I recently discovered a YouTube channel called The Miniature World Of Kit & Caboodlers. It’s a mother and daughter team crafting and restoring all sorts of vintage doll’s houses and often using their mudlarking finds. The videos are so calm and joyful, and I love all things tiny, so it’s become my default channel to have on while I illustrate. They also buy random lots of miniature stuff from eBay and do unboxing videos. This got me looking at eBay for the first time in many years and I accidentally bought this massive doll’s house!

I say “accidentally”, I did mean to buy it, I just didn’t realise how huge it was! I almost cancelled the sale, thinking it wouldn’t fit in my car, but after a lot of measuring, decided it would probably squeeze in. So off I drove to pick it up and now it’s living in the TV room because it probably won’t fit through any doorways, let alone up our twisty stairs! It has casters, which are definitely needed!

I love it though! I love how 3D it is, it opens on both sides, and has lots of outdoor areas (a porch, two balconies, and a rooftop garden). Most doll’s houses are quite wide and flat. They open at the front and are just one room deep. I can see how that might be more practical, but this way is so much fun!

The lady I bought it from said her husband built it in the late 80’s / early 90’s and, after a bit of online digging, it seems to be a San Francisco Dollhouse, also sometimes called Victoriaanse Villa, or a Marmod dollhouse. It was never a kit or house you could buy new complete. You have to build it yourself (or find a second-hand one!) If you search for San Francisco dollhouse then you’ll get plenty of images showing how people have decorated them (plus a different kit design, also called San Francisco), but unfortunately, most of these link to dead websites or missing pages. I’m hoping other people searching for information on these houses might now be able to find this post.

There are a couple of places still selling the plans to build it, but the dimensions they quote are way off so I’m not completely convinced they’re legit and won’t link directly here. The dimensions of this house are 130cm high, 66cm wide, 73cm deep.

Three of the windows are miniature working sashes! The rest are fixed and don’t open. I don’t know if that was the original design or if it was just too much work to make them all like that (there are 19 windows in total!)

After I’d given it a clean I discovered a power cable and lighting instructions in a hidden compartment in the roof. The house is wired for lights but there are only two bulbs left in and I hadn’t expected it to actually work after several decades sitting in a garage, but it does! It also came with a box of new bulbs and light fittings, so it’ll be fun getting that all set up again without having to wire it all from scratch.

It also came with a few boxes of furniture and accessories and I haven’t had a proper look through at everything yet, but here are a few interesting objects:

Top left in the image above is a framed painted tile. The back says it was make in Denmark. The pillow and mattress look homemade and are adorable!

There was also a collection of crude cooking pots stamped with Mexico, and a curious sleeping metal cat with DH on the back. If anyone knows anything more about these, or the San Francisco dollhouse generally, I’d love to learn more! Leave a comment and point me in the right direction.