Emerging from the chrysalis

It feels very strange to be clicking 'new post' on this blog after such a long hiatus. If you follow my main blog, you know that moving house took us a heck of a lot longer than I ever expected. Meanwhile my dollshouses, including the Fairfield, went into self-storage, then into professional removers' storage while we were renting, then came up on a big truck a few months after we bought our new house, and since then they have been filling up our utility room and kicking around in the basement.

I've been trying to create a room in the cellar for the dollshouses since January, but at first I was trying to buy secondhand kitchen cabinets on eBay with no luck at all.  I gave up on that in July when I spotted a 40% off sale at a big DIY store. I was able to buy the cabinets I wanted, and flatpacked so that we could bring them home in the car without having to hire a van. I used the money I saved towards buying worktops, and the fitter who installed our real kitchen came and installed the cabinets last weekend.  Since then I've been painting the rest of the room, and today I finally started unwrapping dollshouses.

The Fairfield just happened to be the first one I picked up.  I've put it on a little table surrounded by a sheet, so that if any tiny bits have come loose in transit, they will hopefully be caught by the sheet.

Oooo, what's in the box??

Could it be... a Fairfield dollshouse?

Cardboard removed and the giant 'bumper' of bubblewrap revealed, that kept it centred in its box.  Underneath that the house is clingfilmed, to hold in all the tissue paper.

Unwrapping the clingfilm to reveal the tissue-stuffed rooms.

Gently pulling out wads of tissue paper reveals the master bedroom, looking pretty good.  In this house most things were stuck down so they've stayed put.

Each piece of tissue paper is fully unfolded and inspected on both sides to make sure nothing small is clinging to it.

Garden looking ok, bit of 'lawn' has crept into the conservatory though.

Luxury bathroom revealed, and study. The chairs in each room had fallen over but have now been righted.

Boy's bedroom, just had to tidy up the floor a bit.

Girl's bedroom (sorry out of focus) had suffered a lot more with most of the furniture in the forefront overturned.

Bit of an earthquake in the dining room!

I'd forgotten my pictorial wallpaper - love it!

Placed safe on the new display area, with its dust cover over it.  Will need a bit more tidying up plus I know I've got some more 1/24th kits and accessories around to eventually make up for it.

One down (unpacked) and many more to go!