Since this was my second Queen Anne Mansion, I not only wanted to furnish it, I wanted to experiment with a different paint scheme for the exterior.

Inspired by the book America’s Painted Ladies (a wonderful book with tons of pictures of houses with Victorian paint schemes), I decided on a cream base with pink and green trims. All of the window frames are double painted and additional bits of trim were added.

I also decided to shingle this house and was pleased with the N-Scale (1:160) shingles I found at Laserkit. Because “real size” shingles vary in size and and shape, there really isn’t an issue in the scale discrepancy (the dollhouse being 1:144).

I thought I was finished when I painted the wooden tower topper green. I was wrong. My husband (the former carpenter) informed me that the tower top should either be shingled or copper. Well, I thought the shingles would be “too much”, so I opted to take some thin copper sheeting and cover the tower top.

But first I found a chemical recipe to speed-up the patina process — I didn’t want bright shiny copper, but nice weathered copper. The recipe worked and within a few hours I had too much patina. I lightly sanded the piece to get it back to a “weathered, but not decrepit” look.

In the image below, the wee birds in the bird bath were carved from toothpicks — an experiment inspired by the carving work of micro-mini artist Frances Armstrong.

This miniature house is now in a private collection.

The furniture and accessories are a combination of scratch-built and painted mini-metal furnishings.

This Queen Anne Mansion was my first foray into the world of 1/144. It was quite the challenge, but I was pleased with the final results. Of course, this one was done before I knew people were crazy enough to furnish these little houses.

And before I became one of those crazy people.

That said, as it was my first 1/144 it will always have a special place in my heart.

The Queen Anne Mansion is a kit by Northeastern Miniatures The house stands a mere four inches tall and is designed as the “doll’s dollhouse” — perfect scale to fit in a 1:12 (standard scale) dollhouse.

Since this was my first construction of the Queen Anne, I didn’t make a lot of changes to the kit. I added a window box on the front, a mailbox, a goodly bit of landscaping, and a potted plant on the front porch, but pretty much everything else you see if “straight out of the box.”

This miniature house is now in a private collection.