I have loved miniatures since I was a little girl. My grandparents had a wonderful, fully furnished 1960's dollhouse that belonged to my late aunt that we were allowed to play with (under supervision whenever we'd visit them at their apartment in Chicago. Eventually, they allowed us to take it home down-state where my mother, sister, and I lightly renovated it. We wore that house down. For the past year, I've been following on IG some fantastic dollhouse creators (check our House of Viridian and Southern Gothic Dollhouse for a couple). My dream was to do it myself. Create my own 3-d artwork of everything I love about horror, be my own interior designer (because, let's face it, it's not going to happen in my real house).
The problem was time and cost. The other week I stumbled upon an (almost) fully built, all wood dollhouse on Marketplace. I jumped at the chance to grab it. It had been sitting in this woman's basement for decades. Her grandfather had built it in the late 1970's and it's so well crafted (go grandpa). The interior and exterior were never painted, but it came with a ton of mouse poop and some furniture. From Google, it looks like a kit called Windflower Manor from around 1979. It has 12 rooms and is juuuussst a little bigger than 1:12 scale (for those that don't know 1:12 means for every inch in the house, that equal an actual foot in "real life"). I plan on some alterations to fit my vision, and this has been a lifeline of creativity just planning it out.
I plan for this to be my own personal journal/blog, but obviously it's published online. It's mainly for documentarian purposes. But, if you stumble upon it, I hope you at least aren't appalled at what you see. I'm doing this on the fly, when I have time.
Ok, so this weekend I disinfected and cleaned the hell out of it. I removed all the furniture and bits, threw away what we covered in mouse urine or too broken to be salvaged, and vacuumed/bleached the interior and most of the exterior. The windows need some more cleaning, and there a bits on the outside that need to be repaired. It's on my porch right now. I plan on somehow getting it up to my art studio once I feels it's un-grossified.
Here she is in all her dirty glory:
As you can see, she's HUGE! Ignore our messy porch.