I've discovered etsy!

Can you believe that all these fabulous goodies are actually miniature 1:12th scale? No, I couldn't either...All of them apart from the pink (limited edition) Egg Chair & the Gold Chinese Screen are available from GiGi Studio found at http://www.etsy.com/shop/giginstudio
The fabulous pink limited edition miniature egg chair comes from my favourite haunt www.elfminiatures.co.uk & the beautiful gold chinese screen was another etsy find..

I'm not kidding you, if you haven't discovered it yet, head to www.Esty.com For some fantastic mini & normal sized inspiration!

Enough chat! Now I need to do some real work on the Honeychurch... See you in a while with some pictures of her next incarnation xxx

With a living room like this!

Got a bit of a pink theme going on here but it will look so lush with a creamy white don't you think?

I've been shopping!

Screen shot of www.grahamandgreen.co.uk

So, after way too much time spent online ‘window’ shopping I’ve finally decided on the ‘look’ for the Honeychurch refurbishment. It was super easy in a way because it would look just like a house I'd love to live in...But I'd need masses of money to make it look like this (full sized) Ahh! the beauty of having a miniature passion - you can have gorgeousness & it needn't cost the earth!

grahamandgreen.co.uk, rocketstgeorge.co.uk & coxandcox.co.uk have given me so many ideas, well them & some great mini blogs too! I’ll do an honour call with links on the right hand side!

I am thinking the main bedroom is going to look something like this...

Out with the old!

This was just after I'd stipped out all the old furniture!

I think these may actually have been the pictures I used on eBay to try to sell her! Strangely, I don't have any showing the house in it's former "antique" glory...I wonder why?

& more pictures... of the house before & after its 8 week long journey to Australia. It was the only item we brought over that suffered any damage, well apart from totally losing a box of Christmas decorations & being asked by Border Control if we wanted to have a fake Orchid plant destroyed or pay nearly $200 to have it 'made safe' (it contained dried spagnum moss & we chose to have it incinerated)

I have a friend that moved to Australia around the same time as us, who 'lost' an imitation Christmas tree along route & we've wondered together over a coffee or two if my dec’s are adorning her tree somewhere - I do hope so!

The make-shift joints, where I added the extra floor section had been done very badly (by me) in the first place and as a result the two half doors had come away from each other. I’m happy to report that these have now been fixed with dowels drilled into each of the half doors (top & bottom) together with some pretty strong Tarzan’s Grip (Australian adhesive) Oh, and a very kind Son that took pity on me & drilled the miniscule holes for the dowels.

Hello World!

Turqouise 'Reac' designer miniature armchair one of the many available from www.elfminiatures.co.uk This particular design became the muse for the whole project!

Hello world! I'm a complete novice in the blogging world and have loads to learn, like how to post/insert pictures, add links etc, so I'm hoping you’ll be patient with me... These ramblings should follow the modernisation of my 1/12th scale Honeychurch (discontinued) dollhouse from a tired but still beautiful Edwardian house filled with dated wallpaper and the like - into a gorgeous modern/retro mews style dwelling...

Originally, I’d decided to sell this beauty on eBay. Sounds harsh I know but we were re-locating from UK to Australia in 2009 and I was being seriously firm about getting rid of the hoards of stuff that followed us every time we moved house!

So the 'Honeychurch' house along with masses of other household goodies went up for sale on eBay, most of the other bits found new homes but not my "Honeychurch".

I was about to re-list for the third time but then had a change of heart! Maybe it wasn’t meant to ‘sell’ & I could instead turn my dated looking dollhouse into a contemporary mews style home to take to Australia with me. We could both have a fresh start!

I've owned the house from ‘new’ for around 9 years and in its first life it was a traditional two storey Edwardian dollhouse, complete with all the fixtures & fittings you'd expect. It started out looking something like this..

.

This lovely home belongs to 'Gabrielle' I hunted for a picture of the two story version Edwardian Honeychurch (as I had none of my own) & came across this sweetie! If it belongs to you, please let me know & I can credit you properly!

After a while, I thought it would look so much better as a townhouse so set about hunting for another floor. Not easy! As “Honeychurch” the company who had made it had closed. I knew that Honeychurch had made a basement for this house that I could use and after months of searching I finally found one in a lovely little hobby shop in Somerset, sadly that’s now closed too!!!

The basement was duly added but I had some juggling to do to make it look balanced, so put the doors that came with the basement at the top of the house instead of the bottom. Otherwise I would have ended up with the original front door on the first floor, If you see what I mean? Can you see my terrible joins?

I'm now thrilled the house didn't sell on eBay, most of the original furniture & dolls I'd collected over the years did sell but I kept a few goodies that had potential to remodel!!!