Cadogan Gardens Planning the exterior

Having now taken a stroll around Cadogan Gardens and Cadogan Square ( courtesy of Google ) I can see that the dolls house is not based on a particular real location. The first choice is the double fronted layout as most of the houses which have a similar window structure only have a single bay with the stairs to one side of the property. This change is to be expected since the real dwellings have the two rooms on a floor behind one another which is problematic for displaying in the miniature version. The floor plan of many houses from this time have additional rooms behind one another so a more accurate representation might be to view from the side rather than the front, but that could result in a less interesting view when the house is closed, so an acceptable variation. This makes the other variations a little more acceptable such as the use of quoins on the corners. None of the real buildings have this, mainly because the houses are mainly terraced and only the end houses have a suitable corner. The real corners do have some interesting alternatives to quoins but with the miniature a detached building a more decorative finish does seem appropriate. That said, there are a number of interesting details present in the real properties that could provide alternative finishes.

At this point I really need to provide images to support the statements being made, and while I have a growing portfolio of suitable material, they have watermarks on or come from Google or other on-line sites which prevents using them. Time for a run down to London to take my own images, and check other details on site. At the same time I have a few sites to visit in my research on the interior treatment of the house which could hopefully be included in that trip. While I have not found a property I can base my own external treatment on, 1 and 3 Cadogan Gardens do have something similar in the way the windows are finished while number 2 is the closest I've found to the windows structure on the model. The bracketry below the windows on the kit seem to be taken from a number of other Victorian buildings, pictures of which I have, but without information on just where they are located. So I can't follow up easily on those. The Cadogan estate have a number of very nice treatments around the windows which works well with the brickwork of the rest of the building, but that would require a change to the current stonework trim to them. Something I may well consider once I have some other material to play with.

I had already made a couple of mistakes in my previous planning. That the main finish is brickwork was always a given, but the details on how that would be achieved was open to discussion. I do have a large box of brick slips from Minaco which would make a very nice finish, but as pointed out previously, this will add a lot more weight to the finished project. I bought a couple of sheets of the Street's Ahead embossed card brickwork and this looks a more practical solution so I had taken advantage of the current sale at Doll's House Emporium to stock enough sheets to complete the outside. A decision I rather rushed into, before looking in more detail at the actual brickwork out on site. I had bought the stretcher bond finish, but the higher resolution images of the real brickwork is competed in English bond, presumably because the height of the buildings use two or more bricks thick walls to reach that height. While there is a Flemish bond version of the embossed card, it is a simpler layout than actually used, but it is a little closer to the original. Doll's House Emporium fortunately switched the order for me before shipping and at the same time have supplied the red brick colour which is a better match than the weathered even after 150 years of London weather. At this point, the brick slips are looking a little better option since that would allow proper copying the brick layout in areas like the faces of the bay windows, but I am hoping I can achieve something similar with the sheet solution. A third option is the Bromley Craft Products stencil approach as they have all three bond styles in their stencils. The problem I can see with this method is that it will be fine on the large end walls, but the fine detail between the windows will be difficult with all the angles on the front faces.Watch this space once I have something to play with.

The order includes a few other items including the embosed card slates. I am fairly sure that the roofs are slate as I can see traces of it even from the ground level pictures. In real life, most of the roofs are actually hidden behind parapets. There is a case to modify the front of the roof on the model to better match that as an alternative to adding the quoins and it is something I will try out before making any final design decision. I have a number of examples for the dormers that may fit better overall but all require pulling the dormer wall forward which will need a bit of structural work to achieve.

The next step