Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Repainting History: Customer's WWII Dollhouse

Customer brought me her "WWII British P.O.W. dollhouse".  I was intrigued by this description and have searched for information about these houses, but have come up empty.  Customer recalls that her mother bought the house for her when she was child (maybe 5 or 7?).  A British P.O.W. built the house: but she is unsure if the P.O.W. was an Italian or Germany POW in a British camp or a British soldier in a camp.  Either way, it is a mystery how this dollhouse came to be sold to the customer here in the USA.


The customer does not want me to touch the removeable roof.  But she would like me to restore the house back to it's original green trim paint colors (which she painted white and red when she was a child) and to repair/replace the missing mullions in the windows.  I will repaint the exterior white and spruce up the "yard".
With the roof removed, you can look down into the top floor's 4 rooms.

The front doors swing open to reveal 4 rooms.

With the front opening doors and a removable roof, it will be easy to clean these interior rooms.  The bottom floor's back two rooms however are inaccessible and will be difficult to work on.  Customer wants me to clean the rooms, install real wood floors in the rooms she put down faux wood drawer liner papers and install wallpaper on the top floor's back room.

The oldest house we have renovated as of this point was a 1947 "The Birches" house by the Keystone Company (Keystone's "The Birches").  Now, if this dollhouse really was created during WWII by a P.O.W., this house would be tied or possibly even the oldest dollhouse on which we have worked.  If any of you have ever heard of a WWII P.O.W. dollhouse, I would love to hear more about these dollhouses!

1 comment:

  1. Hello Lori,
    It is a very handsome house. The structure is beautiful and the rooms are just lovely. Have fun bringing it back to its former glory.
    Big hug,
    Giac

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