It's just like a real Victorian house, only a lot smaller. Janet Manderscheid of Bruno has made a replica of a Victorian house, and it's calling Humboldt and District Museum and Gallery (HDMG) home for the next couple of months.The house was created less than a year ago, Manderscheid told the Journal. "I had collected a bunch of stuff before, so it was either make it and have something to put it in, or get rid of it," she laughed. A lover of the Victorian era, Manderscheid had been collecting items of or resembling the style of that age, in miniature, for years before she spent three months building the house in her sister's garage in Saskatoon. "I've been collecting for about four or five years," she said, keeping an eye out for Victorian items at the Good Neighbour Store in Humboldt.Some of the miniatures she found, like the lamps in the drawing room and a phonograph sitting on a table are actually pencil sharpeners, she explained, but they fit right in. She also found plenty of items that, with just a bit of modification, also fit in the house. For example, one of the ornate clocks on the wall is made out of a watch, set in a Victorian-style brooch. Manderscheid's mind seems to be able to take nearly any object and see it as something that would be perfect for the scaled-down house. For instance, pictures hanging on the walls of some rooms are clip-on earrings surrounding photos from magazines, and a former spice rack has been converted into a kitchen cupboard.The chandelier in the dining room was made from another clip-on earring, and the light fixture in the library is a rubber ball.Other tiny, additional details - like the tiny set of scissors in the sewing room - came from brooches.Her inspiration for this house came from a doll house that was built especially for Queen Mary, she said. "I always admired seeing it," she said, so she set her mind to making one of her own. And she's done it. The details in each of the 14 rooms is incredible. On one side of the house is a nursery, a sitting room all decked out for Christmas, complete with tree, a library, a drawing room, a sewing and laundry room, and a bathroom. On the other side is a bedroom, wine cellar, music room, kitchen, dining room and chapel, and at either end of the house are a garage and a sunroom. "All the rooms are electrified," Manderscheid said, pointing to the lit light fixtures, powered by batteries. The ceilings of most of the rooms have been painted, and there's a mural on that of the drawing room. In the chapel, there's even a tiny, printed copy of the Holy Bible, and in the music room, there's a book of Christmas carols. Manderscheid made some of the furniture, like the fireplaces in some rooms, the chesterfields in the living room, the china cabinet in the dining room, and the working grandfather clock in the library."They were hard to find, so I built them myself," she said. Though she had never done woodworking much before, Manderscheid is a crafting professional, and found a talent for it while she built the house. She is also inventive, making the stove for the kitchen out of a Biore soapbox, some plastic and metal, and a music box out of a coughdrop box for the dining room.The hardest thing about the house was actually finding wallpaper for each room that would make it look Victorian, she said. For that, she turned to wrapping paper in some cases, and sheet music in the case of the music room. She painted the floor of the kitchen, to give it a black-and-white tiled effect, and added some spooky atmosphere to the wine cellar to make it realistic, down to the nibbled cheese.Though there are some dolls included in the house for the display, some are not to scale, Manderscheid said, so she plans on making dolls of the right size sometime in the future. The entire structure comes apart, she said - each room is a separate box - so it's easy to transport.Though the house was a fun project to do, she said, and finishing it has given her a sense of accomplishment, Manderscheid isn't as attached to it as you might think.She's actually considering selling it, she smiled, or donating it to somewhere, because it's too big for her house.The public can stop by and check out the house and all of its tiny details until the end of December.
