Over The River and Through The Wood
“Over the River and Through the Wood” was originally published in 1844 as a poem written by Lydia Maria Child (originally titled “The New-England Boy’s Song about Thanksgiving Day.”) A few things changed over time: wood became woods, Thanksgiving became Christmas, and the journey now is to Grandmother’s house, rather than the original Grandfather’s house. Child wrote the poem about visiting her grandfather’s house, known as the Paul Curtis House in Massachusetts. This green dollhouse is a gift for my granddaughters, and while their drive to visit me is sans river and woods, it does include awful Chicagoland traffic.
This past weekend was to be the big “reveal” while all my children arrived home for a long overdue reunion. Sadly, the weekend plans went sideways, and while the dollhouse was loved, it remains here for another day. Owning an old house is not without challenges, including 100-year-old water mains. Ours is complicated by the subdividing of the property over the years, so now our water main access is hundreds of feet across a neighbor’s yard in a six-foot-deep meter pit. Oh, and ours services two houses, so when it ruptured, both our house and our rental house became waterless. Of course this occurred on a Friday afternoon…right when all my children were arriving home. The complications of repairing, as well as the Village’s new requirements, have left us a bit numb, and as I write this we still have no water and no resolution from the Village. Hopefully today will bring good news.
Thankfully this miniature “Grandmother’s House” does not include plumbing. The house was one I spotted on Marketplace and was thrilled as it is exactly the same 1940s structure as the dollhouse I made for my daughter 25 years ago (see blog post ericas-heirloom-treasures/thehousethatjackbuilt). The house was sad, needing a major overhaul, and I set to work.
The white paint had to go since I knew the wood underneath was charming vintage pine. I pulled off the contact paper and stripped the paint on two floors. Sadly this mucked up the fireplace a tad and I had to touch it up, as well as create a new “fire” to cover old glue from the prior “fire”. I sanded the heck out of the house, and added pre-painted white baseboards to clean up the not so great edges.
Two of the windows were missing their muntins – a funny word that I thought was “muttins”. Muttin, of course, is the meat of sheep – and being a bit of a Miss Malaprop, I often mix up words based on sounds. The term 'muntin' is also confused with 'mullion' (elements that separate complete window units). Many companies use the term 'grille' when referring to a decorative element of wood placed over a single pane of glass to resemble muntins which actually do separate multiple panes of glass. Some etymology for us word geeks: the word muntin comes from the French word “montant” which is the present participle of “monter” meaning “to rise”. The word was used as far back as the 13th century.
All of which is to say I cut small bits of wood to size, painted and then glued them in place. I added “glass” in the form of a plastic sheet, and hot glued it in place after painting the window framing. The flowers in the flower boxes came from stems picked up thrifting. I used a sweet brass button from my button box as the front door knob, and shingled the roof with mini cedar shakes. The exterior of the house was painted using our house paint so the dollhouse resembles “Grandmother’s House” which should really be “Nana and Pop’s House”.
The vast majority of the house was sourced cheaply. I bought the wallpapers in the pink bedroom and kitchen (chickens duh), though the living room paper was free and the small bedroom “paper” was actually from a thrifted book about clothing artwork that I cut up (as is the mirror in the bathroom). I sourced the vintage wood kitchen set off eBay as I could not stand the cheap stuff available these days. The remainder of the furniture and knick-knacks came from estate sales – including the sweet artist easel for a granddaughter who loves to do “art”.
The house’s artwork was a fun project – the two framed pieces in the living room are actually small photos of both sets of grandparents, with ours showing the date 2025 and the other including the two girls. The pink bedroom art is a reduced sized copy from a feminist calendar I received at Christmas from my daughter, and I had to include the “girl power” imagery for my two granddaughters from their aunt. I made the curtains, bed coverings and pillows and was thrilled to find the little plastic teddy bear in a bin of estate sale dollhouse stuff. The vintage rug in the children’s room was handmade needlepoint work also in that bin. I cleaned and re-backed it so it would survive many years of play. The little metal horse on the mantel, also from the bin, is to remind the girls of their aunt’s “horse” room in our home. And I could not forget to include a small metal sewing machine – also found in my estate sale bin – for my granddaughters to remember me by.
The joy of my granddaughter exploring the treasures will sustain me through the stress of this week. Thankfully I don’t need to excavate a water main line for the dollhouse!
