Disassembling and Rebuilding a Triang Stockbroker

Introduction

I have just bought another Triang Stockbroker, even though I don’t have any more room for a big house.  Once I see a Triang House, it like seeing a puppy that needs a new home.  So I thought I would buy it for spares.  It was sold to me as needing a little restoration, as much of it had been done already …..

     

As you can see the entire house has been over-painted twice I think once blue and then cream. The front door and internal back door have both been stripped of paint, but have all the original door fittings.  It has all the internal doors.  The wooden beams on the house have been painted black.

[Bottom Left] The Kitchen still has the original Triang Dresser

[Bottom Right] The only Triang Fireplace is in this room.

[Top Right] This room does have original Triang floor paper, which is in very good condition.

[Top Middle]

Room above the garage.

Complete staircase, although the stair carpet has been over painted on the lower staircase, the upper is not.

 

The house does have all the windows, [none of them have curtains, just some decorative lace stuck on the inside]. All the windows need restoring, they are rusty, and the frames have been painted matt black. The sundial is missing from the chimney, and there are no chimney pots.

 

It’s nice to have the green cardboard shutters, which I shall scan and touch up in Photoshop.

With no original wallpaper in this house, unfortunately, every room has been over-painted with coloured gloss paint, I did find a scrap of wallpaper behind the kitchen dresser, [shown below] and a piece behind the stairs which I have not seen before, but it may have faded.

There are panels for lighting the house, but the metal tags at the top are broken, so there is not connection for the battery.

This is the view of the inside of the porch, you don’t often see, complete with the little wooden seat.

 

So disassembling is complete, I can see just how much work needs to be done.

So now a decision has to be made, what do I do with this house, with no room for another large house, my first thought was to break it up for spares. but I am now thinking I will make this one smaller.  This is not something I would normally do, but I could make it like the Half Stockbroker. Although the porch on the side of the Half Stockbroker house is different to the Stockbroker, it would look alright and the house would balance out well with the chimney on the side.

One final note ……..

PAINTSTRIPPING – How not to.

 

 

The Big Strip

Now the Stockbroker house has been disassembled, it is now the hard and messy job of removing old paint and paper. The outside of the house has the original paint, with light blue gloss layer, topped with white gloss, a bit like a layer cake.

The internal walls does have original wall and floor paper, hidden underneath various colours of gloss paint. I did manage to save quite a large piece of floor paper.

 

This was a very slow job, I was able to scrape and peel most of the white gloss paint off, the blue layer needed paint stripper. The original paint could not be saved, so needed stripping back to bare wood. Care has to be taken with the removal of the original paint, as it could possibly contain lead. It was stripped using paint stripper and a small blade, peeling away quite easily. On some parts the paint could be removed with just a light spray of water, and a gentle scrape with a blade. It was then taken outside to sand.

Many of the old Triang doll houses seemed to lack finish, this can be seen in the picture above showing how rough the wood surface is.

 

My pile of old stripped wood, one day this will be a doll house.

 

Porch

The porch has been removed, it will be so much easier to decorate not being attached to the main body of the house.

 

I took the roof off of the porch, so I could remove the red paint.

This was not a good idea, probably the worst idea I have ever had. When the paint stripper was put on, it made a very red sticky mess. It was useless to try and scrape the paint so I had to wipe it off with a damp cloth and then scrape off the goo, and then under the red paint was black paint. I decided just to sand it and be done with it…..

 

The chimney has also been stripped down, it has come up really well. Probably the easiest piece to do, as it is a solid lump of wood.

It was so much easier to paint the porch when it was removed from the main part of the house.

Looking very smart with a new coat of paint.

The porch has now been attached to the side of the main part of the house.

As simple as this Porch looks, it was really difficult to put back together again, and a lot of glue was used to hold it together. I used the original nail holes, but the nails would not hold it together any more without glue.  Positioning the little roof was the hardest part.

The floor has been painted with a reddish brown, which looks similar to the colour used originally, with the front door completed now it looks quite smart.

 

 

Stripping the Beams

All the beams on the house have been painted with black matt paint, this is going to be removed, as I want to take it back to wood. I plan to stain and wax them, rather than paint.  

The main front panel has one large beam section across the top windows, and one smaller beam panel either side.

The gable part of the roof has one triangular piece with straight beams.

This opening panel goes over the garage. The beams have come up really well, and I think they will look good left in natural wood.

 

New Front Door

With my new style Half Stockbroker, the front door is through the porch into the kitchen. The door was not fitted so I don’t have a picture or what it was like originally. It now has a nice coat of dark green paint.

As with all the hinges, they had a good coat of various paints, I wanted to use as many original parts as I can. So out came my trusty Dremmel fitted with a wire brush wheel I got to work. Some of them were also slightly bent so had to be tapped gently with a hammer to put them back into shape.

