Goodbye Beacon Hill

The Beacon Hill

Fare thee well, Beacon Hill.

My first custom kitchen, painstakingly cut from sheets of basswood, all working drawers and cabinets; my tiny spice-drawers… Farewell. Packed away are the miniature stoneware pots and urns and plates, my artisan baskets full of vegetables, my carefully hewn foods.

Farewell 22 Acacia Drive; the working windows and hand-cut copper flashing. Adieu my terracotta bricks and heavy mortar walls, white corbels and meticulously draped window treatments…

The Beacon Hill, along with sausages and a ham-hock, some resin furniture pieces, and my hours and hours of labour and love was carried off by a mustachioed gentleman and my husband. They slid the house into a car. The gentleman’s wife spent most of the morning Saturday at the sale hovering back and forth around the dollhouse, giving her husband pleading looks. She got her way, and with gushing praise for my work and taste, she gleefully followed as it was toted away, promising to take good care of it, and finish it up and fix the dollhouse with love. I was happy. Happy it went to a collector, happy it went to someone who really loved it… and happy it was gone to someone who would pay attention to it.

It was in rough shape. It had seen much dust and moisture, and the inevitable beating of being moved cross-country and from home to home. It had seen much neglect, and the wallpaper was delaminating and the white paint was discolouring. It was time for the Beacon Hill to go. ::sigh::

This house came from a kit from Greenleaf Dollhouses. It is one of their flagship houses; one of the most beautiful. Greenleaf houses have extraordinary exteriors, wonderful detail but their interiors are challenging and sometimes rooms are very small. I struggled with the kitchen, and then decided to do the cabinetry. I will probably do the same in my future houses, because I am a Greenleaf girl.

The Beacon Hill has a successor waiting (two actually). I have a number of projects in the wings that have been waiting for a while. I have the kit for the gorgeous Willowcrest house:

Gorgeous.

I also have a kit for the first Greenleaf house I ever built; the Glencroft:

Built it once, want to do it again.

. I’m holding onto it, because I want to possibly buy another kit and ‘bash’ them to make a bigger house. I want to make this house the cottage in which the Misses Dashwoods come to reside in (Barton Cottage) from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. It’s my own version of Barton Cottage, it’s not taken from any film adaptation. But that is my plan for that house. I also have a slightly battered McKinley Dollhouse,

which is a wall-hanging townhouse, which is very cool, and I have a four storied tower of room-boxes I have a story idea for. I’m not sure if or when I’ll start the new projects; I need space and time for dollhouse making. We shall see. I took out all my treasures from the Beacon Hill, all of my stunning stoneware, my gorgeous artisan baskets, my incredible iron-worked boot scraper… and even a couple of teeny birds. I also found my special knife set. I’ve ferreted everything away, carefully putting my Bespaq pieces into the box for a new residence.

I wonder what’s next? Who knows.

I do know that I was drooling looking at the Greenleaf site today... the Beaumont is back.. check out this beautiful Antebellum house:

The Beaumont was discontinued for a long while. Now it's back and it's laser-cut no less. ::DROOL::

And look at this one, it's a Corona House...

It's front-closing, so it has that older style feel to it. I like the Georgian appearance.