn't be a truer statement!

As you can see, the front needs a lot of work. The front panels don't close all the way because it's not seated in the hinges correctly. I'll need to fiddle with that some more, but since I plan to remove those front pieces to make painting easier, I'll wait until the paint is dry.

Well, two curtains are still hanging...

My mind immediately thinks of the movie The Money Pit when I look at this picture...

It's difficult to see in the pictures, but the stairs are coated with dirt and dust. They've also been colored on. They're made of plastic, so I have a new can of chalk paint, which will cover the plastic without scratching off.

I really don't want to know what caused this stain, I'll be bleaching this sucker before I start on any refurbishment, though.

This miniature fixer-upper has some real potential. It'll need a lot of elbow grease, but I'm super excited to get started. I plan to go more farmhouse with this one, as opposed to the Orchid that is a Painted Lady decorated one part vintage Victorian and one part shabby chic.