Our cemetery memorial expert Mark Smith of Gravestone Transformations has been hard at work restoring the little house. In early 2021 he discovered that the “spalling” occurring on the inside walls of the house was increasing – likely due to the moisture held on the interior of the house, particularly when softer object are placed inside.
As a result, we placed signs at the memorial asking for objects to not be placed in the house. Mark visited many times over many months to undertake the slow process of removing moisture from the sandstone interior, to prep it for the work necessary to stabilize the walls. This is a process that works slowly over time and took many steps. The walls on the two engraved sides had become very thin and likely wouldn’t have lasted too much longer without the steps taken to remove the moisture from the stone and apply the materials needed to thicken the walls and make the house more structurally sound.
After many trips, Mark was able to stabilize the interior of the dollhouse walls – the photos are included. At this point, there is still much to be done on the little house, and additional work will continue in the spring! Thank you to everyone who has generously contributed to the roughly $4000 + cost of this restoration. As you can see in past posts, the house first received a cleaning with D2 solution and the foundation of the house was stabilized and re-tuckpointed. This began in 2020. It has been a long road, and we appreciate the amazing and special skill is has taken on part of our restorationist to execute this difficult task.
Once the restoration is completed, we hope to possibly replace the cross that sat atop the roof of the house that was lost somewhere along the way, and we also hope to place a bronze plaque on the dollhouse base that marks the estimated date of origin of the house, the restoration date, and the names and birth/death dates of the nine family members whose graves at the Keating Dollhouse site remained unmarked.
If you would like to contribute to the Keating Dollhouse restoration, you can contribute directly to the restorationist’s company, Gravestone Transformations (Mark Smith) via the link below. Scroll down to the donation form and click on the checkbox next to “I would like to designate this donation to a specific fund.”
A dropdown menu will pop up. Keating Dollhouse is one of the options. If you would prefer to make a contribution via paper check, please send us a message here on this website, on Facebook, or email us at keatingdollhouse@gmail.com and you will be provided the proper mailing instructions. Thank you!
Keating Dollhouse 