The living room

 May 2026

It's been a while since I posted.  The days were busy and I didn't get much time. 

Since I can't do much about the exterior walls right now I have moved to the living room.  

I have ordered lamps, but the most important one, the floor lamp, is out of stock.  I don't know that I want to wait till September and I have been thinking of making one myself.  I will give it some more thought...

I also have a table lamp that was supposed to go on the sideboard, but the one I have ordered seems a bit big.  A bit more re-thinking is in order. 

Let's concentrate on the walls first.  A while back I decided that I was going to do my own wallpaper, so I searched the internet for a pattern that would fit the period mid last century. bIt took a while, but I have found what I wanted.  I only had Reflex photocopier paper, which is rather thin, so I went and bought 100GSM digital paper.  When I had finally created the wallpaper on an A4 sheet I wanted to print it out.  Unfortunately my printer didn't come to the party.  The colours looked a bit washed out.  Kevin's printer on the other hand, did a great job.  Five sheets would do it. Well, almost... 😉

I am working on MDF which I had to seal.  I did this with diluted PVA glue. (Water:PVA - 4:1) In order to have a nice smooth wall I painted everything white with the acrylic paint I used for the window frames.

The printed sheets were finished off with a spray of fixative, because I print on ink jet, not laser.

And tonight was the night.  The wallpaper is on.  Just keeping the fingers crossed that it's not going to wrinkle.  At least it didn't smudge and was rather easy to stick onto the walls.  The only 'problem' I had was lining up the pattern and since I was short of only 2 cm of wallpaper I used the cut-out from the door and fitted it in above it.  Probably not 100% correct, but not very visible anyway. For glue I used Water:PVA - 3:1. I didn't want to diluted the PVA too much in case the paper wasn't thick enough or the ink would run and smudge after all.

I have no photos to show, but I used plain paper to make a template for the wallpaper, which made it easier to line up the patterns as I could do it first on the table top and transfer it from there to the correct spot on the walls. I learned this from Julie Warren's video series: My Dollshouse Diary.

I couldn't help myself.  I wanted to see the coal stove in place. 😊

And now I have to think about the next project.  I know already that I am going to make the internal door and frame myself as well.  To that extend I have removed the high instep in the door opening to be able to create a low threshold, the same as I have in my first dolls house. 

The flooring in the room will most likely be the same as the one you see in the picture above.  I used embroidery fabric soaked in tea to create a close resemblance to the Jabo wall-to-wall carpet we had in the 50s and 60s. 

While I am making up my mind about the brickwork for the exterior walls I have started on the furniture.  This will be revealed in the next post.