Furnishing Can Begin At Last In My Hacker Dolls House Kitchen

With restoration on this Hacker dolls house more or less complete, furnishing can now commence. 

Although a lot of the original wall & floor papers remain, there are still areas where papers are damaged or missing. So I will attempt to disguise or hide those areas where possible. The kitchen seemed a good place to start as it still has original built in dresser & range. But it is small, so I decided to utilise wall space, as well as purposely placing items to hide the most noticeable damaged areas. 

A wall rack was made from lollipop sticks & tiny tacks, then painted, & highlighted in black pen to match dresser colouring. When filled with utensils the damaged area underneath is hidden. 

A German "Marklin" style rack with canisters was made from card, & brightens up the left alcove. 

The antique German wooden items hide wallpaper damage in the right alcove. The built in range with paper brickwork & hob detail is original to the dolls house. 

On the front left edge of  kitchen there is a chunk of missing wallpaper & border. I attempted to use acrylic paint to disguise some of the missing border & paper, but not too successfully. But thankfully the rack, dustpan & brush really does hide the majority of it & helps distract the eye. 

From my box of accumulated old treasures, it was great fun deciding what goes where. 

 I added tiny hooks made from fuse wire along shelf edge to hang cups, etc. from, particularly as there is so much wasted space above the one upper shelf. Why didn't they put a second upper shelf in that space I wonder? 

My dresser is filled with all kinds of treasures collected over a long period of time, a real mixture. 

Now that the rack is filled with a selection of items, you can hardly see the damage wall behind. 

I like to mix genuine antique items alongside newer items that have been made to look old. On the antique table is an old style 1/12th scale pre-loved Avon made cup, saucer, & matching plate. They are sitting next to an antique German plaster tart on an old metal plate, an antique bread board & knife, plus an antique kettle on a stand.  

The gorgeous little cat asleep on the old stool is pre-loved but I just adore her, so she will stay in this kitchen & can sleep there as long as she likes!

No doubt the kitchen will continue to evolve further. But for the moment, job done! What fun this dolls house is turning out to be. Now I have to decide which room to furnish next. 😊

Antique German Hacker Dolls House Restoration - Part Four - The Doorbell!

The next stage of restoration on my old Christian Hacker dolls house, was to get the doorbell working again. 

It took a while to figure out how to do this, particularly as the old metal bell’s backplate was bent out of shape, therefore preventing the bell to ring at all. 

I managed to gently prise the whole thing off, straighten with pliers, then fix back into place. The old smudge of blue paint was scraped off the bell exterior (not sure what it was doing on there). 

And although the original hole for the exterior lever had at some point been filled in & painted over, it wasn’t too difficult to work out where to drill a replacement hole. The new external lever was made up of old jewellery bits, aged further with paint. 

Then through a prolonged process of trial & error, I decided on strong thread instead of wire in order to connect the bell to the lever. 

Finally, I am delighted to confirm that on pulling the lever firmly the bell does indeed “ding”, as you will see in this video ( you will need your volume turned up).🤣 

Now with the addition of antique lace curtains too, this lovely old dolls house is slowly coming back to life. Am now looking forward to filling the rooms with all my gorgeous bits & bobs I have been collecting for this beauty. I think I will tackle one room at a time...starting with the kitchen. 😊

Antique German Hacker Dolls House Restoration - Part Three

 Continuing with the restoration of my lovely old German Hacker dolls house, next job was to construct a replacement balcony. Now that a replacement door has been made (see last post), this house now desperately needs a balcony to sit in front of the balcony door!

The original is long gone sadly. 

Research suggested the balcony on this house should be balustraded, with a curved portion in the middle of the run. A little bit out of my woodworking capabilities, so instead I constructed a simple straight balcony using balustrade remnants from an old dolls house ( I have kept them for years & just knew they would come in useful one day). 🙂

After some jiggling, sawing & gluing, I managed to construct a reasonable length of balcony out of the remnants. Not perfect but adequate enough. 

With additions of a wooden floor, lots of glue, wood filler & paint, it came up a treat. 

It did take a while to mix up acrylic paint to match the original green frontage trim, but got there in the end. 

Next, some light sanding to give illusion of age, then finally it was glued into place. 

Am quite pleased with the result, this lovely old house is now coming along!

 And so the restoration continues…next in Part Four is the doorbell. 

Antique German Hacker Dolls House Restoration - Part Two

Restoration continues on my antique Christian Hacker dolls house. 

Where the door should be, the previous owner had glued a thick pane of glass which is now too difficult to remove, and could potentially create a lot of damage if I tried to do so. So I decided to create a replacement mock door to slot in front instead. Research showed that the balcony door should be similar in design as the front door, but with an upper glass pane, so this is what I attempted to do.

A scaled plan was first created on paper. 

Then the door was created using jelutong wood and wood glue. The lower panel's edges were chamfered with sandpaper. 

The wood filler helped to add to the required texture, then where it had been applied it was sanded well.

Next, layers of acrylic paints in various mixed shades were added to bring the colour up to as near to the colour of the front door as possible. 

Pencil crayons were used for highlighting around the panels, as seen on the front door. It was then finally sanded gently. 

I was chuffed to bits with the result!

 On completion I gave it a good coat of wax polish, then buffed it to a shine. The simple handle was created from old jewellery bits, aged with paint & fixed in place. The back of the door was given several coats of off-white paint and sanded well. 

Then the door was fixed into place, in front of the glass. 

The effect that I had been aiming for was to make the replacement balcony door look like it had always been there, and the result was about as near as I could get  it. 

Next on “The Restoration List” is a replacement balcony...so watch this space for Part Three!

Restoration On The Antique German Christian Hacker Dolls House Begins - Part One

 I started restoration of this dolls house back at the beginning of August, and over the past few weeks I have been logging its journey on my Instagram account (vintagektminiatures). However, for those of you not on Instagram, I will repeat those posts on here. 

My lovely antique German Christian Hacker dolls house is now out of storage & restoration has begun. Woodworm was rife though, and it has taken several treatments to sort over a considerable period of time. The many worm holes have now been filled with wood filler, so if any new holes appear I know that I will have to treat the house once again with woodworm killer. 

The house is split into three floors & comprises of five separate removable sections. The very top of the roof also lifts off. All original papers are still there but some areas are in poor condition. 

I have managed to erase some of the crinkles out of the papers, & found wallpaper syringes useful for that task. Hopefully furniture will help to hide some of the more damaged areas. 

Above you can see the ground floor that has the kitchen, a central hall with stairs, plus dining room. Each room has a connecting opening door. 

I particularly love the kitchen’s built-in dresser & range, and I think this is my favourite room at the moment. 

This is the middle floor that contains two rooms with a connecting door. Each of these rooms have a back window. The left room will be my drawing room, and the right room will be an adult's bedroom. 

The top floor has a further two rooms, plus a connecting door.  The larger room will be another bedroom, and the smaller room will be the nursery. As you can see in above photo, there is a lift- off frontage.  

Under the base you can see the model number 138/6 M written in pencil & “Made In Germany” in ink, alongside a faint Christian Hacker trademark. 

There is a missing exterior door & balcony from the frontage of the second floor. Previous owner has simply replaced that missing door with a pane of glass but am currently pondering on how to reinstall a door & balcony. 

Am also hoping to restore the doorbell too & get it working again if I can figure out how to! Methinks this dolls house will be one of those long term projects & I love it.

Restoration Part Two to follow shortly...