K-K-K-Kenner F-F-F-Fever - Restoration Diary 1

Finally after months and months of pining, I got myself a beautiful wispy brunette Kenner Blythe. After being outbid a few times on Ebay and other auctions I put in a winning bid and landed myself a bit of a banged up girl. It's really been a case of trial and error trying to restore her to a nice condition, having never owned one before but the Blythe community has been super helpful. A lot of people send their dolls away to professional Kenner restorers but I couldn't bring myself to do that I think part of buying a dirty old broken Kenner is watching her transform as you clean and fix her into a uniquely beautiful lady.

Initial condition report:
- Broken neck
- Glue on neck, body and face
- Dislocated knee
- Dirty body and face
- Frizzy knotty hair
- Yellowed eyes
- No body cracks
- Pull string still works, changes to all four colours
- Crude wire fix on neck
- Small lip scuff re-painted or original factory flaw
- Three yellow stains on forehead
- 4 missing hair plugs from back of head





The first thing I did was pull her head off, it was only hanging on with a piece of wire that had been jammed into her body. Knowing that noone else would be more excited, I went and saw Tara (Duchess_Tara) at work and showed her my lovely new Kenner. She squealed in excitement when I unwrapped her, and even made me give her a kiss! At her advice, I rushed out to the supermarket and bought some baby shampoo to wash her in. I washed her body, hair and head, after leaving her soaking in warm water for a few hours and removed quite a lot of the dirt. Her body and face still have a few stains on them that I need to work on further.



The scariest part was next, I knew that in order to fix her broken neck I would need to open her head. Her scalp was rather easy to remove, it was a shame I had to remove it as it was glued on so nicely. I just pulled it softly around the edges and it started to come out from underneath the cap that holds it on. Once I had it off it looked like this:



The cap underneath was in poor condition with several cracks starting and a few pieces missing. I found the missing pieces in her scalp so they'd obviously broken off over the years. Ruth of Eurotrash has recommended I stick them back together using mouldable putty resin as it will make putting the scalp back on easier.



In order to remove the cap from the top of a Kenner's head, you need to squeeze the two stems at the top very very tightly and slide if over the top of them. They kind of stick out over the cap like a letter T. As the cap was in such poor condition I decided to file back these stems a bit so I could remove it without breaking it completely. Using a flat file, I brought them back about 2mm and was able to slide the cap off easily, without causing further damages. Factoring in that the scalp will be glued back down, I believe filing the stems will have less of a detrimental effect than having a broken cap.





The next step to opening her head after you have removed the 4 screws holding it together (two below the ears like on a Neo and two in the scalp) is to open the glue. Once again, a real shame to have to break this open.



What I saw inside her head when I opened it was quite shocking... Stay tuned!