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Thursday, March 20, 2014

Not a Lot of Mini Work...

OK.  I did get the area down to a small pile in a basket.  I got the pattern pieces together for the porch.  Then April and Amare arrived.  So you get a photo of the clean up and some more restoration photos from the Mini Time Machine.

Oh how I wish I would have used egg cartons.  I would be done by now.  I still have the porch to go on Daisy's cottage.  Need I say, I am sick of stones!?

There has been some discussion on the Greenleaf forum about the work of Moritz Gotschalk, the German dollhouse maker.  I thought that I would throw in a couple of those that I worked on at the museum.

The first one is a working kitchen...

When this one came in, The right side of the floor was approximately three inches higher than the left...Shall we say that it was a bit warped?  It was a LOT warped.  It took a few days of wetting it down with hot water soaked rags and weighting it.  It finally agreed to behave. 


When I say working kitchen, I mean just that.  There is a tank on the outside of the left wall that can be filled with water and a spigot and bowl on the inside, for real running water...Not only that, they actually used the stove!  We found candle wax on the floor of the oven and black rings on the roof of the stove.  They would let the little girls "cook" things on the stove....With supervision, I hope!

Most of the items that you see, with the exception of the little boy, came with the kitchen.  With the water damage and warping, it was a big job.  I had to redraw parts of the floor and the wall tiles and get them as close as possible as the original paper.

This kitchen is the header for the Mini Time Machine website right now.  If you want to go look, go here. http://www.theminitimemachine.org/

This is another one of the Gottschalk houses. It has the typical red roof.  Green and white seemed to be the most popular paint colors at the time.

The foundation contains a drawer that slides out and makes a front garden.  The bottom had been repainted and when I started carefully removing the extra layer of paint, I found that the configuration that you see here was under it.  The windows and the bushes had been covered up.  This is very close to how the original house looked. 

Walter, April and Amare went to the park.  They should be back soon.  Little boys are  better than minis.  I have to go now.

See you tomorrow.

7 comments:

Marisa said...

That Mini time machine is just amazing thank you for sharing the link

Unknown said...

Today is the day that I finished reading every post you have written! It seems crazy that it only took me 3 months to read 5 years worth but I've been hooked and reading months at a time! It's great to see everything grow and evolve from all of tessies outfits, zars entire body changes, the workroom getting cleaned, and then getting messy again, amare growing up, loads of pairs of socks, too many beads to count and general hilarity throughout! Thankyou so much for your expertise, advice and whit.

Looking forward to the next 5 years,
Freya xxx

Caseymini said...

Freya, I think that you are one of about five people that I know of that have read the whole thing from start to finish. I always wonder if there are others out there that have done that. I will keep writing as long as I know that someone is reading. Thanks so much!

12Create said...

What a great idea Freya to read through Casey's entire blog. I've been struggling to find a good book to read lately and just think of what I could learn. The challenge is set. Thanks Freya for the idea and thanks Casey for the reading material.

Caseymini said...

Good luck, Sharee! Let me know if you ever make it through. One of these days I am going to have to do that myself. I know that there are some links that no longer work and should be replaced.

Caseymini said...

Freya, I just noticed, you said five years. Actually it's six! You deserve a gold star!

Unknown said...

Goodness! You see the time just flew by! It was a pleasure my dear, now I feel a bit flat without my days of tessies goings on, I've downloaded a book on my kindle but it's not the same! Haha! It's the learning that's so great and incredible how motivated you remain, I know there are projects you get cheesed off with and many ufos but you make something every day, it's amazing! You are an inspiration! Xxx