A FANCY French Dollhouse Kitchen

 It's already the first remodel, and I only began my dollhouse pursuit a few months ago.

The kitchen needed an upgrade, when I decided to move the cooker (thats what they

call the fancy European stoves) over between the countertops.

After I moved the cooker to the cabinet wall, I moved the bakers rack I made

over to the same wall, and hung it above one of the base cabinets.

 This was the layout before, a simple country kitchen for the servants. 

 Hahah. There is always a

running story behind every dollhouse, don't you know.

The before layout had the bakers rack over the cooker.

Which in real life would be FOOLISH because all the cooking grease and 

steam would go over all the copper pans and utensils. So I decided to 

make a European style fancy vent hood to go with the fancy cooker.

 It was built from balsa wood scraps and a piece of heavy paper for the curved part. 

Store bought miniature corbels were added to the bottom for that fancy old world flair. 

 I primed the wood with gesso and then I noticed after I sprayed it with the shiny green paint

I had used for the cooker, that there were splotchy shiny areas and the paper was mostly dull.

It occurred to me that anywhere the gesso had touched the paper, that was where the paint did its proper thing and had a glossy shine.  So I went back and primed the paper area of the hood with the gesso, and then sprayed again with the Krylon seafoam green paint.  

Then I applied "brass" strips to the hood using card stock that had been wrapped

in gold metallic paper and tacky glue.  They looked awesome!!

The thing was FANCY!!! It made the kitchen way more FANCY!

 But something wasn't fancy at all....

 The hanging light was NOT fancy. 

It was a simple country kitchen light fixture. It had to go.

Goodbye tiny copper lantern.

Hello big French chandelier! 

The kitchen also finally got a refrigerator and 

another bakers rack to hold more copper and our farm fresh eggs.

One more look at how amazing it looks from EVERY angle.

And....

The Kitchen Aid mixer got upgraded to the copper version like the one in 

my own tiny real life kitchen.  

You see that is the fun part. Making

things resemble your favorite parts of your home, and then adding 

FANCY things you WISH you had, but sadly DO NOT.

And while I tried to take a few quick pics with my FANCY camera,

a little hand snuck in while my eye was firmly resting on the camera.

As I snapped the pic, I heard her say in her little voice: 

"Broken"

I popped my head up and saw that she had yanked off the cabinet door.

You see the doors and drawers are false fronts and she is very intent on

opening and closing anything she can get her hands on.

I told her, "Grammy will fix it." 

And then quickly ushered Reeve right back to her own little dollhouse.

It is filled with colorful inexpensive vintage dollhouse parts I have been

finding with the help of my sister, Ellen. 

 It is everything a little girl would want.

Where she played happily for quite some time,

and only broke a few things.