This is about a group of 6 that I restored recently. I had to use the "wet the cardboard and Iron" technique. Yes Virginia you can iron cardboard ~ paper etc. And it works pretty well but it takes some time to get it to stay flat, flipping it back and forth until it stays flat. The two houses in the first photo that were so completely smashed were somewhat daunting. It of course was necessary to take those houses completely apart and then reassemble them after they had been straightened. The first photo is one that was posted on the auction site and as you can see all of the houses needed at least some work and some extensive restoration was accomplished. This group was made within a year or two of one another. 3 are Printies and 3 are Platform coconut houses. The church and the Red coconut were from the same maker and all three of the printies carried the same stamp on the bottom and were no doubt littermates.

The first two are printies and are very related. Notice the layout is essentially the same for them. There was just a bit of damage to the fence of the house of the tower entrance printie with the pastel blue roof. But it was the house with the green spotted roof that was the biggest problem of all of them. What you cannot see is the back of the house was terribly crushed and I was unsure whether it was even restorable but it came out just fine. I had a house I wanted to fix up that had a balcony so took it off of the other house and scanned and printed this one out. LOVE those porthole fences of these two.

The last two are coconuts and though the red house mostly needed windows and fence work I did put some of Pete's coconut on the roof. The church was a bit more challenging. The mullioned windows had lost all of their cellophane and are the restored originals but the challenge was getting the speckled white & black coconut finish right and making the decision to use the blue green coconut on the base. The original coconut that was on the church was horribly yellowed and/ or faded. It is a lovely little church today thanks to Pete's coconut.

Great job, Tom.

tom...thank goodness!...more little houses that didn't end up in the land fill...please continue to share your collection with us...

my very best regards...howard...

Awesome Job Tom! I love the gold roof on the blue coco. That church looks like it just rolled off the assembly line. Thanks for sharing!

My fave is the brickie with the blue roof

Beautiful restorations. I love the church!

Is "brickie" a category now?