Bodensee by Bodo Hennig

 

I am finally ready to reveal my little (big) surprise, hinted to in this post. You all probably knew it was a new dollhouse, but did you guess it was a

Bodensee by Bodo Hennig??!!!

This house was on my "covet" list, after I first saw it on Rebecca's Collections and the puppenhausmuseum website a few years ago. Manufactured in 1981 by Bodo Hennig, and now generally quite scarce, the house is 1:10 scale, enormous, and heavy. I have never seen one pop up on eBay until this past December, on German eBay. I've bought doll houses from Germany and other countries before and it is not a walk in the park. The shipping is outrageous, and you can sometimes get stuck with a less-than-professional seller, leaving you on pins and needles until your house arrives. Well, I still paid a lot, but the seller was truly wonderful. She disassembled the house and packed it extremely well. Everything arrived intact. And the house is in phenomenal condition!

As expected with a Bodo Hennig product, it is exceedingly well-made (blogger diePuppenstubensammlerin wrote a great article about the company in Dolls House Past and Present -- check it out!). Every screw and part fits perfectly, and if they do not, then you are doing something wrong. It is constructed of solid particle board and wood, and many of the walls are sheathed in a formica-like material for the plain yellow walls, and colorful wallpaper on the other walls. There is nice glazing in the windows. The house measures 37" x 24" x 23" with a total of eight rooms and a large removable stairwell.

After unwrapping everything, I got started. I assembled it using photos of the house as a guide:

Big box!!!

I made a mistake with one of the walls, which I realized after the roof parts did not fit! DUH!

The tall white wall on the right is in the wrong spot!

 After I fixed the walls, the roof went in!

In order to get it off the floor, I took the roof apart so that I could separate the two parts of the house. My husband and I then lifted it onto one of my storage units. Many, many apologies for the surroundings...our basement is, well, a basement, so there are boxes, storage things, an elliptical machine, etc.

Here it is perched in its new spot.

I did some decorating, too. The house came with a lot of original Bodo Hennig furniture, lamps, and three dolls.

Do you like it??? It did take me forever to decorate...so many rooms! And so much space. Since the scale is 1:10, I had to look for some larger pieces in my collection.

I am so happy to have the house, and am excited to think of different ways to use the rooms and style it. If you have a Bodensee too, please share!!!

Credits: Ugh, so many to mention! The majority of the pieces are Bodo Hennig and vintage German pieces from my collection. A shout-out to Megan of Modern Mini Houses for the cool pillows on the green couch and the yellow couch!!!

The time it took me: Probably 2-1/2 hours to unpack and assemble (and partly re-assemble to move), and 1-1/2 hours of decorating. Maybe more. I did it over the course of last week and this week.