Category Archives: Houses

With a Little Help from Our Friends

Posted on October 8, 2011 by smallhousepress

Being our first commercial building, the 20thSt. Emporium required a jump-start for our learning curve. The three-story structure would include a 7-stool soda fountain and mirrored backbar. To show it off we wanted gold-leaf lettering embellishing the reflective surface of … Continue reading →

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The Birth of the 20th Street Emporium

Posted on October 2, 2011 by smallhousepress

In 1980 we seem to have slowed a bit, producing two structures, compared to the 3-4 we completed in previous years.  I sometimes imagine there was a time warp, or black hole, in Seaview that allowed us to make houses … Continue reading →

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The Bear and the Secret Room

Posted on July 21, 2011 by smallhousepress

The third house we completed in 1979 we called the Bear River (there are a lot of rivers in our neck of the woods, but this is one we had an up-close and personal with–blackberrying one summer’s evening on a … Continue reading →

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When What’s Old Was New

Posted on July 8, 2011 by smallhousepress

Number 20, our second house of 1979, was a project of another sort—the customers specifically asked for less aging. At the time, the idea of aged miniatures was still new. The buyers wanted to display the house in their miniature … Continue reading →

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Dirty Little Secrets

Posted on July 1, 2011 by smallhousepress

In 1979 the world tilted in our favor–Mork & Mindy came on the air, and Suzanne, a new customer, asked for an aged house. Not just a hint of age, but old. “Show all the bumps and wrinkles, I love … Continue reading →

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On the Trail of The Astorian

Posted on May 29, 2011 by smallhousepress

For better and worse, over the years our houses have begun to wander. One of the happy stories is of The Astorian, which got off to a rocky start, found a good home for 30 years, and now resides at … Continue reading →

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It’s All in the Numbers

Posted on May 19, 2011 by smallhousepress

Miniature house #17 was The Oysterville, the second of three houses we built in 1978. #18 would make that 18 houses in 5 years—or 3+ per year. I think this was the first $6000.00 house, which boiled down to each … Continue reading →

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Beach Walks & Saturday Night Live

Posted on May 11, 2011 by smallhousepress

In 1978, while we were building The Loomis Lake house, the world was watching Saturday Night Live (with Steve Martin’s original King Tut performance) and Saturday Night Fever. Gas cost .63 a gallon, and new homes went for $54,800.00. The … Continue reading →

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For the Love of Basements

Posted on April 24, 2011 by smallhousepress

Moving a dollhouse is a dicey undertaking. These cumbersome and unbalanced objects have a way of expanding incrementally and secretly during construction. While we learned early on to design a house narrower than our 28” studio doorway, we didn’t always … Continue reading →

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How to Smoke a House

Posted on April 14, 2011 by smallhousepress

People were smoking a lot of things in the ‘70s, but we may have been the only ones smoking houses. And I’m not saying what might have been growing on our porch in those ancient times that might have caused … Continue reading →

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