Flip this House!
Many of you may not know that I did not just inherit one house — I inherited two.
My father built me a dollhouse for my 4th (?) birthday. It was incredibly deluxe, solid wood in a white colonial style with green trim, decorated in the hippest of early 1970s wallpaper and carpet. There were built-in bookcases, windowboxes, even my initials on the shutters. I was in heaven, and played with it, in many incarnations, for over ten years.
Recently, Beatrix has been especially interested in dollhouses. Every time we go to a toy store she wants to play with them. In particular, we have spent hours in Creative Kidstuff playing with the Calico Critters animal families and their homes.
But have you priced out dollhouses lately? They are ridiculous, either incredible expensive ($100 to $200 and up) for wooden ones (and I don't like any of the designs much anyway), or tacky plastic, or both. So we decided to renovate my old dollhouse and "flip" it for a picky new owner...
Here it is originally:
Here it is after some work. We decided to start out simply, just painting the walls and covering the floors with felt. We can always get more elaborate later. Patrick did almost all of the planning and work:
Here's the final version, complete with the Hopskotch Rabbit family (Beatrix's favorite from Calico Critters:
Beatrix is, predictably, in love with it. The dining room furniture ends up in the bathroom half the time and the little teeny tiny bars of soap will be the death of me, but its worth it for how much enjoyment she gets. It's nice to pass it on, and especially wonderful to have her understand how much love went into its renovation.
My father built me a dollhouse for my 4th (?) birthday. It was incredibly deluxe, solid wood in a white colonial style with green trim, decorated in the hippest of early 1970s wallpaper and carpet. There were built-in bookcases, windowboxes, even my initials on the shutters. I was in heaven, and played with it, in many incarnations, for over ten years.
Recently, Beatrix has been especially interested in dollhouses. Every time we go to a toy store she wants to play with them. In particular, we have spent hours in Creative Kidstuff playing with the Calico Critters animal families and their homes.
But have you priced out dollhouses lately? They are ridiculous, either incredible expensive ($100 to $200 and up) for wooden ones (and I don't like any of the designs much anyway), or tacky plastic, or both. So we decided to renovate my old dollhouse and "flip" it for a picky new owner...
Here it is originally:
Here it is after some work. We decided to start out simply, just painting the walls and covering the floors with felt. We can always get more elaborate later. Patrick did almost all of the planning and work:
Here's the final version, complete with the Hopskotch Rabbit family (Beatrix's favorite from Calico Critters:
Beatrix is, predictably, in love with it. The dining room furniture ends up in the bathroom half the time and the little teeny tiny bars of soap will be the death of me, but its worth it for how much enjoyment she gets. It's nice to pass it on, and especially wonderful to have her understand how much love went into its renovation.
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