Interesting tab and slot construction

I mentioned that I had four new dolls houses (plus a cardboard one) in Bathurst. I've shown two of them, and while I'm now back in Darwin, I did manage to photograph all of them while I was in Bathurst, so I can still show you all of them.

This house was listed on Australian ebay last August, by a seller whose name was Jennie. That's how our mother spelt her name, and her birthday is in August, so I felt a bit sentimental about it anyway, but was also attracted by some lovely features, including the front porch with its picket fence. And look at that sliding front door! Here you can see it from the inside:

The house also has a very interesting construction. The right side of the front, and the whole of the back, are removable, and sit in place by means of tabs which slot into the base:

You can see the three tabs along the bottom of this side of the front, and in the next photo, you can just see the slots in the base. The two rooms behind this wall are the bathroom and a small bedroom, and they have a flower box running under their windows, which will look lovely when filled.

All the rooms in this house are decorated with wallpapers and carpet from a real house, perhaps the maker's house ... the seller didn't know who had made this dolls house, though, as her husband had rescued it from a clean-up in the Carlingford area of Sydney many years ago.

Here's the back wall, where you can again see the tabs slotting into the base:

What really fascinates me is that all the walls of this house are constructed the same way - they have tabs which slot into the base, and then the non-removable walls have little nails through them to keep them in place:

So, the back wall can be taken off, and the back of the roof lifts up:

Downstairs on the left is the master bedroom:

Through the door, you can see a small hallway and into the bathroom. I think that the tops of the interior walls have the same tab and slot construction, too. The wires hanging down by most of the windows were used to hang the curtains on - the curtains came with the house, but I haven't taken photos of them yet. They need washing before they are rehung - in fact, the whole house needs cleaning. I took photos of the kitchen/dining/living area, and then wondered what the kitchen flooring was made of:

So I felt it, and then wiped it, and realised that it was not in fact grey!

If there was that much dust on the vinyl flooring, I imagine there's the same amount on the carpets, so I will have to vacuum and shampoo them.

On the other side of the living area are the stairs:

leading up to one large room running the whole depth of the house, and one smaller room:

On each side of the roof, there's a rod screwed to the wall which can be moved upright and placed into a notch in the beading at the edge of the roof/ceiling:

The large upper room:

where the stairs come out:

The small upper room:

As well as curtains, all the windows, and the front door, clearly had some kind of covering stuck to them, probably plastic. I'll have to see if I can remove the glue marks before fitting new plastic. I wish I had photographed the curtains, even before washing them - they each have a number written on a bit of masking tape and stuck to them, and the windows also have numbers on masking tape below them, so it's easy to identify which window the the curtains go on:

I'm intrigued that the sides of the house are identified as northern (above) and southern (below):

This would mean that the back, with the kitchen and main bedroom, would face east, and the front, with the porch and front door, would face west. The downstairs bedrooms are on the south side, which here in Australia means less sun, and the dining room, kitchen and side of the porch are on the northern side, getting more sun and warmth. I don't know if the labels were attached by the seller, or have been there since her husband found the house - I wonder if either the maker of the dolls house, or the seller's husband, is a house builder, and so thinks in terms of siting a house with relation to the sun ...
The base of the house, laid out as a real house would be, is fairly large: it's 86 cm wide and 71 cm deep. To the peak of the roof is 43 cm. The scale is 1/16th: the room height is 6 1/4 inches, and the doors vary between 4 3/4" - 5 1/4". So I'll probably be furnishing it with the 1/16th scale brands of the period - Barton, Dol-toi, perhaps Lundby ... I have a couple of pieces of homemade furniture I was going to try out in here, too, but forgot. But the first task will be cleaning it, especially the carpets!