Historical Dollhouse

An old friend of mine from school found out about my love/obsession with dollhouses and very generously gave me an old dollhouse she found in her barn! She's living in an old old house in Indiana and is remodeling it. The house was in pretty bad shape having apparently spent the last 50 years or so in a barn, and I literally spent a full year in paralysized contemplation about whether to put in new wallpaper and floors or just restore as much as possible. The wallpaper inside is so pretty and I'm fairly certain it's a lithography printing. It has a gorgeous art deco trompe l'oeil scene downstairs and a darling flowered print upstairs. A wall swings out to give access to the interior and you can also lift off the roof. After some research, it seems like it's from the Schoenhut dollhouse company (Philadelphia) and was probably made in the 1930s.

 Here's how it looked when I got it

and here it is cleaned up a bit - the pressed cardboard roof is a little shinier now, but otherwise I didn't change anything on the exterior but wipe off the cobwebs.

This is the swinging out door - it had a lot of yellow crayon some child must have applied.

Here's a before an after I really love - a lot more crayon from an interprising child (unpopular opinion:  Dollhouses are not for Children!)

after:

And here's that great art deco scene on the first floor before and...

after!

To my incredible delight, what I thought was torn paper was actually just paper stuck on there!  So with some delicate application of moisture and gentle nudging, I was able to remove all of it!  There is, alas, a tear in the middle of the wall, but an amazing improvement overall.  

I was also able to clean up the floor which also had the most enchanting wood grain you've ever seen...

Here's a sort of before and after that shows the difference.  I cleaned with first a mixture of vinegar and water, then lemon and water, then... dare I say it... Magic Eraser which really did the trick.  Of course you have to be very very careful.  If you clean too much, you'll Magic Erase the whole damn thing.

After all that cleaning, I really didn't want to touch it very much, and since I wasn't able to find the exact house (although similar ones) online, I have to think it's pretty rare.  I offered it back to my friend, and also mentioned we could donate it to a local history museum, and because she's super-cool, she wants to donate it.  I couldn't be more pleased.