someonesDad Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 Greetings. I am new both to the forums and to the world of dollhouses, and am hoping for some guidance from those of you who know so much more than I. Quick setup story: as shown in the attached photo, I am helping to complete an unfinished dollhouse for my daughter. This particular house was purchased by my mother in 1978 with the intention of building it for my sister. My grandfather was a carpenter and helped with much of the trim work etc. For a variety of reasons, they never completed work on the house, and it sat in storage for 40 years. Until now. For my daughter's 12th birthday, my wife and I decided to complete the house (which had by now come to us). And now on to my question. In the photo below, there are basically 2 colors of all of the finishing materials (clapboard sheets & roof shingles). The darker versions were installed back in 78, and the lighter ones are the work we have done over the last couple of weeks. The clapboard will be painted, so the color difference is not an issue; the shingles however will be stained (or otherwise darkened... we are hoping to have an aged cedar roof look in the end results). All of the shingle are from the same era, the lighter ones have just been opened recently, the darker ones have 40 years of aging. The Boston lap and edges on the main roof are pieces I cut from basswood L-molding, so they are not the same material as the rest. Does anyone have any advice as to how to equalize the colors so as to blend the old & new work? Again, the desired end result is the gray color of aged shake roofs. I have experimented a bit with the steel wool and vinegar solution and think the silvery gray that produces is viable, however the different starting shades produce different end results. I'd love to darken the newly applied shingles to match the vintage work, but am assuming that bleaching back the old stuff is probably more realistic. Am I mistaken? Thanks in advance for any advice you can share with me. Chris p.s.: if it is useful to know, the shingles are Houseworks LTD Dollhouse Roofing Shingles. The packets we have from the 70s are #7004 and contain 100 shingles, I just purchased a bag of 1,000 of the closest current version I could find, #7104 to complete the remaining lower roof. p.p.s.: I'm also interested in any staining/finishing tips for the grey shake roof we are hoping for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KathieB Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 Hi, Chris, and welcome to the forum! What fun you must be having doing up this house for your daughter. So nice that it stayed in the family this long. Dollhouses are some of the most patient critters on the planet. Since stain is by its nature translucent, I don't think it will provide the even coverage you're looking for. I see two options: Go ahead and use the stain and pretend the house sustained damage in a hurricane and had to have parts of the roof repaired, hence the two-shades of shingles. Use an opaque paint in a hue nearest to the aged cedar look you want as a base over the entire roof and then brush on stain other colors in areas to simulate the naturally uneven darkening of cedar shingles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rbytsdy Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 Welcome, Chris; lightly-thinned paint is what I used to cover a mishmash of differently-colored shingles on my first Tennyson (some of which had already been stained, in different stains ). Great-looking house; looking forward to seeing your colors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparklepuppies Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 Welcome Chris! That is an amazing house. What an awesome gift that will be. Curious if you know what house it is? And if you live (or used to live) in the SE? It looks very much like the houses by The Dollhouse, Inc, made by Jerry Jarrell in Stone Mountain, Ga. Your model looks like the Williamsburg, with a slightly different window configuration than the catalog. The trim and the base are what jumped out at me. I have it's sister, the Mt. Vernon Colonial. You can find it in my albums. For your shingles... The others have good suggestions. Something else I've done is to remove some old shingles in random places, and sprinkle the new ones throughout. Not the most fun thing to do though. Have fun! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havanaholly Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 Welcome to th little family, Chris. I'd try a dark stain, like walnut, and then wash a very diluted dark gray over it when the stain is dry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mesp2k Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 Hey Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
someonesDad Posted March 10, 2018 Author Share Posted March 10, 2018 (edited) Hi again to everyone who has replied, and thanks for the thoughtful (and quick!) responses. It doesn't sound like anyone is too optimistic that bleaching the shingles will return them to some comparable base for staining. I will look into painting options as well as darker stains to see how they look over the various shades on the roof. You can see my testing board set up in the lower left base of the house. Tracy, the house was purchased in Norwalk, CT in late 1977, early 1978. I don't know enough about the dollhouse market past or present to know if a Connecticut shop would have sold houses from a Georgian builder back in the days before the internet. I have no further information about the provenance, and my mother doesn't remember the manufacturer. That said, I looked at the Mt. Vernon in your albums, and agree that there are some strong resemblances. Beyond the trim and base, I have a pair of virtually identical chimneys that are not in the original picture. Anyway, if they're not from the same creator, they certainly seem to have come from like-minded people. As to any non-standard features, I was always under the impression that my carpenter grandfather added his own touches to the original shell (for example a nice set of casters under the base, dental moulding, and possibly the extensions under the bay windows?), but at the time the house was purchased and worked on I didn't really pay too much attention to my younger sister's dollhouse. I had assumed the he had created the chimneys as well, but they sure look like the ones in your gallery. Thanks again to everyone for the advice. Edited March 10, 2018 by someonesDad Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havanaholly Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 Two things: Paint covers a multitude of sins problems. There is a band limit to the number of photos you can post directly. After you make five posts you can make albums in the Gallery and post your photos there, then link us or copy & paste them into your posts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WyckedWood Posted March 11, 2018 Share Posted March 11, 2018 Beautiful house. Edited because I misunderstood the question...I really like the looks of the lighter shingles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 11, 2018 Share Posted March 11, 2018 I would try to stain the lighter shingles to a shade as similar to the old ones as possible.. then when they are completely dry, I'd age them all with paint washes.. mainly because I'm not sure how the vinegar/steel wool solution will react to stain. To achieve aged grey on wooden accessories I have stained them first then added a very diluted wash of black paint.. Then a diluted wash of white paint. Of course I'd test the results before attempting this on your roof and consider that washes will dilute water based glue and may make your shingles curl. Have some wax paper and something heavy to put on them to hold them down if this happens. Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havanaholly Posted March 11, 2018 Share Posted March 11, 2018 I clamp strips of scrap wood over the waxed paper to hold shingles in place whilst they dry, as I use carpenter's wood glue to apply shingles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
someonesDad Posted March 11, 2018 Author Share Posted March 11, 2018 Thanks again to everyone for the great suggestions. I am very appreciative of the warm welcome and received wisdom. It looks like there are a few ideas for me to check out on my spare shingles. Holly, thanks for explaining the forums' image policy. I hope I didn't post more images in this thread than I should have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havanaholly Posted March 11, 2018 Share Posted March 11, 2018 4 hours ago, someonesDad said: ...I hope I didn't post more images in this thread than I should have. You'll get a nice little pop-up message when you've exceeded your limit. No limits in the Gallery. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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