Little Coul House
Little Coul House is a Hobbies brand #237 Special Large Tudor Doll's House. This particular style was available from 1948 through 1968. Mine is likely one of the later models as the door and window frames are plastic instead of metal; the coal fireplaces in each room are metal. An altered version of this house was issued in 1970 and is still available.
The garage which came with it appears to be the same brand - the doors and windows are characteristic of other Hobbies houses, but I've yet to find another example of this little building.
The house is more 1:16 scale, but I'm going to use it as a 1:12 scale house with lower, cottage-like ceilings.
I've decided to go with a 1920s syle for the interior. The ground floor will be a kitchen and sea-themed bathroom, while the upper will be a living room and a library.
Middle Coul is the name of a farm near us and the name particularly tickled me - apparently there's an East and West Coul as well; I was hoping for a High Coul - so I decided there should be a Little Coul, too.
I bought this house and the garage for £40 from our local auction house the spring of 2020.
They were both pretty grungy, and whomever built the house was a bit rough, especially with the decorative lattice, so I've had a lot of work to do.
The interior decorating was slightly garish, to put it mildly.
That's a whole lot of pattern for one wall
I called this the Seizure Room.
I knocked out the hall walls to make one large room on each floor, removed the stairs and covered the stair hole.
Stripping went much faster than I expected, with only an old knife and a bottle of vinegar water
I removed all the doors, windows, and fireplaces before stripping. The door and window frames will be painted black and the lattice left white.
I'm not sure if I will use the fireplaces in this build or not, but I will certainly be keeping them as they're very nice.
After stripping and cleaning, I drilled holes in each room for electrical wires and "plastered" the walls and ceilings with wall filler.
I stripped the brick paper from the exterior of the house and will be removing and redoing the lattice on the left-hand side of the house at least.
The upper part of the house will be rough white "stucco" (more wall filler), and the lower part will be grey stone (wall filler again).
I painted the ceilings first - blue in the living room and white in the other rooms - before painting the walls.
The library started out grey, but I decided I preferred a dark blue in the end, though I'm slightly annoyed to have two blue rooms in a line.
With the walls and ceilings painted, I applied a layer of wall filler and sculpted the floors for each room - wood upstairs, cobbles and stone flags downstairs.
Floors painted and grouted. I used matte Mod Podge on the stone floors and satin on the wood.
The kitchen cobbles.
I decided I didn't like the dark grout or yellow tone of the bathroom tiles, so I gave the floor a wash with white.
The floorboards look nice with a bit of a shine. I have an oriental rug for each room, too.
My mother bought me a few pieces for the kitchen for Xmas and I couldn't resist trying them out, though the kitchen still has a lot of work to be done before I can furnish it.
The Little Coul garage
I'm still not sure if this is made by a brand or an individual.