Luckily the door had all its original door furniture, door knocker, letter box and door knob. Being a little dull with age, out came the Dremmel again.

I am really pleased with how these came up, and are now ready to fit on the door, which has been painted.

I used the orininal nails to fit the letter box and door knocker back into place.

This is the outside wall with the new front door fitted to it.

A view of the door through the newly decorated porch.

 

 

 

Front Panel

The original small front panel has been over painted in white, with black [hard to remove] paint on the beams. The panel did not have hinges on it you can see the holes in the side of the side wall. The more I look at this house the worse it gets.

This panel is made of ply wood, which is made up like a wood sandwich. This sandwich had split and the layers needed gluing. I also had to add some slithers of wood where pieces were missing, you can see this in the top right hand side.

How many clamps does it take to make a wood sandwich? …… [As many as I had in my drawer.]

This is the finished Panel, with its new wooden beams and shiny hinges.

I think when hinges are fitted the panel will have a gap. I am not sure that it should have a space, must study some other pictures of Stockbroker houses to see correct position for them.

Few minutes later …………………………….

I have looked at other picture of the Stockbroker house and how the panel is fitted, and the hinges are on the side of the house as I thought. I did notice that in the pictures the panels did not have a big gap when fitted, why is it then mine has such a large gap. Then it dawned on me I had fitted the hinges the wrong way round. I just don’t seem to be able to get my head round hinges.

 

 

The Hinge

This post is inspired from the last one, and the difficulty I have with understand the workings and fitting of a hinge. Mainly for me to refer to, I started by an internet search ‘What is hinge’ …..

Hinge, a Dating App, Introduces Friends of Friends. … That is the premise behind Hinge, the next mobile matchmaking app that is catching on with urban millennials. At first glance, it looks very much like Tinder. But instead of random strangers, Hinge matches only users who share Facebook friends……

Oops my search should have been ‘What is a hinge’ …

A hinge is a mechanical bearing that connects two solid objects, typically allowing only a limited angle of rotation between them. Two objects connected by an ideal hinge rotate relative to each other about a fixed axis of rotation: all other translations or rotations being prevented, and thus a hinge has one degree of freedom. Hinges may be made of flexible material or of moving components…. [Wikipedia]

The hinge I have used is called a butt hinge.

I went onto the ‘DIY World‘ site that describes this type of hinge … ‘Looking at the 75mm hinge it appears at first glance that the two flaps are identical, but on closer examination, a slight difference can be seen between them. The knuckle which is wrapped around the pivot pin is made up of five segments from the two flaps, with one flap forming the top, middle and bottom segments, while the other forms the other two. The flap that forms the two portions also has slight gaps between it and the knuckle at the top middle and bottom. This flap with the two portions wrapped around the pivot pin is the flap that is fitted to the door.’

Well there we go, why do I find a simple hinge so complicated?

This is my hinge with its flaps open around the pivot pin.

This is my hinge with its flaps closed around the pivot pin.

This is my hinge turning its flaps on the pivot pin, this way it does not close all the way but stops at an angle.

This is my hinge with one of its flaps attatched to a piece of wood with screws. [A short, slender, sharp-pointed metal pin with a raised helical thread running around it and a slotted head, used to join things together by being rotated so that it pierces wood or other material and is held tightly in place.]

This is my hinge in place, with both flaps attached with screws, enabling it to rotate around the pivot pin.

My door will have a gap in it as I have attached it using the original screw holes, I could have mounted it against the edge thus giving it a smaller gap. As the area of wood which the screws would have to go in is not very wide, it was better this way.

Do I understand the workings of a hinge better, yes at the moment, until the next time …………..

 

 

 

Garage Doors

These doors are a bit of a mess as you can see, and not all of the hinges are fitted. [refer to earlier post restoration comment]

The doors have been painted before with various layers of paint that need to be removed.

The paint has now been removed, being careful to remove the paint from the groves which make mock panels in each of the garage doors.

The dremmel came out again and the hinges were given a good polish.

With a nice fresh coat of green paint they look much better.

 

 

 

Complete

Well the house is comming together, the roof only needed a little repair, and painting.

The one job I hate doing is painting the base, I don’t no why, but alway find it difficult to get a good finish. I used gloss paint, and then finished with a matt varnish, which gives it a nice sheen.

The garage door is green, but my camera tends to make dark green blue? I like the natural wood beams.

A view of the porch, I need a sundial to go on the chimney breast.

So this is it the house so far, just the windows to restore, and new shutters to fit.

The new windows and shutters have now been added. I have added net curtains to the windows, as the Princess 2. There were 15 window frames and 32 white inserts to strip of paint, rust protect and paint. I had decided to do them all, even if I don’t use them for this house, at least they are done.

   

This restoration has been a real dilemma for me, it goes against what I have tried to achieve with my other houses. I had no room for another full size Stockbroker, so I had a choice, break it up for spares, or build something I had room for. I think I made the right choice.