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.