Dolls house charity shop find ...

I've finally got round to finishing off some things I was working on,one of which was renovating a dolls house I found in a charity shop for the grand price of £2, the original plan was to fix it up and sell it, however it got claimed by my daughter and it's now living in her bedroom,You'd think she'd be happy with the one I made her for Christmas a few years ago,but this one is apparently now a beach house for her dolls.

Here's the dolls house before I started on it -

A bit tired, or well loved if you prefer.

As you can see it's had a bit of use,my first thought was to take the thing apart completely,but as it turned out that wasn't possible because I'd have ended up breaking some of the joins,so I just took it apart as far as it would go.


Some damage,easily fixed with a bit of wood glue -

Despite it being quite badly split this was fixed easily.

The paper used for the roof tile effect was torn in places,and there was a fair amount of pen and pencil drawing all over it,along with some stains,so I figured I'd just strip all of the paper off and see what I was left with.

Taken apart waiting for paper to be removed and then sanded - 

Ready for it's make over.

And here it is fully sanded and awaiting a lick of paint - 

Looks better already.

I had hoped that I could leave it as bare wood once it was sanded,but I was unable to get into all the little gaps,even with a detail sander,so I went for a paint job instead.

After pondering the colour scheme for a while I decided on what could be described as a traditional look,but it reminds me of a cottage,white walls,black roof and green doors,personally I think it's turned out well,but then I would.

Here's the finished house - 

A bit plain maybe?

From the sides - 

Has to be better than it was.

It's painted in white gloss (after 2 coats of undercoat and primer) the roof is black emulsion and the doors are painted with a green water based enamel paint,so it can be cleaned easily,and yes it's perhaps a bit on the plain side,but it looks great with some of the furniture I made for my daughters other dolls house,so now I guess I'll have to make a load more for his one.

All in all despite having spent a few ours doing it up I'm happy and so is my daughter,we had the paint already and for £2 it's not to be sniffed at,it proves that trawling through charity shops often yields interesting results.

Thanks for reading.

Magpie Monday ... "Free" coffee table / chest

I thought I'd do a Magpie Monday post, been meaning to join in for ages, just never seem to get the timing right.

Me and my wife spend time looking through charity shops and such like when ever we get the chance, you find some great stuff, and more often than not it's better made and will last twice as long as a lot of the things you can buy today.

Furniture is one of those things, years ago people made furniture from real wood, non of this laminated chip board stuff, and they used real carpentry to put things together, and not just a load of screws.

So on the way back from the city a few weeks ago I came across this bit of furniture in one of our local charity shops.

You can just make out the label, it says free !

Yes that's right it was free, apparently it had been in the shop for a while at various prices and no one bought it, yes it needed a little tlc, but even so I'd have bought it had I seen it, but on the day I went past they had decided it had to go, so they put it outside with a big "free" label on it, and no one took it ! I passed the shop well after lunch time and it had sat there all morning and part way into the afternoon, why did no one take it ? I'm still wondering.

It's a chest, at least that's what we call it, it now sits in our living room and acts as a coffee table, desk for the kids to work at, a foot rest when we are watching a film, oh and as it opens (the drawers don't open) it also gets used as storage. Old furniture may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I like it.

I had to sand it down, all over which didn't take as long as I thought it would, then I used a natural beeswax polish on it, to give it a protective coat and feed the wood, I normally use the beeswax polish for turned wood, but it worked well on the chest.

More pictures - 

Not the best picture.

And that's about it, a perfectly good piece of furniture for nothing, free ! and you can't really get much cheaper than that, all it needed was a sand and a good coat of something to feed the wood, a similar piece of furniture would cost quite a bit now, especially for solid wood.

It's worth looking out for bits of furniture in charity shops, you never know when you'll find an absolute bargain :-)

Thanks for reading.

Charity shop find... ...

I thought I'd do a quick post on charity shops, and the things you can find in them.


My daughter has just turned 2, and we went out the other day to find some things for her birthday, and if I'm honest we got a little stumped as to what to get. She likes dolls and other things, but a lot of the things she would like we already have from when her brother was younger, and it seemed a little daft to buy the same things again, so we got her a doll, and some bits and pieces for the doll, and while we were looking at various shops we came across an old wooden crib in a salvation army shop, it's a small crib, just right for a doll.


Here it is.

The crib.

It's a few years old, but we got it because it's wooden and really sturdy, as you can see it needs a bit of work, so my job is to strip the old paint off it give it a sand and then paint it again, most likely white, or if the wood comes up okay then I might just varnish it.

The point is that it was £3 and it's wooden, and apart from a little bit of tlc it's perfect for a doll, and it will most likely out last anything that's made of plastic.

My daughter has already seen it and loves it (she got a little worried when I put it in the shed) so next time you're out and about why not have a look in a charity shop or two and see if there's something you can use, it might cost you a fair bit less than a new one and not only are you helping a charity out you're recycling as well.

We actually got most of our home brewing supplies from our local charity shop, for a fraction of the price it would have cost if we'd got new, so it's worth having a look.