At Home in the Lines DH/D, 1926

Well, I still haven't finished scraping the overpainting off the outside of this house, touching up the paint and putting on the roofing paper. But George and Margaret Sinclair decided that the appearance of the outside didn't matter as much as having a home to live in; they were getting rather tired of living in a shoebox.

There are curtains at both downstairs and upstairs windows -


some glass would make the house less draughty and more secure; the glazier seems rather hard to tie down to a date ...


Speaking of downstairs and upstairs is not quite accurate - as you can see, there are no stairs - or at least, no visible ones, inside. This is one of the mysteries of dolls houses which dolls seem to cope with well.


Margaret has boiled the kettle for tea, and chosen a book from the bookcase,


and puts her feet up after her tiring day working as cashier at a teashop.


George spends a lot of time upstairs, where he has a comfy chair by the fire.


He lost a foot in the war, and, poor man, seems to have neither a false one fitted, nor crutches.

As he was also gassed, and suffers from nerves, he is unable to work.


He feels bad that Margaret has to work, but grateful that they have been able to find this small, cosy two-roomed cottage. It is luxury after their last lodgings.


As you may remember, the inside of this house had also been completely overpainted. I have reproduced three patterns of wallpaper from Lines houses of the period by scanning pieces of wall that I bought from someone who had taken apart a house which had so much woodworm that it couldn't be saved. My reproductions are not as good as Dolls House Restoration's, but they'll do. I intend to buy some of his parquet flooring and window shutters, but in the meantime, I have used wooden flooring from Jennifer's Printables upstairs, and a copy of a vintage wallpaper sample downstairs (the original is in my Triang 52).

The kitchen range is original, and came with the house. The upstairs fireplace is also original, but I acquired it separately. The furnishings are vintage pieces from ebay - except the upstairs lights, which were Oese's (I can't find it in the photos, but it came with these vintage pieces in the house Oese bought).

I forgot to say: the pattern repeats for these three designs are in my post Slow Progress, if anybody would like to use them in their own houses. The one I used upstairs is darker at the top of the repeat, so a sheet of the pattern shows distinct lines, unless you can photoshop them out!