Building the Kitchen

Before we left for Florida last October I'd bought some wonderful Miele appliances for my future kitchen from ELF miniatures.  Take a minute to check out this site, especially if you need anything modern, it has wonderfully different stuff and the most helpful person running it.


I had also designed and drawn up a plan for fitting a very large kitchen diner.  At that stage I was using the double size room in the basement as a kitchen diner and the small room with the door as a mud room. This would have given me loads of scope for designing a super-dooper kitchen which is what I was hooked on doing.  Six months away and spending a lot of thinking time on the house as I couldn't actually DO anything and I decided as a nod to modern living there was no way I could exclude a TV watching area from the home and nothing I'd planned so far allowed for that so I decided to use the two room knock-through as a family room and the small room with the back door as the kitchen.  The challenge now became how to get a quart into a pint pot.

A couple of plans later and a couple of emails to Elizabeth (the ELF!) and my  flat pack kitchen arrived.  As someone who has lived in something like 13 homes in three countries and has  totally gutted and refurbished one of them, a full size flat-pack kitchen holds no terrors for me.... but this teeny tiny one was a whole new learning experience.  Mostly a learning experience in patience.  There was no way it could be rushed.  I had to wait for glue to dry and (three) coats of paint to dry at each step of the way.  That said, it was a totally enjoyable experience.  The only sad part is that I learned such a lot about building models and probably won't get to use it again.


I am thrilled with the result and can't wait to dress it with all sorts of bits and bobs.

Lights and Floors

Up until now the work has been pretty haphazard; I've just done things as I've bought them.  This usually entails moving stuff in and out every time I want to do something.  I've finally realised I need to buckle down and finish the build.  The rooms need flooring and to do this they need the lights putting in first as the wires run along grooves in the floor above's ceiling.  I can't even put the last of the roofing paper on until I get the top floor lit as the the wiring for their lights run down a groove in the roof.  I made it my mission to buy lights and floors (only!!) from the first UK show I went to.  This was the Leeds show on the 16th April.  I did manage to get real wood floors for three rooms and tiles for the kitchen floor.  I bought lights for three rooms too.  Sadly I managed to buy a chandelier for the girl's bedroom which I already had at home.  This is the penalty for buying six months before and not keeping proper lists. Another lesson learned.  So, in the main, the house is now lit and floored on three floors and shouldn't need to be shoved around hither and yon to complete the top floor (purchases at the next show?)

Leeds Doll's House & Miniatures Fair

On 16th April we went to Pudsey, Leeds for a Doll's House Fair.  Again a lot of the stuff was pretty much as usual.  There were two or three stalls which I hadn't seen before but were way out of my price range - sadly.  


I've made a note of a couple of them just in case I ever win the Lottery.


Hearth and Home - kitchen ranges, sinks and for me the most wonderful fireplaces - I still need three and can't fins any I like within my budget.


Stokesay Ware - just the very best in ceramics.

Burghley Renovation

When we got back to the UK I decided the house and basement were far too big to live with comfortably; also I found the basement particularly irritating for several reasons.  It is excellent in that it gives you another floor to play with but the huge frontage is pretty much totally useless, a nuisance to open as it requires some dexterity and a large space to do it in, the plastic railings drop off if you just look at them and it doesn't really work in terms of its design.  If it is a set of steps from a pavement level to provide access to a terraced Georgian house how come there are windows and a door at the ends of the basement rooms?  They would have to be on a street level and can't exist in a terrace!  The bulk of the basement front can't be used for storage or another entrance or anything which made any sense.  Hence the Burghley Renovation.


I hacked it to bits and started again.  It cost me two sheets of paper from DHE to match the house and cover the grooves in the doors, wood filler to fill in the grooves, paint for the steps to make the additional step blend in and some trim for round the front space.  Other than that it was a case of re-using the bits I'd hacked apart to rebuild a more logical and smaller basement front.  The photos pretty much explain how I did it.