Recent Repaints

"Come on in!"

 

"What can we do for you today?"

Mimi and her husband own a business that repaints and re-upholsters furniture.  Sometimes they also do light carpentry and re-modeling.  They got a lucrative "pink be gone" contract from the prop department at Ayamedia Studios this summer.  Here are some of the sets they re-finished.

Office:
Customized versions of this Gloria set show up on eBay all the time.  Mimi and her crew were able to deliver this one at a much better price.

Lawn and Garden:
One day I would love to have a home with a gazebo set in a large, rambling yard.  In the mean time, I acquired this gazebo on eBay.  Unfortunately it was pink and purple so it has been in storage for the last 8 or 9 years.

This patio set came in a lot I purchased on eBay.   I liked the curlicue feet but didn't appreciate the pale purple color scheme.

Mattel also seems to favor lurid purple for lawn swings.  This one looks much more restful now.

Den:
The electronics that came with this Gloria play set are a little dated but it makes a useful period piece.

Living Room:

In one of my best eBay scores I acquired almost a whole houseful of Sweet Roses furniture from the 1980s.  All of the pieces were lovely but every one was pink!  Once I recover the pillows, my dolls might even be able to invite guests to visit since both the sofa and the arm chair fold out to make beds.

There was a matching end table and lamp set that went with this Sweet Roses living room but I haven't found it at a palatable price yet.  I do have the wall unit, though.

This Gloria play set feels like it should be covered in a blue and green plaid but after Mimi showed me how much the fabric would cost, we settled on deep purple instead.

I love Jane Austen novels and the Regency romance genre that developed from them so I look forward to using these Gloria pieces in drawing room dramas where ladies in high-waisted gowns engage in witty repartee with handsome lords.

In the play "No Exit," Jean Paul Sartre consigned his characters to hell which he imagined as a hotel room furnished in second empire style.

Mimi and her crew were especially careful to protect the glass doors with masking tape before applying the new stain to this clock. 

I believe this throne came with a Princess and Pauper castle that I bought on eBay.  It was hard to appreciate the detailed styling when it was pink.

Bedroom:
This was a Barbie set from the early 2000s.  I liked the sleek, modern lines but the mattress was pink.

The wardrobe doors and dressing table drawers were also pink.

It took many coats of paint to make the bedposts of this popular Gloria set white like the head and foot boards.  Originally they were pink.

I decided to make the accents in this room green in honor of Princess Tiana.

Kitchen:
A key principle of kitchen design is that the stove, sink, and refrigerator should be arranged in a triangle to facilitate meal preparation.

While this kitchen violates design logic, I still find it charming.

Mimi suggested bold yellow and black for this 1995 So Much to Do kitchen.  I said "Anything but pink!"

Dining Room:
My dolls like sushi just as much as folks in Morristown so I bought three of these sets for the local sushi restaurant.

I bought this dining room set at KB Toys circa 2006.  They had a whole series of furniture sets for about $10 each.  There was a soft plastic candelabra permanently mounted in the middle of the table.  It took Mimi and her crew a long time to remove it and fill the hole with modeling paste.  Their efforts to sand it smooth were not entirely successful so I positioned a Gloria candlestick in the center of the table to hide the defects.

Mimi made up for that mistake by hand painting the chair backs and seats to look like tapestry embroidery.

We chose a French country kitchen motif for this Gloria dining room set.

Here is more of the Sweet Roses furniture.

The original chair seats had dry rotted so Mimi made new ones.

Finding a can of "Georgia Clay" paint on sale at Michael's inspired this dining room suite which is a combination of Gloria and Fancy Life sets.

In the 1920s, the Universal Negro Improvement Association founded by Marcus Garvey promoted the colors red, black, and green as the colors of the "Africa for Africans" movement.  Since then, red for the blood, black for the people, and green for the land have become symbols of black nationalism.  Mimi used the hand-detailed stripes on the chair seat covers to express black cultural nationalist sentiments. 

***

Mimi herself was a Mimi Bobek doll.  

I used acetone polish remover to wipe the garish make-up off her face and I plucked her "fright wig" hair out by the roots.  Then I spray painted her whole body with Krylon Fusion paint and detailed her facial features with artist acrylics.  I used modeling paste to create her hairdo. 

Her pants are part of her original outfit but the top is from a Little Miss Matched ensemble.  Although she can't sit with ladylike decorum, like Kathy Kinney who played Mimi Bobek on the Drew Carey show, my Mimi is a great character actress.

À Bientôt