the final scale test

Pardon the mess.  I have been stripping the wallpaper off the walls, using hot water mixed with vinegar, a sponge and one of those fake credit cards the credit companies mail you when they're trying to get you to apply.  (I love those things.  Great for spreading glue and scraping!)  I tore out the wall between the dining room and kitchen, I am thinking about installing a pass-through here.  The wiring will come out next, and then I will PAINT the walls this time.  I feel like I'm completely rebuilding this house!

My topic for today is picking out the right furniture for your house.  1:12 scale can have a LOT of different meanings.  Just like with full size furniture, you can have a wide variety of sizes.  Half of the sofas we looked at when shopping for our living room would not have worked for the room due to their oversized dimensions.  They'd make the room feel smaller, harder to fit other needed pieces of furniture, and very difficult to navigate from one end to the other. I hate dealing with this frustration, but at least it's a little easier to solve when shopping for dollhouse furniture.

There are two tricks you can bring along when going to your favorite miniatures store.

This is for my Knupp House.  I need to start one
for this house!

The first is to make a paper layout of each room's floor, and then you can physically place pieces of furniture on it.  If your house's rooms are small enough,   you can draw them out in a spiral notebook.  This way you can also include the room's colors and wallpaper, and perhaps pictures of already purchased furniture.

The other test is useful if your house is occupied.  Will the doll fit realistically next to or on the furniture, or does he or she look like a 6 year old with feet dangling?  If you bring both floor layout and doll, you can also get an idea of how well they can navigate the room with everything in it.

Above, Robin, Nora and Theo are testing out the furniture.  Theo fits OK in the Chrysnbon chair, but poor Robin's feet are a good half inch (or half foot) off the floor!  She also cannot touch the back of the chair without some major slouching or a pillow or two.   (My 4'11" grandmother struggles with this same problem, so don't assume these pieces are out of scale.)  Nora's legs are a bit longer and her knees are more flexible (TOO flexible, I just unpacked her from the move and had to do some physical therapy to get them to fold the right way again) so she sits a bit better.

The sofa, chair, and coffee table take up the ENTIRE living room.  Theo is technically in the dining room.  The chair blocks over half of the entryway.  This was the only layout I could manage that would allow all three pieces to fit at all without totally blocking the door.  If you were in this room, you would have that same cautious feeling that you get when you're edging your way through a cheap furniture store that's crammed full of sofas and tables.  Again, they're not necessarily out of scale, this is just a tiny room.  Were I to move these pieces upstairs to the second or third floor,  they would likely work better.  

I'm really disappointed because I just adore this living room set.  I've had the coffee table with the curio drawer for YEARS, and have never gotten to display it.          I may end up regifting them to my sister or my niece when she gets old enough.  My sister's dollhouse has a huge living room!  

I get to design my own sofa now!  I'm thinking red with a chaise.  I'm also considering blocking up the french doors to put in a fireplace and wall TV.  This room needs a focal point!