The dirty truth...

Fifteen years ago I started working on my Canal house Singel 224.  More than 5 years past my estimated completion time, it is finally near to being finished.  The photos you see on my website and here on my blog mostly show the house looking beautiful and pristine.  But that is not entirely how it looks on a daily basis.  I keep the house in my workshop, so you can imagine the amount of dust and dirt collecting in the rooms.  

The grey haze on the floor of the Salon below is not a trick of light or caused by a photographic quirk, no, it is plain old dust.

To make it even more clear, here's a shot of some items the Bedroom.  The jewels have rather lost their sparkle.  You can imagine when there's a layer of dull grey dust, the whole house loses a bit of its sparkle.  

I always intended to cover the front with glass or perspex. In fact, I did have a sheet of acrylic glass screwed to the front for quite some time.  But it was a huge task to get it off when I wanted to work on one of the rooms.  On one occasion when putting the acrylic sheet back on, it cracked.  As I was never very happy with this solution, I didn't buy a new sheet.

While cutting glass for another project a few months ago, I had my aha moment.  Sliding glass panes for every room!  The glass panes slide in a groove of a very simple wooden construction which I attached to each of the floors of the Canal house.  So simple yet so effective.  I can't believe it took me so long to come up with this idea ;-)  

So, going through my stash of old picture frames, I cut glass for all of the rooms.  This was fairly easy compared to my next task: cleaning all of the rooms.  I decided the best way to handle it was to clean the house room by room, tackling any repairs which needed doing as I went.  

I packed all items from one room into a storage box and started cleaning that room first.  Then all of the items, one by one.  It was a perfect opportunity to take stock of what I have in my collection and to take a few good photos of all of my pieces.  I am sure in future you will see some of those photos pass by here or on my Instagram account! 

Happily cleaning the first room.  It wasn't so much fun anymore when I started on the third room.  It was so much work!  It felt like it was more work than cleaning a full sized house.  

Although I do clean my silver fairly regularly, some of it was badly tarnished.  But I don't mind cleaning silver, I actually quite enjoy it.  It is so satisfactory seeing it come to life again!

Not quite finished yet (the attic and basement still need cleaning), but here is an impression of the house with the glass panes in place.  Closed and protected from dirt and dust and bugs and mice! (read what happened when mice visited here)